Big Mike said:
Thanks Mark (sorry carolwrite, for hi-jacking the thread).
At least I think this is answering his question. It's a big subject.
So I've calibrated my monitor and that profile is now my display setting. And that is the only place I need to use that profile?
As I understand it, yes. An image is stored as color data. An ICC profile is a translation that tells something how to produce that color data accurately. The monitor profile makes certain adjustments so that the monitor displays that color data correctly.
For example, if the monitor naturally tends towards blue, white will have a blueish tint to it. The profile tells the computer to take some blue out before sending it to the monitor, that way white will show as white.
The printer itself doesn't get a profile, again as I understand it. The printer profiles you get are translation maps that you use in software so that when you softproof, you can see what the image will look like when it is printed using that printer, ink, and paper.
As an example, some paper is warmer than others. If you use a paper that is a little yellow, when you softproof, white gets a translation that makes it somewhat yellow, and all the other colors become more yellow too. If you don't want as much yellow in the final print, you would do a color adjustment to the source image data. The white will still be a little yellow, since that's the paper. There's nothing you can do about that. But you can pull yellow out of the the rest of the image. If you then print that image data on white paper, it will lack yellow in the color. Different ink sets have different color gammuts, so you need to take those into account too. That's why it should really be called an output profile rather than printer profile.
So the end result becomes:
Image data -> printer profile adds yellow (and other stuff) -> monitor profile removes blue (and other stuff) -> monitor shows what the print will look like.
I know that Adobe RGB has a wider gamut but in the interest of keeping things simple...I'd use sRGB right from start to finish so that I don't have to change it.
That works. If you do a lot of print at home, I'd use AdobeRBG, though. sRGB will limit the number of colors the printer will output. The printer has it's own color gammut, so you only get colors where the two overlap.
and should I set my printer to sRGB as well?
I'm no expert, but I think the printer gets nothing.
I'm not going to go through the trouble of getting my printer profiled. Partial because, as you say, it's a combination of printer, paper & ink.
And it's expensive. I did it because I was showing and selling my prints.
A lot of paper companies will offer more generic profiles. They will be tuned to the ink and paper and a non-specific printer of a certain model. Each Epson 1280 (for example) will be different enough that a pro may want to have their own profiled, but for general use, having the company profile the ICC to the Espon 1280 sitting in their shop is close enough.
Here's Ilford's:
http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/prod_html/galerie/IJPROFILES/default.asp
I'm sure a search will reveal more profiles for other papers.
http://www.serendipity-software.com.au/support/download/icc/printer/
On the Epson site, they have some links to ICC profiles. Not every combo is there, but there are some on both the printer pages and paper pages.