Printer Profiling Report - Kodak Papers on PIXMA MG5250

I profiled two paper types on the Canon MG2552 printer. Kodak Premium Glossy and Kodak Matte.

Glossy:
It took 3 scans to get a half decent profile on the glossy paper. The first 2 scans produced profiles which resembled blocks of Swiss cheese instead of neat 3D polygons. The last profile while looking somewhat complete still had some major flaws which were only evident after doing a test print. When soft proofing the test image against the profile in Photoshop it was clear that the printer did not have the full colour range and gamut required to print an exact copy of the test image. In the actual print  I was surprised to find red and green colour shifts which looked like chromatic aberrations, and banding throughout the colour and black and white tonal bars. Clearly something had gone wrong again while scanning. Soft proofing the image again in Photoshop really didnt reveal the issues which were present in the actual test print. A reprint of the test patches and reprofiling would be required to fix these issues.

Kodak Gloss compared with Adobe RGB

Matte:
The matte paper only took 2 scans and the final profile polygon looked much cleaner. Again when soft proofing the test image against the matted profile in Photoshop it was clear that the printer did not have the full colour range and gamut required to print an exact copy of the test image.The actual test print was was quite clean with really only the printers colour limitations noticeable to my untrained eye.

Kodak Gloss compared with Adobe RGB

Kodak Matte compared with Eizo Monitor Profile

With the glassy profile unusable my ring around was produced on the matte profile. Looking at the printed ring around its easy to see how slight colour shifts could easily be mistaken for the wrong colour or no shift at all.



Comparing the printer and monitors to the Adobe RGB colour space revealed the gamut limitations of the devices. The Canon 5250 printer was by far the worst colour gamut performer and greater shifts in available colours were noticeable. I was surprised to find that the iMac and Eizo displays preformed reasonably well overall when compared to the RGB space.

While the calibration processes were somewhat tedious, its clear after working through them and looking at the varied outputs I produced, that having a colour managed workflow is vital in getting consistent and predictable results.