Set-up

Now comes the acid test. Our hope is that our next print will closely resemble what's on the monitor. Do not expect perfect agreement. An LCD is not a printed page and the image representation technologies are as different as night and day. You do, however, have a right to expect very good to excellent agreement. I slightly prefer the prints from the Epson to the Monitor display. There is nothing like a nice glossy page to emphasize depth and clarity of a fine image.

You can print with either your imaging software or a stand-alone, dedicated printing package such as QImage. I much prefer using the latter to Paintshop or Photoshop because of the greater flexibility and the availability of sophisticated scaling facilities which help preserve image quality. The product is inexpensive and works perfectly.

1. Turn on the printer. Honestly, it's easy to forget. Furthermore, with some units, printing profiles and/or utilities may not be accessible unless the printer is ON even if you won't want to be using it for awhile.
2. Bring up your imaging (or stand-alone printing) software - the one that is going to send the image to the printer - and load a picture.
3. Edit the image on your perfectly calibrated monitor so it looks just the way you want to see it printed. Your eyeball is the most important part of CM. If using QImage, the image must have been pre-edited. QImage has some editing routines but they are no substitute for the real thing.
4. Resize and re-sample the image for printing. It's a good idea to do this now rather than leaving it up to the printer drivers. Your imaging software is more sophisticated and gives full control over results. Resize to desired print size in inches or centimeters. The print resolution should be the same as the printer's native resolution or some integral sub-multiple. For Epson printers use 720 or 360.  You might now want to save this image with some sort of information in the file name to indicate it was prepared for printing. I use "PRN". If using QImage you can usually dispense with re-sizing/re-sampling actions. Pop the image into the right-size template and the software will execute an optimum quality re-sizing (various options available to customize this, of course). Very nice. It is also usually recommended to apply some additional sharpening prior to printing. This is to compensate for undesireable effects arising from re-scaling and to anticipate inkjet droplets expanding when they hit the paper. You may need to experiment for best results. QImage has a range of sharpening options available which work well.
5. You must now decide whether to engage Color Management in the imaging software (Paintshop, Photoshop, QImage etc) OR the printer drivers. You must NOT do it in both places. Using CM in the imaging software offers the most flexibility and best quality. For example, you can do proofing. In Paintshop, you can turn on/off CM under "File/Color Management" using a check-box. You can turn on/off CM in the printer drivers by opening the printer control panel. Find "Properties" and locate the "Mode" drop-down list (although the exact place may be product dependent). Click "Custom". To turn off CM, choose "No Color Management". To use printer CM, choose "ICM" but let's ignore that.
6. You now have CM activated in either the imaging software OR the printer drivers. Let's assume you have done the right thing and CM will be handled by the computer software. Make sure CM is turned OFF in the printer control panel. Epson printers will show "Custom" setting and "No color Management". You must next inform the software what color profile to use with the printer. The places to find this differ with the software but are obvious in the File/Print menus. (Photoshop's controls are actually very good, easy to understand and well-documented in-place.) You will find a drop-down-list with profiles corresponding to each paper supported by the printer. If you are using Premium Luster Photo Paper on the Epson 3800 you will find a choice = "Pro38PLPP" and that is the one to pick for that paper on that printer. Ignore any generic profiles such as "Epson Standard". QImage makes profile selection obvious by having the menu continuously visible.
7. Color management will need to know the image Color Space but will get this from the embedded specification. If you did something weird and removed the embedded space I'm not sure what happens.
8. You are ready to print. It is assumed you used the printer control panel to select the right paper (size and type) and any other options such as "Print Preview", selections for speed vs quality etc. None of this makes any difference I can see but, at least, you should set the right paper type because this will determine the optimum amount of ink to squirt. Leave the printer color controls alone except to ensure they are at default settings.

Viewing the Print

Here's where you actually find out if Color Management worked and if your settings are correct. It is the Moment of Truth. You may recall from other articles in this section that images are almost invariably prepared with a color balance of 6500K. This is part of both the ubiquitous sRGB and Adobe RGB standards. 6500K is considered a good, all-round daylight color balance and the likely sort of light under which prints will be seen. To view your print properly it should be in light having a 6500K color temperature. Obviously, if you have good reason to believe your prints will generally be viewed under other lighting you will have to prepare them differently but that's beyond the scope of this article. Don't obsess over color temperature. While 6500K is the standard, you probably won't see a difference between that and 6300K or 6600K (as examples).

You could actually use daylight (not direct sunlight) but this is often not available in the typical work area so you are stuck with a lamp. Artificial lighting is all over the map when it comes to color temperature. Some will have a distinctly greenish cast while others are blu-ish or red. Furthermore, there is no easy way to determine what the color temperature actually is. There's instrumentation that can do this but it's expensive ($1k or so).

There are lamps available with calibrated color temperatures. I have not looked into this at all. They are probably expensive too. My discovery and recommendation is the Philips line of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) for household use. They actually come labeled with color temperature (how considerate) and there is a range of Wattages at 6500K also termed "daylight" on the box. In viewing my prints under these lamps I cannot detect any difference at all between the color balance of the prints and the image simultaneously viewed on a calibrated monitor. Quite amazing. The cost is only around $2.

To my eye this lamp provides a distinctly white light whereas most others tried are visibly tinted. If you view with a lamp having a color cast you will be tempted to depart from the standard by altering the color balance of your images in the opposite direction to compensate, so the prints look right under that lamp. This is the road to inconsistency and ruined prints.

Of course, the color temperature of fluorescents diminishes with ageing but not that much. Replacement is very inexpensive. Remember too that a CFL needs a few minutes to warm up and stabilize.

What to Expect

Using a color managed workflow I obtain very good to excellent agreement between monitor appearance and printed output - all with scarcely any manual intervention or other attention to the process. This is confidence inspiring. Color management works and, in practice, it's almost trivially easy to do even though the underlying science and engineering are complex.