How do I get my printer to match the colours of the image as I see it on screen?

Question

How do I get my printer to match the colours of the image as I see it on screen? My HP Office Jet Pro L7680 printer tends to print my images with a bias towards red compared to the image I am seeing on screen with Lightroom 5 using a Mac with Retina 5 screen. Would appreciate any expertise on how to calibrate the printer to the screen

Answer 1

You have two options. The first method costs nothing but is not as accurate and the second means buying hardware and investing some time. The fastest way to get things closer is to download the color profile from the printer manufactures site for the printer and paper combination you are using. Install it on you Mac and relaunch LR. This is best when the paper and printer are both from the same company; in your case, HP. If the paper is not made by HP, you can often find profiles for your paper/printer by going to the paper maker's web site and doing a search for the appropriate profile.
The other alternative is to purchase a piece of hardware such as the ColorMonki which can be used to not only profile your monitor for color balance but also you printer/paper as well as your camera. When all of your devices agree on what color 118,118,118 means, you get the same color from capture to print but this is also an expensive option and there is a lot of time involved in building your own color profiles. The results however, are much more accurate.
Once you have a color profile installed, the next step involves doing soft proofing. Once you have your image looking the way you want it to in LR, open it in the soft proof option. This will show you how your print will look using the color profile for the paper/printer you are using. During the process, you will be shown the print on your screen which may look off. Use the small triangle in the upper-right corner of the histogram to turn on the out-of-gamut warning. This will highlight any parts of your image which contain colors your printer can't handle. Use the rendering intent options to decide how you want these colors handled (relative or perceptual). Check them both and use the one you like best. You can also make additional changes at this point if required before you generate the JPG image. Make sure to save it as a max quality JPG using the sRGP profile. Once saved, you can send this image to your printer or even to a lab as the process is the same.The attached link should get you to a video showing how to use the ColorMunki hardware/software but, more importantly, shows you how to prepare an image for printing (in this case, for a lab) using soft proofing with the color profile created (or downloaded).--Great Color from Your Lab Prints – Every Time! on Vimeo