hi Elle, I’ve used printer profiles. I had use of an Epson R2400 for a while. I sent off the colour charts, got back the profile, and used this with P’shop CS3 to print. P’shop had a panel in the print process where you specified the profile, plus rel.col or perceptual etc., and then on hitting OK, the printer did its job. It was essential to use the profile. And you could also soft-profile as part of preparing the image for printing.
I’m interested in this because I’ve got loads of photos I’d like to get printed. I have used UK outfit DS Colour Labs previously, they do standard prints at what seems like a good price and quality to me (as well as dearer art paper ones). (I don’t stand to benefit saying this…) For their “standard” / budget prints, they DO want the image converted, whereas they say not for the art paper ones. I just downloaded their glossy profile and it seems to work for soft-proofing. But given what’s been said above, I was not surprised to find I couldn’t select it as the Output Profile. So folks, my vote (if I have one) goes for implementing this! (I haven’t looked at Gimp for printing). Here’s what DSCL say about preparing the files via P’shop -
Once you have your profiles installed within Photoshop you can navigate to Edit > Convert to Profile. A window will pop up which contains a dropdown menu titled ‘Destination Space’. Click on the dropdown menu and find the desired profile from the list.
…from http://dscolourlabs.co.uk/about/NEWNEW_Technical_Support
I wonder why they ask customers to do this? Surely they could apply the profile? It must put people off.
Cheers.