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Devices such as the Pantone Eye-One Display 2 will ensure your monitor is accurately displaying colours, but it will all be in vain if your printer isn’t similarly calibrated.
The Printfix Pro from Colorvision is an affordable printer calibration tool that will appeal to professional photographers and designers.
The Printfix Pro package includes both hardware and software. The Datacolor 1005 Spectrocolorimeter is used to physically examine test targets, while a variation of Colorvision’s Printfix printer profiling software handles all the calibration.
It’s one of the lowest cost print profiling systems that uses a hardware colorimeter. Reflective colourimeters such as this work by illuminating their colour targets with a stable, high intensity light source.
Normally this is a specialised, high voltage lamp, driven by relatively complex control circuitry. Every so often these must be re-calibrated, using a known reflective target shipped with each colorimeter.
Datacolour’s 1005 Spectrocolorimeter cuts manufacturing costs by using an array of six, low-voltage LEDs of different colours. These are not as stable as a specialised lamp, so the associated Printfix software insists on calibration before every measurement run.
A triangular plastic calibration base with an embedded enamelled white spot and a square of black ceramic tile is included for this purpose.
More expensive systems use a motor drive to automate the process of moving the colorimeter across a printed colour target. With the Printfix Pro costs are kept down by making this a purely manual system.
There’s a choice of three levels of print target accuracy; 150 patches on A4, 225 patches on A4 or the expert level 729 patches on three pages of A4 or one page of Super A3.
In use, the 1005 Colorimeter is a little awkward because the bulk of the casing around the read head makes it difficult to see if it is accurately placed over each colour patch.
Readings are taken by clicking the top of the colorimeter and acknowledged by a flashing LED. Each reading takes about one second.
The Printfix Pro software guides the profiling process by presenting a sequence of instruction screens, including a square by square check off, for measurements from the target.
Despite the cost cutting compromises the Colorvision Printfix Pro represents a huge step forwards in low-cost printer profiling.
Related reviews:
Pantone Eye-One Display 2 monitor calibration device
A top-of-the-range of monitor calibration device
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