Custom Printer Profiling
This is a page from our Custom ICC Profile Service Instructions.
Please see the panel to the right for a guide through these instructions.
Part 2
Printing Your Target
These instructions are for actually printing your custom printer profile target for our Image Science profiling service.
ICC Profiling is a process that requires you to follow the instructions very carefully. If you fail to do so precisely, the process won't work!
Getting Ready For The Profiling Process
Do this first!
Make sure you follow our instructions on Preparing For Profiling first, before doing anything else.
THIS IS ESSENTIAL AND MUST NOT BE SKIPPED!
Paper Type Setting
Covered in more detail in our article linked below, but the gist of it is as follows:
All 'Art' Papers - any fine art matte paper, smooth or textured. Also all matte canvas.
Epson - Epson Archival Matte (also listed sometimes as Epson Enhanced Matte or Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Matte)
Canon - Use Premium Fine Art Smooth if available, otherwise Photo Paper Pro Premium Matte
All Gloss/High-Gloss/Metallic Papers & Gloss Canvas
n.b. some metallic papers use Pearl in their name - but they are by definition high gloss papers so they fit this option.
Epson - Epson Premium Glossy
Canon - use Photo Paper Plus Glossy
All Lustre/Pearl/Semi-Gloss Papers & Semi-Gloss Canvas
n.b. here we are referring to papers which use Pearl to describe their surface, like Ilford Smooth Pearl.
Epson - Epson Premium Semi-Gloss
Canon - Use Photo Paper Plus Semi-gloss
More information:
Printing Guides
We have separate instructions for Colour and B&W target printing, with specific guides for Windows PCs and Apple Macs.
If using a PC click the appropriate ACPU guide below.
If using a Mac click the appropriate CSU (ColorSync Utility) guide below.
Be sure to come back to this page for the (important) next steps when you are finished following the guide.
The below guides show Epson driver settings. The PC screenshots are in Windows 11, the Mac screenshots in Ventura 13.1. It's impossible to have precise instructions for every combination of operating system, driver and printer make and model, the below guides are to assist you, they exemplify the process and may not be exactly the same as your system configuration, but they should give you a good understanding of the necessary process.
Fundamentally you must ensure three main things in your printer driver settings:
- No Colour Management is applied: Make sure to disable ALL colour management in the driver. This is often referred to explicitly as 'No Colour Management' but sometimes also 'Host Controlled Colour', 'Application Controlled Colour' or 'Rendering Intent'. Depending on your printer, be sure to check if is there is a ‘photo’ setting under 'Colour' or 'ICM' in your driver, and that you set this to 'none'.
- The correct Paper Type is set: Make sure to set an appropriate paper type in your media settings as per our guide for this.
- The correct Quality Settings are used for the desired print quality (and you save these to use for your actual printing).
This is consistent across all operating systems and printer makes and models. They may be called different things or be in different places, but they remain fundamentally the same.
If you’re using Dinax Mirage, we have specific guidance on printing ICC Profile targets in Mirage in our Getting Started With Mirage guide:
The Next Steps
Now that you've got a printed profile target, its important to evaluate it for defects and check it for correctness before sending it to us.
Please proceed to and follow the instructions and examples in our next guide Evaluating Your Printed Target.
Remember, you must supply on a separate sheet your name, email address, printer model and full paper details.