Epson Stylus 2000P, Stylus 2200, Perfection 3200, Perfection 3200 PRO Workbook

PMA Preview Edition

for EPSON Scanners and Printers

Color Managed Workflow

PMA Preview Edition

for EPSON®Scanners and Printers

Color Managed Workflow

Copyright © 2003 by Epson America, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Epson America, Inc.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty

While Epson America, Inc. has strived to be accurate in preparing this book, it makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The information and opinions stated herein are not guaranteed to produce any particular results, and the advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every individual. In no event shall EPSON be liable for any loss, inconvenience, or damage, including but not limited to direct, special, incidental, consequential, or other damages resulting from the use of the information contained in this booklet.

Trademarks

EPSON and EPSON Stylus are registered trademarks of SEIKO EPSON CORPORATION. EPSON Perfection is a registered trademark of Epson America, Inc. General Notice: Other product names used herein are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks

of their respective owners. EPSON disclaims any and all rights in those marks.

Printed on recycled paper 2/03

Contents

The Art and Science of Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Profiling Your Scanner and Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Printing the Printer Profiling Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Preparing the Printer and Scanner Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Scanning the Targets with SilverFast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Building the Scanner and Printer Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Building Additional Printer Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Printing the Printer Target from Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Printing the Printer Target from Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Preparing the Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Building a Scanner Profile for Transparencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Scanning the Transparency Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Building the Scanner Transparency Profile in MonacoEZcolor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Building a Display Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Configuring Color Management in Your Host Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Configuring Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Configuring Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Scanning with LaserSoft SilverFast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Reflective Scanning with SilverFast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Transparency Scanning with SilverFast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Using Color Management with Your EPSON Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Using the Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

he EPSON Perfection®3200 scanner and your EPSON

photo printer form an ideal system for reproducing photography and fine art. With these outstanding tools, you expect the highest quality color output. That’s why we’ve created this booklet. It gives you all the tips and techniques you need to optimize color on your EPSON system.

Monitors, scanners, and printers each use different technologies to reproduce color. Different color technologies mean that the devices have different color ranges or gamuts. Each one can produce certain colors that the others can’t.

The good news is that a color-managed workflow can help you match colors as closely as possible. By following the instructions in this booklet, you can achieve effective color reproduction using your EPSON Perfection 3200 scanner and EPSON photo printer.

The Art and Science of Color

Each device in your computer system has a different color “language.” Color management translates these languages into a universal form of communication, or device-independent color model. By using a common language, a colormanaged workflow lets you convert an image from one color model to another.

Profiles describe the color gamut of various devices and the color space of individual images. With the information in profiles, color management tools determine the best method for “mapping” out-of-gamut colors. The result is that you get consistent, predictable color reproduction.

This booklet provides you with the step-by step instructions you need to create accurate profiles for your scanner, monitor, and printer.

All the components you need to build a colormanaged workflow are included in the EPSON Perfection 3200 Pro software bundle:

MonacoEZcolor offers an easy, effective means of building profiles for your scanner, printer, and monitor.

LaserSoft

SilverFast®provides powerful tools to deliver great scans that need little or no correction after scanning.

Adobe

Photoshop®Elements 2.0 lets you manipulate your images until they’re just right, then hand off the color correctly to your EPSON printer.

In this booklet, we’ll walk you through the process of building the profiles you need, configuring SilverFast to pass the color along to Adobe Photoshop Elements, and applying the profiles to ensure that your prints contain the color you expect.

Profiling Your Scanner and Printer

The starting point in building the workflow is to create profiles for your scanner and printer. MonacoEZcolor lets you build a scanner and printer profile in a single session. The first step is to print the printer profiling target from MonacoEZcolor.

Note: You need to create a separate profile for each combination of ink, paper, and printer settings. When you use the profile to make a print, you need to ensure that you’re printing on the same paper, with the same inks, using the same printer settings you used to print the target.

Printing the Printer Profiling Target

1 Launch MonacoEZcolor. The welcome

screen appears:

2 Click Create Printer Profile.

MonacoEZcolor provides you with some general guidelines to observe during the profile creation process. If you aren’t sure how to follow these guidelines, don’t worry—just follow the steps provided here.

3 Click the right arrow at the lower-right of

the MonacoEZcolor screen to proceed. The following screen appears:

4 For any EPSON printer, click RGB Printer.

From the Printer Model/Technology pop-up menu, choose Other for any EPSON printer, or choose EPSON Stylus Photo 2000P if this is the printer you’re using.

5 Click the right arrow to proceed. The Print

Target screen appears:

6 Make sure your EPSON printer is selected

as the current printer, and the paper you want to profile is loaded. Then click Print.

Tip: If you plan on profiling multiple papers, or the same paper at multiple resolutions, click Save TIFF to save the target as a file named “RGB Print Patches.tif”. Printing the target is always the first step in building a printer profile. If you have the target saved as a TIFF, you can print it without having to go through the introductory screens in MonacoEZcolor.

Click here to proceed

MonacoEZcolor advises you to record the settings you’ll make in the printer driver, so you can apply them when you use the profile. When you click OK, the print window appears:

7 Choose Print Settings from the options

pop-up menu. The print settings appear:

8 Choose the paper type you want to profile

from the Media Type list—for example, Enhanced Matte Paper. Then click Advanced Settings and choose your desired print settings. Most of the time, the default settings work well.

9 Once you’ve made your selections, choose

Color Management from the Options menu. The color management settings appear:

10 Click No Color Adjustment to ensure that

the driver doesn’t alter the colors in the profiling target. Then click Print.

Once you’ve printed the target, you’re ready to proceed to the next part of the process: using SilverFast to scan both the scanner and printer targets.

Tip: For an accurate printer profile, make sure you let the printer target dry for at least an hour to reach its final, stable color. Some paper-and-ink combinations take longer to dry than others. If you wait until the next day, you can be sure the target has reached its final color.

Preparing the Printer and Scanner Targets

The next step is to scan the printer and scanner targets in a single image. MonacoEZcolor will use this scan to build the profiles.

1 In MonacoEZcolor, click the right arrow.

The following screen appears:

2 Follow the on-screen instructions to attach

the reflective IT8 target included in the MonacoEZcolor package to the target you printed.

Note: If you use tape to attach the target, make sure the tape doesn’t cover any of the color patches on the IT8.

3 Click the right arrow to proceed.

Follow the on-screen instructions to place the printer and scanner targets on the scanner.

4 Click the right arrow to proceed. The

following screen appears:

Caution: On some operating systems, MonacoEZcolor lets you scan directly into the application using the EPSON scanner plug-in. Do not use this feature. To create a profile that LaserSoft SilverFast can use correctly, you must scan the scanner and printer targets using SilverFast, as described in the following section.

Scanning the Targets with SilverFast

To build profiles, you must use special settings in SilverFast that are quite different from the ones used in normal scanning. You must scan the profiling target with all color management and color correction features turned off, following the instructions in this section.

1 Launch the standalone SilverFast

application. You’ll be prompted to import the SilverFast (Epson) plug-in, as shown. You can find the plug-in inside the SilverFast application folder.

Note: Your scanner must be connected to your computer and turned on before you can successfully import the scanner plug-in.

Next, you’ll be prompted to enter your name, company, and serial number information. You’ll find the SilverFast serial number on the back of the SilverFast package. Once you enter this information and click OK, SilverFast opens.

Before you scan the target, you need to make sure that SilverFast is configured correctly for the profile scan.

2 On the main SilverFast screen, click the

General tab, and make sure the Scan Mode is set to Normal (File), Original is set to Reflective, and Pos./Neg. is set to Positive, as shown:

3 Once you’ve confirmed the settings, click

the Options button. The SilverFast Defaults screen appears:

4 For Gamma-Gradation, enter 1.80. Check

for HDR output, then click the CMS tab.

The CMS Defaults screen appears:

5 Turn off all the color management options

for the target scan. You need to do this whenever you scan a profiling target.

In the Color Management section, set Scanner->Internal and Internal->Monitor to <NONE>, and set Internal->Output to RGB.

In the Profiles for ColorSync section, set all profiles to <NONE>. You can leave the other settings at their defaults.

6 When you’ve completed all the settings,

click OK.

7 On the main SilverFast screen, click the

Frame tab. Set the Scan Type to 48-bit HDR Color, and set the resolution slider to 150 dpi, as shown:

8 Once you’ve made your settings, click

Prescan. The prescan image appears in SilverFast’s scanner window:

9 Crop the prescan, using the dotted line

surrounding the target as a rough guide. Don’t worry if the scan is slightly skewed. But if the scan is more than 10 degrees or so from square, reposition the target and redo the prescan.

10 Click Scan RGB to make the final target

scan. SilverFast prompts you to choose a location, file format, and file name for the scan, as shown:

11 Save the scan in TIFF format.

We recommend that you include the printer and paper type in the file name. If you profile multiple printers, or multiple papers on the same printer, you’ll end up with many scans that look very similar. Including this information in the file name makes it easy to identify which scan belongs to which paper and printer combination.

Once you’ve entered the information, click Save to start the scan. SilverFast scans the target and saves it in the specified location.

You’ve completed the scanning process. Now you can return to MonacoEZcolor and build the profiles for your scanner and printer.

Building the Scanner and Printer Profiles

The final part of the profile-building process is loading the target scan into MonacoEZcolor, then naming, building, and saving the profiles.

1 Return to MonacoEZcolor. If necessary, use

the navigation arrows at the lower-right of the MonacoEZcolor screen to navigate to the screen shown below. Then click Load an Image, and load the target scan you created in the previous section.

The target’s file name is displayed below the button, as shown:

2 Click the right arrow at the lower-right

to proceed.

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