Marco.org

Here’s a color photo on screen. I would like a paper version.

I would like the colors and brightness in the paper version to resemble the colors and brightness on the screen.

I recognize that generating color by shining red, green, and blue light through a polarizer has different output characteristics and ranges than dropping millions of tiny dots of cyan, magenta, light magenta, light cyan, yellow, and black pigments (or fusing cyan, magenta, yellow, and black plastic powder) onto paper.

My screen is calibrated with one of those Spyder things, so I know it’s pretty accurate. What’s the printer equivalent? My printers are the Epson R260 inkjet and the Xerox Phaser 6180 color laser. I have a variety of excellent paper. I don’t care which printer is color-accurate — I just want at least one of them to be.

I’ve burned through at least $40 worth of ink and paper tonight performing trial-and-error with various settings. How do people do this? How am I supposed to do it?