Using Profiles to Make a Group of Printers Match One Another

QUESTION -

We profile each of our printers, and then print a test image to see if all the machines match one another. One of the printers is a little different, why is this?

ANSWER -

Profiling each of your printers will not cause them all to reproduce images exactly the same as one another. Profiles allow you to remap the color data in your images to take full advantage of each printers capability. If your goal is to achieve the same output from each printer then what you need to do is, compare the gamuts of all the printers in the group, select the printer with the smallest gamut, convert your images to this color space, then print to each printer using its respective profile.