# Creating custom printer profiles with inexpensive scanner?



## Pyrogerg (Apr 13, 2012)

Brand new to color-management, so here to diving right in.

I don't have a particularly good printer (Canon MP620, a few years old), so I generally order prints online. It's occurred to me that I should be able to use the MP620's scanner to create a profile for it or any other printer, however. I'm sure that I'm showing my naivité here, but this is what I imagine:

Calibrate monitor using X-Rite ColorMunki Display - done
Print to whatever device
Scan result and compare with file printed to create output profile.

It seems like this could be an in iterative process, whereby an existing profile is used to soft-proof and the actual output is used to improve and update the profile used for soft-proofing. I suspect this could be more useful for my inkjet at home than for a well calibrated, cared for, and profiled printer at a professional lab, but who know. Any thoughts on the matter? Feel free to direct me to threads on the matter that I may have missed in my search.

Cheers,
Gregory


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 13, 2012)

Hi Gregory, welcome to the forum!

So just clarify for me how you're intending to create the profile itself?  I think that's the main area where it'll fall down.  If you're not doing it regularly, it might be easiest to use one of the printer profile creation services, where you print a particular file and post the print to them, and they create a profile for you.


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## Pyrogerg (Apr 13, 2012)

Victoria, your response to my other post regarding color management (cf. cmyk vs rgb profiles) has allowed me to clarify me thinking about this a little. First I'll explain my understanding of soft proofing in case it's just plain wrong, then I'll explain how I think that the process could be used to create custom soft proofing printer profiles with a home scanner.

Printers use the cmyk colorspace, so when we soft-proof in Lightroom we're casting the image in sRGB, which is relatively similar. Further, we can compressing the contrast range of the image to approximate the tonal space of the output media. These changes are not just subjectively apparent on the monitor, but are quantified in a histogram. That histogram represents the software's prediction of what the output will look like. If we then print the image and scan it, an rgb histogram from the scanned print - actual results - can be compared with the histogram from the soft proof - predicted results.

Here's the profile-creating step. By comparing the predicted histogram with the actual histogram, a new soft proofing profile could be created, which for that particular image at least, would represent what the output actually looked like. Really, it's just basic calibration. Presumably, that profile would render more accurate soft proofs than the original, because it's calibrated to actual output. You wouldn't want to use an actual photograph for this, but rather some sort of calibration image that runs through an appropriate range of color and tonal values.

I was hoping that there might be a Lightrooom plug-in that did something like this. Too optimistic, I fear, and I certainly don't have the time to figure out how to create such a thing. Ah well, I'll post another thread to figure out which profile I should be using for my printer since the title of this thread wouldn't help anyone find that question.


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## Pyrogerg (Apr 13, 2012)

That makes perfect sense, David. I've just posted in a new thread for help finding an appropriate canned profile for my printer.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 13, 2012)

Very well said CD, thanks.


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## pknight (Jun 13, 2012)

Pyrogerg said:


> That makes perfect sense, David. I've just posted in a new thread for help finding an appropriate canned profile for my printer.



Gregory,

I'm new here, so maybe I'm missing something.  Who is David?  The only messages I see here prior to the one I quoted are from either you or Victoria.  Have some messages been removed?


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## Brad Snyder (Jun 13, 2012)

Yes, there's a post deleted from the thread. I don't know what the specific advice was, I'm not sure we can retrieve it, and I am sure that we would not retrieve it. 

The post was deleted when the posting member asked to be completely removed from the forum, following a (polite) disagreement over the forum's advertising rules.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jun 13, 2012)

The gist of it was that developing your own color management tool for the sake of calibrating  one old printer is not cost-effective and the time/money would be better spent on a new/better printer.  The advice came from an ex-member who has experience in the field.


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