AAUG Reviews

By Bruce Herman, AAUG Member
Reviewed 6/06

Have you struggled to make an inkjet or laser print that looks the same as the image you see on your color monitor? If so, you’ve encountered one of the most common problem in color management in the “digital darkroom.” ColorVision, a division of Datacolor, makes a series of products to address the various aspects of color management on a personal computer. These include tools for calibrating your monitor, printer, and digital projector. And in case you think that theses tools are not needed for a Mac, think again. The Mac OS was designed to make good use of the calibration profiles, which are in the .icc files in your Library, but it needs accurate profiles to start with. The files provided by hardware and paper manufacturers are not necessarily of poor quality, but they are one size fits all. Monitors, projectors, printers can vary significantly during a production run. Just as importantly, their characteristics will change as they age. So even if the manufacturer’s calibration was perfect out of the box, it will not always be so.

As I said, ColorVision makes a variety of products to meet all color management needs. The product reviewed here, PrintFIX PRO Suite, is a combination of two of ColorVision’s professional products, Spyder2PRO and PrintFIX PRO. Spyder2PRO considers of the Spyder2PRO colorimeter and the calibration software. It’s used to calibrate your monitor and front projection digital projector. It works with CRT’s, LCD’s and laptop displays. PrintFIX PRO calibrates your printer for each individual paper, and consists of the the software and a spectrocolorimeter, which is a device to read colors from a print. I’ll begin by reviewing the Spyder2PRO, and then review the PrintFIX PRO.

The Spyder2PRO software installation was straightforward. It comes with a quick start guide that includes several essential points. First and foremost, your screen must be set to display at least 1024×768 or more pixels. Some of the older Apple laptops may not achieve this minimum resolution. The second important point is that you must be able to adjust the color temperature, the brightness and the contrast. You do not have to be able to control the individual colors (red, green and blue), although doing so gives you a better calibration. You can independently calibrate multiple monitors whether they are driven by one graphics card or separate graphics cards (not true on MS Windows).

I have a CRT display, but the sequence of events is the same for an LCD. First, be sure that the monitor has been on for an hour or so, and that the Spyder2PRO puck (the colorimeter) has been connected to a powered USB port for at least 10 minutes. You start Spyder2PRO software like any other program and the rest of the process is completely guided by a wizard. An omnipresent contextual help button takes you to the relevant section of the manual eliminating the need to read the manual before running the software. Note that it takes 15-20 minutes to run a calibration, but you should allow more time if you are running it for the first time because you’ll be reading parts of the manual.

Following two introductory screens, the software asks you to provide some information, including the display type (CRT, LCD or projector), the white point (color temperature), the gamma, and whether you wish to specify the black and white luminance or allow the software to determine these. You also have the option of having the software compensate for the ambient light. If you don’t know what these things mean, just click the help button. The help includes the usual setting, the purpose of the step, and then a more detailed explanation that would allow you to decide whether you should depart from the standard setting. After entering the information, you go through a series of steps that require you to adjust the brightness, contrast and should you choose to do so, the intensity of the individual colors of your monitor. These adjustments are made with your display’s on-screen menu. You should adjust the position of the menu so that it is not in the center of the screen because the colorimeter will be reading a target there. When the process is completed, you’ll be asked to name the new profile. You’ll also be shown a photograph that you can view with and without the calibration being applied. The difference may astound you on your first calibration. The new .icc file is stored in your Library where the OS will automatically select it. You also can have the program warn you that you need to create a new profile. Most critical users will calibrate their display every 2 weeks.

PrintFIX PRO is similar to Spyder2PRO in that it installs easily, comes with a quick start guide and runs from a wizard. It’s differs from Spyder2PRO in that it is a two step process. In the first step, the program prints an array of solid color patches on a sheet of 8.5×11 paper of the type that you are profiling. The second step is to read each of the blocks with the spectrocolorimeter after which the program builds the profile. As was the case with Spyder2PRO, the contextual help is excellent.

The program opens with a screen that requests the name of the printer and the paper that you’re about to profile. Following an informational screen are Print Quality and Media Setting Check screens where you verify that your printer is correctly configured for the paper that you’re profiling. Be sure to switch to the landscape mode, a requirement that should be made more obvious in the GUI. You can even print a test image to verify that you don’t have any clogged jets. The real work begins in the next screen where you select among targets: 150 patches or 225 patches on one sheet; or 729 patches on 3 sheets or on one large sheet for roll fed paper. I found that the 225 patch selection that ColorVision calls “high quality” provided an outstanding profile. I did not use the 150 patch target, although the help suggested that it should be fine for most modern inkjet printers. Be sure to turn off your printer’s color management before printing.

After the ink has dried overnight, you connect the spectrocolorimeter to a powered USB port and start the program again. Selecting the button to create a profile takes you to the screen where you are then instructed to use the spectrocolorimeter to basically scan each of the color patches. This process takes about 20 minutes for 225 patches. That may seem like a lot of time, but I can assure you that the results are well worth it.

I have an Epson R2400. Epson provides generally excellent profiles for their own papers this printer, but the third party papers that I use came with only mediocre profiles supplied by their respective manufacturers. The watercolor papers, such as Crane Museo Max when printed with the PrintFIX PRO profile, had a wider gamut and more saturation. In fact, I would not consider printing on any water color paper without a custom profile. I also achieved outstanding results with glossy papers such as Pictorico’s Hi-Gloss White Film. Basically, the prints have looked like what I see on my display for all of the papers that I’ve profiled.

I have to admit to being a long time fan of ColorVision’s products. I have used their display calibration tools since I was working with Photoshop 6 on a PC. I’ve also used their printer profiling software for almost as long. If you are serious about printing on an inkjet or laser printer, I highly recommend the ColorVision PrintFIX PRO Suite. If you already own a display calibration product, then add PrintFIX PRO. Although, you can have a high quality profile custom created for your printer and paper combination by a service company, they cost approximately $100 per profile. It won’t take long before the PrintFIX PRO will pay for itself. The only case where I would hesitate to recommend creating your own profiles is if you are using Epson inks and Epson paper in one of their high end printers (R2400, 4800, and above). The profiles for these are generally quite good. But if you are unhappy with your results with these, or especially if you are using 3rd party papers, creating your own profiles with PrintFIX PRO will save you hours of grief and wasted paper.

The one component of the suite that I have not yet tested is calibrating a projector because I don’t own one. I hope to borrow one and will add to this review at that time.

OS support: Mac OS X 10.3 or later. Although I have not personally tested it, ColorVision has certified the software and supports it on Intel Macs where it runs under Rosetta. It is also supported under Boot Camp, where you use the same license as the Mac installation (i.e., you get both Windows and Mac versions on the same CD and the one license allows you to run in both environments).