print-helper

A Script to guide you to colour-managed printing,

WHAT DOES THIS DO?

Typically colour rendering differs between devices (monitors, printers). Aside of calibrating the devices to a defined state colour-profiles are used to describe the behaviour of the output-devices. Gimp realises colour-management by using a working-colour-space, a monitor-colour-space to get a good vision on a monitor and a printer-colour-space to be able to render print-previews.

With the availability of good photo-printers there is a need to include them into the colour-management chain by:

1. keeping the printer in a controlled state (for example HP 9180 and HP 8850 can calibrate themselves, calibrate always with the same paper).
2. get a colour-profile (or make it) for each paper-type. Leave the colour-relevant settings of your printer-driver untouched after calibration and profiling.  
3. convert the image from the working-colour-space to the printer-colour-space and
4. do eventually some enhancements (rotation, scaling, sharpening) and at last
5. print it.

This script assist for the steps 3 to 5. Colour-Management is only supported for RGB-Images.

INSTALLATION

1. Copy the script print-helper.scm to the global script directory
   (for example /usr/share/gimp/2.0/scripts)
   or to your local script directory
   (for example /home/a_user/.gimp-2.4/scripts
2. Get the colour-profiles, a example for a hp 8850 with advanced photo paper is attached. The default profile-name can be change by editing this line of the script:

   SF-FILENAME _"Print color profile"
   "/usr/share/color/icc/hp_advanced-glossy.icc"

3. To use the sharpening by refocus which is outstanding for colour-images - you have to install the gimp refocus plug-in (see the plug-in registry on www.gimp.org)
4. Restart gimp or fresh up the script-fu system.
5. You will find a entry print-helper in your FILE menu.

GETTING PRINTER-COLOUR-PROFILES

There are a several ways to get printer-colour-profiles:

• Use vendor supplied profiles from printer or paper manufactors. These are mostly produced not with linux systems, therefore it is questionable it they are reliable for linux systems
• Some vendors offer to make profiles for you
• You can use vuescan (www.hamrick.com)to profile a printer by using a scanner. Vuescan can even profile your scanner by using an IT8-target (for example from www.targets.coloraid.de/)