Friday, March 06, 2009

HIgh Quality Color Profile for Epson3800/Kirkland Pro Glossy

It doesn't seem that Costco has an official support site for the Kirkland brand inkjet paper that they sell, so no color profiles are available. Never fear, The Dima is to the rescue!

Well at least for those of you that are using an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 with the Ultrachrome K3 ink-set.

I have created a custom profile using outstanding test-charts by Bill Atkinson that he provides for free to all interested parties.
I used a 1452 RGB target which was measured three times and averaged using weighted method to compensate for the possible measurement errors.

In order to use this profile successfully you must use following settings when you print out of Photoshop or any other color aware application:
  • Setup a soft-proofing space as such: View>Proof Setup>Custom>Device to Simulate>EPSONKirkProGloss.icc. Chose either perceptual or relative colorimetric intent, tick the black point compensation. (You must have a calibrated and preferably profiled monitor for this to work well)
  • Print your file with the following settings: Photoshop manages color. Intent that matches the one you setup in your soft-proof settings.
  • In the printer driver chose custom. Use Premium SemiGloss paper setting, it will change your black to photoblacK if it's not already active.
  • Under the Custom, click advanced and choose SuperPhoto 2880 as your resolution.
  • Turn Off High Speed and Finest Detail.
  • Printer Color Management is set to Off (No Color Adjustment)
  • Click Paper Config and type 3 as a paper thickness, don't change other settings.
  • Click all of the OK's and print.
  • This settings are for the USA made Kirkland Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper Itm./Art. 126755 and Itm./Art. 933656. sold at Costco.


Save it in your profiles folder Windows>System32>spool>drivers>color


If you done everything right it looks amazing!

Use at you own risk. Have fun printing.