"What you see is what you get!" is an old adage that is only true in the world of personal computers and digital printing for those who have taken the steps necessary to calibrate both your monitor and your printer. If getting the most accurate color possible from your monitor and printer are essential to you, then this article will help you get started with the process.

Using a custom ICC profile together with your printer is one of the smartest actions you can take to enhance your digital printing workflow, particularly if you happen to be a photographer - or perhaps just an enthusiast who understands the value of achieving the most precise color possible out of your printer. But getting accurately printed color goes hand-in-hand with seeing accurate color on your display monitor. Before it is possible to experience the full power of effectively using a profile with your printer, you need to first calibrate and profile your display monitor. You may print perfectly true color out of your printer with great consistency, but it is not going to appear precise to your eye if you persist in using a display that has not been precisely calibrated and profiled.

A monitor profile permits ICC-aware applications - like Photoshop - to accurately display your image's color via your monitor. To realize an identical appearance in print, the existing color data must be translated into the applicable output values for your printer, and whatever combination of paper and ink you decide to use. The role of your printer profile is to accurately translate the appearance of ink that is laid down on the media. Canned or generic profiles from printer or paper manufacturers may provide mostly acceptable results, but they may not consistently and accurately represent the behavior of your specific printer. I am a powerful proponent of ditching those canned profiles in favor of utilizing a custom printer profile instead. In my opinion, the suitable integration of a custom printer profile into your digital printing workflow is a significant step in matching your monitor with your printed results.

Almost always, your display is capable of reproducing a larger range of colors (wider gamut) than your printer. This is much more true today, given the rapid transition from legacy CRT monitors to more modern LCD displays. Consequently, it is just about impossible to adjust a printed image to make it look like your display; but rather, our goal is to make the output from your display look like the print instead. Achieving this requires that you send the image through the printer profile, and back through the monitor profile, so you will see a simulation of your printed image on your computer's display. This is generally known as "soft proofing." This feature is available in a number of popular third-party applications, like Photoshop, Qimage, Aperture, and others. Pretty neat! Soft proofing will allow you to simulate your printer's output on your monitor and helps you to realize the very best screen to printer color matching.

Calibrating your monitor is possibly the simplest and least costly step in the process of developing a viable color management system.  If you haven't done this step already, it is something you should try to do either before - or at the same time as - profiling your printer.  Using a printer profile will only squander your time if you lack the capacity to match your monitor's output to your printer. You will find some very good monitor calibration devices and software packages available online. Here are just a few:  Spyder3 by DataColor (different versions and price points), also various versions of Pantone Huey, and X-Rite’s i1 (Eye-One) Display software.  All of these products come with a precision colorimeter device for accurate monitor calibrations, and software that will help you set up a custom monitor profile.  The software packages listed here are major players in this arena, and all provide very good results at a reasonable price. But there are certainly others you may want to consider.  All of these systems provide detailed information about the display settings you will need to use in order to view images on your monitor with unmatched color accuracy.