Creating Printer Profiles for 4 x 6 Paper

Q: I have installed, profiled monitor, and profiled one paper (8.5 x 11" Konica Photo Quality High Gloss Ink Jet Paper, 10.4 mil). I'm impressed w/ results! I also like to print on 4x6 paper (Konica Professional Photo Glossy 11.8 mil) Is it possible to profile 4x6 paper? What settings (landscape vs. portrait, etc.)

A: Officially, MonacoEZcolor requires letter or A4 size paper to create printer profiles. The recommended solution is to obtain some letter size of the same type of paper and use that for profiling. However a "hack" is possible if you are handy with your scanner and Photoshop. You can composite two scans together into a single TIFF that can be used for profiling.

1. In MonacoEZcolor, on the Print a Target page, choose the Save TIFF option.

2. From Photoshop, print the target TIFF on letter size paper. You can use plain paper and draft quality since this is for positioning purposes only. You can also use an existing print of the target that is no longer needed.

3. On a copy of the target TIFF, crop the image so just the four black brackets and color patches at the top are in the image.

1. Print the resulting image on your 4x6 paper and make sure the four brackets and all the patches are on the printed sheet.

2. On the full page version of the patch set that you will be using for positioning, attach the IT8 as you normally would.

3. Mask out the printer patches and brackets on the full size sheet with some white paper.

4. Attach the 4x6 print of the patches to the full size sheet so it is centered over where the masked out patches are.

5. Scan this sheet as you would normally for creating a printer profile, except at 300 dpi instead of 200. The "auto-cropping" feature will fail, but you should be able to manually locate the brackets and create a profile for your 4x6 paper.