Accuracy of Print Calibration / Using with Laser

[jethro]

Hi, we have an Epson Perfection 3200 Photo that we need to upgrade our SilverFast SE software for. I was noticing the new 'Print Calibration' feature in some of the versions of SilverFast, and it sounds intriguing. But it's a fair amount more money, so I want to make sure it's actually going to be useful for us.

We have a couple printers in the office, but our main printer is a Xerox Doc12 color laser/copier with a Splash RIP. This is one of the more color-accurate laser printer solutions of it's class (especially with this RIP), and many graphics professionals and print shops still use these even though they're a bit old.

So I thought I read somewhere that the print calibration does not support laser printers. Is this true? Is it because they typically drift much more than an inkjet and therefore the results may not be as accurate, or because there is actually some technical limitation?

I'm aware of the limitations of a laser in general, but also know that I have manually customized the profile that our Doc12 was using and got much better results than before. But this was all just 'eyeballing' it and making coarse adjustments here & there. Anything more accurate than that would be a step in the right direction. And this machine does actually have a self-calibrating function using a target to get it to a 'known' working state. This would obviously be done on the proper paper before any profiling, and also before any critical printing.

I'm also curious for a real subjective opinion about the accuracy of these profiles versus one generated using an actual spectrophotometer and professional profiling software. This has always been a bit out of our budget, so if the SilverFast can at least be 'decent' or 'close', it might warrant the purchase price.

And I'm assuming it would work fine for our little Epson Stylus Photo R300, and large-format HP DesignJet 800PS?!?

THANKS

[LSI_Luebker]

Dear jethro,

I think Laser Printers like the Xerox DocuColor 12 are an exception as they do provide very good quality with 600DPI and 8BIT.
Anyway we have not tested those High End Graphic Arts Laser printers so I can not promise you anything. But If you want to purchase the Printer calibration for your Ink Jets anyway I would give it a shot, I am looking forward for your feedback.

[jethro]

Hi, OK we are needing to purchase the upgrade pretty soon now.

I have a question concerning profiling our HP DesignJet 800PS, which would probably be a more standard application for this.

Unfortunately, our DesignJet's onboard PostScript controller/RIP is not working any more. So we had to pull it from the machine, and it is just too expensive for us to replace right now $500-600). We are a Mac-based design studio, but all of our applications would need the PostScript RIP to be able to print to. So we have chosen to install the basic HP GL/2 drivers in a PC laptop we have running Windows XP. This does allow us to print to the DesignJet, but we only have Acrobat to print from on this machine.

- In this situation, would we still be able to successfully calibrate this printer? In the GL driver, I saw an option in the 'Color Management/Color Matching Method' to choose "Managed by Application". So this would lead me to believe that Acrobat would handle the color management, and not the printer driver, correct?

- As we only use this PC for printing to this printer, and not for scanning, how would we send the calibration target to the printer? Would we need to create an Acrobat file and output from the PC? Or would we need to download the PC version of SilverFast just for doing the calibration (I'm assuming we can choose Mac and/or PC versions of SilverFast)?

- Would not having the PostScript RIP make color control and management more difficult or impossible with this printer now?

THANKS.

[LSI_Luebker]

Dear jethro,

the Printer Calibration is just working if you can print directly on the printer and apply a newly created ICC profile in the driver.

best regards,
Thomas Lübker
LaserSoft Imaging