What custom profiles do for you:
Give the best color match between what you see on your calibrated monitor and the
printed page.
Fewer wasted test prints means better prints in less time and for less money.
Allow you to use the full range of colors your particular printer can produce. Generic
profiles are usually designed to be safe, and restrict the available color range. Our
custom profiles measure the limits of our printer's performance, allowing you to print
with as vibrant, saturated colors as our printer can.
Note for individual photographers: Before using our custom printer profiles from us
or any other company, we strongly recommend calibrating your monitor with a
hardware calibration system. The goal of printer profiles is to match your monitor to
what the prints will look like. If your monitor is not well-calibrated, printer profiles will
not help. For a review of several calibration options, we recommend colorvision.
Good sources for monitor calibration hardware include Chromix and Colormall.
RA-4 printers: Fuji Frontier - These printers also have good self calibration routines.
A new profile is usually only required after major maintenance or when the machine
settings are changed. Minor drift in the printers or aging of densitometer lamps can
be compensated for by re-profiling on an annual or semi-annual basis.
If you use an image editing program other than Photoshop, make sure it supports
converting image files to a printer profile. The basic flow is, however, approximately
the same.
Important note #1: All profiles assume an accurately calibrated and profiled monitor.
The goal of printer profiles is to match your prints to your monitor. If the condition of
your monitor is not known accurately, there is nothing to match the prints to. The
viewing condition for the prints is also critical. Unless otherwise noted, our profiles
are built for print viewing under industry standard D50 (~5000°K) illumination.
Important note #2: Our digital lab profiles are created specifically for each individual
printer. These are not generic profiles, nor should they be treated as such. Each
printer and paper combination behaves differently. Using highly optimized profiles on
a printer other than the one they were made for can result in worse performance than
using no profile at all.
You can download our custom ICC profiles for our Frontier here. After downloading
the profile, you need to save it in a location that depends on what operating system
you are using. The profiles are not compressed, as the files can't be squeezed down
significantly. The profile files work equally well on Windows or Mac computers. Note
that the profiles are binary files – they do not contain readily readable information.
Image editing applications such as Photoshop and color printer drivers are
equipped to use them. When you drop off your order tell us not to color correct it -
print it straight "as is". ICC profiles are for professionals or people that know what
they are doing.
Computer ICC locations are:
Mac OS X: Storing profiles in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles allows all users to use
them. An alternative area, for users without Admin privileges, is
/Users//Library/ColorSync/Profiles — any profiles stored here are available only to the
current user.
Mac OS 9.x: System Folder:ColorSync Profiles
Mac OS 9.x users who have difficulty loading profiles in Photoshop, please read this
note.
Windows XP: \Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color
The easiest way to install a profile in Windows XP is to right click on the profile and
select "install profile". Windows copies the profile to the correct directory
automatically.
Windows NT/2000: \Winnt\system32\spool\drivers\color
See above note for installing profiles in Windows XP - the same technique works in
Windows 2000.
Windows 98/ME: \Windows\System\Color
All this information on ICC profiles was taken from www.drycreekphoto.com. For
more information go check them out. They have more information on how to calibrate
your monitor and how to use printer profiles. The also did test on different types of
papers.
When Quality Counts...
