"TrueMatch Color Correction"

[muflon]

Hi,

First of all, thanks for the brilliant product, it's good to see that one can still write something that "just works" in today's messy Linux world Never had a single problem with installation, configuration... and the trial features / licensing idea is just great!

I have a question regarding the color management in the TurboPrint. My photo printing results are generally OK, at least for the amateur level. I have developed myself a rule of thumb: "add -o gamma 1200 and it will be mostly fine" However I am considering to start printing the photos a bit more seriously and I'm looking for a way to do at least a little of color management the right way.... without changing the operating system. In the help file I see:

TrueMatch Color Correction
Switches the powerful TrueMatch colour correction on/off. This system developed for TurboPrint will allow you to accurately output to your printer what you see on the screen. Every single screen colour will be adjusted separately according to the used printer and kind of paper. TurboPrint comes with special colour correction tables for many kinds of paper and almost every printer on the market.

However, there is no mention of the monitor settings/calibration (?! a bit strange, considering the "what you see on the screen" part ). How to use it to really have at least approximative WYSIWYG for the colours? One of my ideas was that maybe the driver makes an assumption that the monitor is calibrated as close to standard sRGB as possible and makes all the rest of the calculations using the printer/paper profile. Could you confirm that? If not, what is the idea behind the "TrueMatch system", from the monitor point of view?


Another question: would it be possible to permit different kinds of paper in the selection box, not only the ones made by the manufacturer? I use Pixma 5200R, however I prefer the "look and feel" of the HP papers. So far, with my "approximative" color management, I've been using just the closest (in terms of glossy/matte and g/m2) Canon paper type. However, I'm aware that once I start to think about it more seriously, it doesn't make much sense any more.

Daniel

[robin55]

Hmmm, why no comment/reply to this? Seems to me the poster has a very reasonable and correct point?

OK, so it would be unreasonable to expect TP to reproduce a badly-adjusted display (most commonly wrong gamma), but that is what the hype appears to be promising!

So what exactly is being promised?

[zedonet]

Hello,

I wasn't aware that this post was still unanswered.

Of course TurboPrint cannot guess the monitor used.

TurboPrint uses the "sRGB" color space. However, by default the "gamma" value is set to 1.8 instead of the sRGB standard of 2.2.

This means that prints are a bit brighter than the on-screen display (the higher the gamma, the darker the image). Most manufacturer drivers like Canon & Epson also use gamma=1.8, probably because this saves ink and prints with gamma=2.2 tend to look too dark.

The gamma value can be adjusted in TurboPrint Config (index card "graphics").