Best Way to Calibrate Printer to Generic Ink

Question

I bought refillable ink cartridges for my Canon MP550 and generic ink bottles from a Chinese store.

I have so far managed to manually adjust the color options in the printer dialog to match the result that I got from original Canon cartridges and have gotten almost the same look.

Printer dialog: http://pic.useful.fi/9893b70af285a19c6d0daea230380277.png

However, the ink bottles are running out and the next batch is more likely going to need the same manual adjustment that takes for ages and wastes ink and paper.

Is there a cheap way to calibrate the printer without having to print tens of pages trying to manually tweak the colors?

I've seen some applications that use a test image that can be scanned with a regular scanner to generate an ICC profile, but the ones I found only work with really old Windows (98) and Photoshop. I'm trying to do this with OS X, Ubuntu or if no other option, Windows 8 virtual machine.

Answer 1

Hmm... if you are going to continue trying to save money on buying from a source you believe to have quality control issues, consider investing in getting a Spyder or other system that can profile your printed paper.

Since it is from a supplier where each mass batch of ink could vary somewhat, then every time you get a new batch of ink, you can re-profile your printer against the inks and the papers.

Note, the profile is per paper x ink x printer combo.

Link to various software solutions:

Open Source Options:

http://www.color.org/opensource.xalter

Paid for Options:

http://www.color.org/profilingtools.xalter

Step By Step using Argyll:

http://www.argyllcms.com/doc/Scenarios.html

Profile Prism Calibration for display/print/scanner:

Howto:

http://www.ddisoftware.com/prism/help/psteps.htm

Software Page:

http://www.ddisoftware.com/prism/

Answer 2

Try the following solution based in Argyll

Better if:

• 1. Test patches are scanned with 48bit without color correction and using the scanner profile as reference (example: for Epson PErfection Photo 2400 scanner, profile C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\per240_r.icm)
• 2. Not Override gamut mapping intent (no -Ta -ta) and using rendering intent perceptual when using profile.
• 3. Calibrate printer before profiling it