I'm having a little trouble getting an exact color match between monitor and printer, using a couple of different professionally made printer profiles. Monitor is calibrated using DataColor Spyder Elite 4. The workaround, until I get a better professionally made printer profile, is to apply a predetermined filter made in Q.

It's much easier for me to get good color matches using the *White Balance adjustments in Qimage than it is to get decent color matches using the Saturation adjustments, but so far I haven't been able to save predetermined filters using the White Balance of Q.

I have no trouble saving filters made using the adjustments for Brightness, Saturation, and Contrast - but getting correct color balance using the Saturation adjustments is very difficult, or impossible for me.

If I have to manually make WB filters for each image I print, obviously the WB filters aren't going to be very useful.

Maybe it isn't possible to save filters made by adjusting White Balance? Or is there some special method of saving these?

Thanks - Bill Hansen

Fred -

Knowing that you're easily able to save filters caused me to experiment with different sorts of names. I see now that while I can list the exact adjustment I make when saving a filter using only brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustment, I cannot save any filter in which I've specified the amount of a WB adjustment. However, when I just name the WB adjustment filter "filter for EPPL" (where "EPPL" stands for "Epson Premium Presentation Luster") I can save it. I might not have tried that, without your note.

I do actual WB adjustments in Photo Shop, before printing in Q - so my images are the way I want them when I see them in Q. If I can get the brightness and colors of the print to match the appearance on the monitor, I'm happy. With a predefined filter in Q, that's very easy, just two clicks.

I agree that the printer profiles I've been using are not good enough. Neither is the monitor calibration. Below is a long paragraph which explains just a very small amount of what I've been going through to get them right. It's not pertinent to the present question, unless you're just interested to read it. I'm going to try a much more involved procedure of making a custom printer profile, using the SpyderPRINT program and colorimeter - but that will take time I don't have, this week or next.

I agree that the monitor calibration seems as if it should be wrong. However, colors of images, and their brightness, as they appear on the monitor, have remained consistent over the past 10+ years, using 3 different calibrated monitors during that time. The present monitor is calibrated every two weeks using DataColor's Spyder3 Elite v.4. I've written back and forth to the DataColor forums, and also to DataColor International several times in the past few weeks, because I am having to adjust the monitor to a measured brightness of 70 cd/m^2 in order to get brightness of images as they appear on the monitor, and brightness of prints, to match. That's a lower measured brightness than I've heard of or read of. But colors are fine on the monitor.

Prints made using three different custom  printer profiles (specific for the model of printer and paper I'm using) are all "in the ballpark" compared to monitor appearance as far as color goes, but none is close enough for my taste.  One of the profiles is the one supplied by Epson specifically for the printer and paper I'm using, one was made by GreatPrinterProfiles, and one was made by me using the DataColor SpyderPRINT program and colorimeter.

I know I should be able to get better matches, because I've been able to get almost exact matches for color and brightness with previous printers.

Bill

I'm using an Epson Artisan1430. It has impressively good user reviews as a "fine art" printer, but maybe those reviews are overly enthusiastic. This is the second sample of the 1430 (I guess I wrote that earlier). My last previous printer was an Epson 2880 which died suddenly after about 6-7 years of good service. I felt that I couldn't justify the $800-1200 cost of an equivalent printer, which would have been the Epson 3000 or 3880. Now I'm sorry I didn't scrape up the money and buy one of the more expensive printers - or am I? I'm not a pro, I don't sell prints, and I don't print every day or even every week.

One of projects for the coming 7-10 days is to produce a custom printer profile using the 729 patch targets from the DataColor SpyderPRINT program, which I own. Beyond that, I can "adjust" the other custom printer profiles using either an Action if I print from Photo Shop, or a predefined filter if I'm printing from Q. As you've pointed out, adjustments like that aren't going to be perfect for all images, but they're the best I can do at this time.

Bill