[toni-a]

I am back into photography and now I am printing more than ever.

I am printing at the lab for large bulks like weddings (yes I did a few for friends but not for money, I even paid the prints myself) and at home also for the convenience. 

My problem is screen calibration.

My options: 

1) buy a calibrated screen. Only Eizo calibrated screens are here however I will lose the convenience of using a laptop in my bedroom

2) get colormunki smile, seems the way to go, however I will have to order it abroad or wait for local xrite dealer next shipment in one month

3) get colormunki photo which will also help calibrate the printer, with same problems as option 2, is the price gap justified, do I really need it ?

4) any other suggestion you have 

[JJ_SO]

There are no "calibrated screens" ready to buy. The ones with hardware calibration (the expensive ones) also have to be calibrated by you. So, they are "calibratable".

 

For screens, Color Munki is great. For printers... well, I can't say - I only did experimenting with two office printers and they are difficult impossible to calibrate because I can't switch off color management - either it's done by the printer manufacturer or Apple. But for calibration, I have to measure the colors without correction to get a proper profile. So, first you need to check if your printer can be calibrated. Otherwise the colorimeter would be pointless for printer.

[toni-a]

I understand colormunki smile should be the way to go ?

[JJ_SO]

I don't see I wrote that 

 

What good is a calibrated screen if the prints are off? Alright, if you let the lab print the pictures and they have a calibrated printer with a profile they can give to you, you'd be able to come very close. But if your own printer can't be calibrated, the screen with the right colors just shows you how far off the printer is.

 

What I say: If you take the trouble to calibrate, then the whole chain has to get a profile, otherwise it's useless waste of time.

[toni-a]

Can Epson L800 be profiled ? 

[JJ_SO]

Well, I'm not Mr. Epson - address your question at them. I read "Category: Consumer" and I also read "Dye Ink" which are two indicators to me tp be careful with a "yes, it can be calibrated". But who knows? Oh yes - Mr. Epson knows..

 

I found a website with Epson's choice of printers with ICC-profiles (you have to use Epson paper by default or calibrate your paper): http://www.epson.eu/ix/en/viewcon/corpor...WT.ac=1227 Yours does not appear. So I'd think, it's not easy to calibrate it.

[Studor13]

I'm not sure how important it is to profile some papers.


For example, I didn't find the profile for a plain Canon glossy paper so I just used a standard Epson glossy. The prints on my 3880 from both the Canon and Epson Premium Glossy look almost identical.


As for monitor calibration, I have a Dell Ultrasharp and it is so good that calibrating it with a Spyder device is only a slight improvement.


I don't know how easy it is for you get Dell where you live but they are not much more than 200€ for a used 24" here.


So my suggestion is to get a Dell Ultrasharp or something similar which you can calibrate to some extent just with the operating system, and use a few Epson profiles to see which ones turn out best.

[stoppingdown]

My personal experience. I have a NEC PA241W, wide-gamut monitor, profiled with i1Display Pro. I've been able to print my photos at home for many years, being quite satisfied by the monitor calibration (I used an Epson printer with Epson provided profiles for their paper). I quit only because the printer was slow and needed to be cared about during the process. About one year ago I tried a print lab over the web, and again I was able to get good quality, proving that the calibration of my screen was fine. I used their own profiles to prepare the files.

 

Of course, when I printed I had to apply some adjustments: the colour temperature and brightness had to be adjusted to take care of the viewing conditions of the print (e.g. natural light, incandescent lights, etc...), but I was able to consistently apply the corrections in batch mode. Only less that 10% of prints needed some more special care, but they was the ones with special light conditions (e.g. very dark overall, or very bright overall).

 

I didn't go on with printing only because of costs - the quality was excellent and relatively cheap only for glossy paper, that I don't like. Matte paper was too expensive, and I'm still in search of a lab offering it at a decent price. But this is not a technical issue.

[toni-a]

Thanks folks for the info, much helpful

This narrows my choices to two devices that were not in my wishlist before:

colormunki display, not available in Lebanon, my sister visting France will get it for me in 3 weeks: 137 EUR: obsviously no warranty

i1display pro: available here with warranty : 385$ roughly 350 EUR

As far as I understood I am not getting much advantage from the i1display over the colormunki display so this one should be the way to go ?

[JJ_SO]

I bought the "older" colormunki to be able to calibrate the printer. After that I learnt, office or "photo" consumer grade printers from Canon or Epson are not to calibrate on a Mac. I still have the device in case I'd get a decent printer. I just don't have so many prints to do and could not guarantee to print something every week, also I don't have so many walls. Getting a printer means you have to use it continuously, means you have to buy ink and paper on a regular basis. I was stunned by the quality of a decent Canon A1 printer. A friend offered me to print some of my photos. That' she quality I aim for. But not necessarily the costs of it although I understand these printers became more affordable. He showed me some prints made with special paper. I understand why he wants to have this printer.


If you're willing to invest more money, the better display Studor 13 was suggesting, appears to be a better investment for your setup.