C o l o r M a n a g e d Wo r k f l o w for EPSON Scanners and Printers PMA Preview Edition
C o l o r M a n a g e d Wo r k f l o w f o r E P S O N® S c a n n e r s a n d P r i n t e r s PMA Preview Edition
Copyright © 2003 by Epson America, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Epson America, Inc. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While Epson America, Inc.
Contents The Art and Science of Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Profiling Your Scanner and Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Printing the Printer Profiling Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
he EPSON Perfection® 3200 scanner and your EPSON® photo printer form an ideal system for reproducing photography and fine art. With these outstanding tools, you expect the highest quality color output. That’s why we’ve created this booklet. It gives you all the tips and techniques you need to optimize color on your EPSON system. T Monitors, scanners, and printers each use different technologies to reproduce color. Different color technologies mean that the devices have different color ranges or gamuts.
Printing the Printer Profiling Target 1 2 5 Click the right arrow to proceed. The Print Target screen appears: 6 Make sure your EPSON printer is selected as the current printer, and the paper you want to profile is loaded. Then click Print. Click Create Printer Profile. Click the right arrow at the lower-right of the MonacoEZcolor screen to proceed. The following screen appears: Click here to proceed 2 For any EPSON printer, click RGB Printer.
MonacoEZcolor advises you to record the settings you’ll make in the printer driver, so you can apply them when you use the profile. When you click OK, the print window appears: 7 9 Once you’ve made your selections, choose Color Management from the Options menu. The color management settings appear: 10 Click No Color Adjustment to ensure that the driver doesn’t alter the colors in the profiling target. Then click Print. Choose Print Settings from the options pop-up menu.
Preparing the Printer and Scanner Targets 4 Click the right arrow to proceed. The following screen appears: The next step is to scan the printer and scanner targets in a single image. MonacoEZcolor will use this scan to build the profiles. 1 2 In MonacoEZcolor, click the right arrow. The following screen appears: Caution: On some operating systems, MonacoEZcolor lets you scan directly into the application using the EPSON scanner plug-in. Do not use this feature.
Scanning the Targets with SilverFast 2 On the main SilverFast screen, click the General tab, and make sure the Scan Mode is set to Normal (File), Original is set to Reflective, and Pos./Neg. is set to Positive, as shown: 3 Once you’ve confirmed the settings, click the Options button. The SilverFast Defaults screen appears: 4 For Gamma-Gradation, enter 1.80. Check for HDR output, then click the CMS tab.
The CMS Defaults screen appears: 5 In the Profiles for ColorSync section, set all profiles to . You can leave the other settings at their defaults. 6 On the main SilverFast screen, click the Frame tab. Set the Scan Type to 48-bit HDR Color, and set the resolution slider to 150 dpi, as shown: 8 Once you’ve made your settings, click Prescan. The prescan image appears in SilverFast’s scanner window: Turn off all the color management options for the target scan.
9 10 Crop the prescan, using the dotted line surrounding the target as a rough guide. Don’t worry if the scan is slightly skewed. But if the scan is more than 10 degrees or so from square, reposition the target and redo the prescan. Click Scan RGB to make the final target scan.
The following screen appears: 4 Click Select Reference and load the reference file corresponding to the reference number on your IT8 target. (It’s the number in white type at the lower left of the target.) For example, the reference file for the target labeled “MONR2002:12-02” is named “MONR2002.12.02.mrf.” Once you’ve loaded the reference file, its name appears below the button. 3 5 Verify that the reference file name matches the reference number on the target, then click the right arrow to proceed.
7 Click the right arrow to proceed. MonacoEZcolor displays a progress bar as it builds the scanner profile, then the printer profile. Once the profiles are built, MonacoEZcolor displays the Finished screen, as shown: Building Additional Printer Profiles Remember that printer profiles are paper-specific, so you may need to build additional profiles for different paper stocks. You can follow the previously described procedure to build additional printer profiles.
Printing the Printer Target from Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 1 Launch Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. 2 Choose Color Settings from the Edit menu (Mac OS 9, Windows) or the Photoshop Elements menu (Mac OS X). The Color Settings dialog box appears: 3 Choose Full color management — optimized for Print, then click OK. 4 Choose Open from the File menu, browse to the RGB Print Patches.tif file you saved from MonacoEZcolor, and open it.
The print settings appear: 10 Click No Color Adjustment to ensure that the driver doesn’t alter the colors in the profiling target. Then click Print. If you see a warning that some PostScriptspecific settings will be ignored, click OK. 11 Quit Adobe Photoshop Elements. When prompted to save changes to the RGB Print Patches.tif file, click Don’t Save. Once you’ve printed the target, you’re ready to proceed to the next part of the process: using SilverFast to scan both the scanner and printer targets.
Printing the Printer Target from Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 1 2 Launch Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1. Choose Leave as is (don’t color manage), then click OK. The RGB Print Patches.tif file appears. 6 Choose Print with Preview from the File menu. The Print Preview dialog box appears: 7 If necessary, click Page Setup to change the paper size and orientation. Make sure Show More Options is checked, then choose Color Management from the pop-down menu.
The Print Settings appear: 9 10 Choose the paper type you want to profile from the Media Type list—for example, Enhanced Matte Paper. Then click Advanced Settings and choose your desired print settings. Most of the time, the default settings work well. Once you’ve made your selections, choose Color Management from the Options menu.
Building a Scanner Profile for Transparencies 1 To scan transparencies, you need to use a different profile from the one you use for reflective copy such as photographic prints. This section provides step-by-step instructions for building a scanner transparency profile. First, you’ll scan the transparency target included with MonacoEZcolor using SilverFast, then you’ll load the scan into MonacoEZcolor and build the profile. Locate the 4x5 transparency IT8.
3 Once you’ve confirmed the settings, click the Options button. The SilverFast Defaults screen appears: 5 Turn off all the color management options for the target scan. You need to do this whenever you scan a profiling target. In the Color Management section, set Scanner->Internal and Internal->Monitor to , and set Internal->Output to RGB. In the Profiles for ColorSync section, set all profiles to . You can leave the other settings at their defaults.
8 Once you’ve made your settings, click Prescan. The prescan appears in SilverFast’s scanner window: 10 Click Scan RGB to make the final target scan. SilverFast prompts you to choose a location, file format, and file name for the scan, as shown: 11 Save the scan in TIFF format. We recommend that you include the scanner and film type in the file name. Once you’ve entered the information, click Save to start the scan. SilverFast scans the target and saves it in the specified location.
Building the Scanner Transparency Profile in MonacoEZcolor 3 Choose 4x5 Transparency. Then click the right arrow twice to proceed to Input the Target, as shown. (The intermediate screen covers steps that you’ve already performed, so you can skip them.) 4 Click Load Image, and load the target scan you created in the previous section.
5 Click the right arrow to proceed. The following screen appears: 7 Click Select Reference and load the reference file corresponding to the reference number on your IT8 target. (It’s the number in black type at the lower left of the target.) For example, the reference file for the target labeled “MONT45:2002:12-02” is named “MONT45.2002.12.02.mrf.” Once you’ve loaded the reference file, its file name appears below the button.
MonacoEZcolor displays a progress bar as it builds the scanner profile. Once the profile is built, MonacoEZcolor displays the Finished screen, as shown: You’ve now successfully built a profile for scanning transparencies. In the next section, we provide instructions for building a display profile to provide accurate color on your monitor. If you want to start using your profiles right away, you can skip to “Scanning with LaserSoft SilverFast” on page 23. 1 Launch MonacoEZcolor.
The Set Monitor White Point screen appears: 6 Click the right arrow to proceed. If you chose CRT as your monitor type, the following screen appears. If you chose LCD as your monitor type, skip to step 8 on page 21. 5 Choose 6500K as the Desired White Point. If your monitor has adjustable white point settings, adjust them to 6500K, then choose 6500K in the Hardware Setting area. If your monitor does not offer adjustable white point settings, then choose I Don’t Know in the Hardware Setting area.
8 When you’ve adjusted the color to your satisfaction, click the right arrow to proceed. The following screen appears: Use your monitor’s Brightness control to lower the brightness just to the point where you can no longer distinguish the letter from the background. Once you’ve made the adjustments to your satisfaction, click the right arrow to proceed. The following screen appears: 10 9 Adjust the sliders until the letters blend with the background squares.
You’ve now successfully built a profile for your monitor. In the following sections, we’ll show you how to load the profiles you’ve created into your scanning applications—and use them to communicate color accurately from scan to print. Configuring Color Management in Your Host Application In these sections, we’ll show you how to use the profiles you built in the previous sections to ensure accurate, predictable color. First, we’ll explain how to configure color management in your host application.
Configuring Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 Adobe Photoshop offers powerful but sometimes complicated color management features. To configure Adobe Photoshop for the EPSON Scanto-Print workflow, follow these simple steps. 1 Choose Color Settings from the Edit menu (Mac OS 9, Windows), or the Photoshop Elements menu (Mac OS X). Scanning with LaserSoft SilverFast The instructions given for configuring SilverFast apply whether you’re using the standalone SilverFast application or the SilverFast Import plug-in.
The SilverFast Defaults screen appears: 4 Make the following settings so that SilverFast can communicate color correctly to your host application. In the Color Management Section, set Scanner->Internal to ColorSync, set Internal->Monitor to Automatic, and set Internal->Output to RGB. When you see the following warning, click OK. The next settings you make will change the SilverFast Internal profile to Adobe RGB (1998) to match the host application. 3 Make sure Gamma-Gradation is set to 1.
6 On the main SilverFast screen, click the Frame tab. Set the Scan Type to 48->24-bit Color, as shown: Transparency Scanning with SilverFast 1 Launch the SilverFast application, or open the File menu and choose Import>SilverFast (Epson) in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. SilverFast appears: 2 On the main SilverFast screen, click the General Tab and set Original to Transparency. To scan positive transparencies, set Pos./Neg. to Positive. To scan negatives, set it to Negative.
The SilverFast Defaults screen appears: 4 Otherwise, make sure that the other settings are as shown. If necessary, refer to “Reflective Scanning with SilverFast” on page 23. 6 When you’ve completed all the settings, click OK. 7 On the main SilverFast screen, click the Frame tab. Set the Scan Type to 48->24-bit Color, as shown: Verify that the Gamma-Gradation value is set to 2.20. (If you set it while building a transparency profile, SilverFast remembers the setting.) Then click the CMS tab.
Using Color Management with Your EPSON Printer 2 If necessary, click the Page Setup button to change the page size or orientation. Click More Options, then choose Color Management. Additional options appear: 3 In the Print Space section, choose the printer profile you created for your printer and paper. Then choose an Intent and a Black Point Compensation setting.
The conversion is applied only to the print stream, leaving the source document untouched. One advantage of this approach is that you can easily print the same document to many different outputs by simply changing the profile in the print space. 4 Once you’ve made your settings, click the Print button. The Print window appears: 5 Choose Print Settings from the Options pop-up menu.
Using the Workflow Once you’ve configured the various components in the workflow, you won’t need to change most of the settings. SilverFast will automatically use the correct profiles for transparency and reflective scanning and will automatically deliver the color in Adobe RGB (1998). The only profile setting you need to change regularly is the printer profile. You need to match the profile to the printer and paper setting you’re using for the print at hand.
CPD-16082 Printed in USA
