Is your inkjet printing a bit hit and miss? You may get a reasonable match to what is on your monitor, but the chances are that they're subtlety different - lighter or darker, and with various tints to the colours. If you like to match what you see on screen to what you print, or you want to print the same image on different papers, then you have three options.

Edit the image. In your imaging software you could edit the image to compensate for the  tints in printed colours. You will have to create a copy of the image and edit it for each different paper that you use. There's a lot of trial and error, with time, ink and paper wastage until you get a close match. Unless you're very good at your image editing, you will still not get an exact match, and you will not be able to get a match to your monitor.

Change the colour settings in the printer driver. This is a better option - you will not edit the image. You just have to play around with the driver colour settings. Yet more time, ink and paper wastage and you will still not get an exact match. You might get close to a match, and that might be good enough for you. But there's still not enough control in there so that you can alter individual colours. Try a black and white print and it become even more so noticeable - some shades of grey might have a magenta tint, whilst others have a green tint. It is impossible to correct this using the printer driver settings alone.

Use a paper specific profile. For ease of use, and for an accurate print, custom profiles are definitely the best way to go. We can make you a custom profile for each paper type you use so that you get consistent colour.


How do you use a profile? To use a custom profile, you must be able to print using profiles from your editing software. For this example, we'll use Photoshop. Open Photoshop. Open an image. Go to Print with Preview. Set options to 'Let Photoshop Determine Colours' and in the box below this select the profile for your printer and paper. As you are printing with a profile, you MUST set your printer to 'No Colour Adjustment'.

If you want us to make you some custom profiles, your fist job will be to download our colour target. Now open the target on Photoshop and print on an A4 sheet (DO NOT RESIZE THE TARGET OR ATTACH A COLOUR PROFILE), ensuring that Photoshop and your printer are set to No Colour Adjustment. Now post the target to us.

When you receive your profile by email, we'll tell you where to install. What you do now is to open an image in Photoshop, set the print option and set Colour Handling to 'Let Photoshop Determine Colours'. In the box below, you select the printer profile we made for you. Then set your printer to 'No Colour Adjustment' and off you go.

We are assuming that you know about printer profiles and how to use them. If you are new to profiles, you are not sure how to use them or how to print the test target etc, please email us for very clear details. It's better to ask if you're not sure!