Printer/Monitor Calibration

[countjackula]

I'm having some problems calibrating my monitor and was wondering how others try to solve this problem.

[Portus]

A good start would be using nvidia's driver, then get a proper hardware calibrator if you feel it's necessary.

[Dredwalker]

Give this a looksee:
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorcalibration/a/cal_printer.htm

[Wooly ESS]

If you print from Photoshop, you can go into Photoshop and tell it to direct printing operations. Then go into your printer and tell it to let the application make the printer settings. There are no garantees, but it does improve the calibration somewhat.

It seems to me that there are so many variables between image characteristics, monitor characteristics, application quirks and printer specifications, that the whole thing becomes a crap shoot. At least it is for me.

If print quality became an overriding factor for me, I think I would custom purchase a monitor and a printer/ink combo that had a proven compatability and start from there, rather than attempt to integrate peripherals on an ad hoc basis. I would also seek a lot of expert advice from knowledgeable people.

[Gerulaitis]

A good start would be using nvidia's driver
One man's "good start" is another's "last resort".

I would strongly advise you to stay away from it, unless you REALLY must. It tinkers with the same 0 - 255 value range already present, whatever you do, you loose range and numbers of colors. For example: you can accidently make it so that anything upwards of 240 is clamped and shows as pure white, or three values 153, 154 and 155 get reinterpreted as the same value, or the difference between 40 and 41 becomes a difference of 5 value steps when reinterpreted. And once you tinker with sepparate R G B channels, you get a circus... 150 150 150 suddenly becomes something like 143 155 160 - then you paint in grayscale, but you see all kinds of rainbow colors for every different shade of gray; you show that to a friend who uses a different computer, telling him about all the subtle colors you see and you get a response - "Stay off crack, kid."

I only use that for the secondary monitor, or for a monitor that's so old it can't display any darks under any settings, meaning the quality is already utter crap, or it's irrelevant.

Try to get away by only using the monitor's controls first. If it fails, maybe make a preset using the driver controls (stick to "advanced" mode insteand of "standard" brightness/contrast sliders, so you can adjust the gama curve without getting the ends of your range clamped out) for when you want to preview how your printer will print; don't have it on all the time, though. Calibrate your monitor for displaying the full range and correct colors, then have some means of previewing what the printer may print.

Hardware calibrator is a good thing, and you'll likely use it for a very long time, but it's costly.

[LuckyDevil]

If this is for serious work and probably future works i would advise in buying a screen calibration kit like this one

Huey Pantone Calibration (http://www.pantone.com/pages/products/product.aspx?pid=79) (i use this one at work but there are diferent brands out there)

They work Pretty good, but expensive. It will show you the actuall colors on screen if you calibrated correctly.

but you also have to consider your software print settings also, and your printer

make sure you constantly test print colors and compare to the screen to see which settings are best.