Question Balancing monitor-printer-scanner

[tinpanalley]

I do some of my own amateur photography, I do projects with my scanner, I've got a monitor obviously and a laser printer and inkjet.

I've always worked with these things and not worried too much because I have gotten decent enough results, but always always doubting whether I've got faithful reproduction at any point along the chain. Can someone please help me understand what I need to do to start getting all these tools in sync visually? I want to know when I scan something and do things to it in Photoshop that I'm looking at the right thing, and have confidence that I'm outputting the right thing. I just dont know where to begin with ICC profiles, etc., if you even use those...

I'm an independent filmmaker so I get colour balance and correction. In the video world, I have my levels and gamma and vectorscopes and histogram and that tells me all I need to know, but in imaging, I feel like there's a lack of consistency from scan to viewing on my monitor to edit to print.

I have, by the way, a Colormunki Display which I use to calibrate my TV and monitor and works great.

Any help would be fantastic, thanks!

 

[Steltek]

This website gives some ideas regarding this subject, including using a Colormunki display:

Calibrating your Scanner, Monitor, and Printer - Jen Betton Illustration

You can get IT8 calibration targets for your scanner and calibration software (you should check the scanning software you use to see if it directly supports calibration via IT8 targets to generate scanner ICC profiles -- a lot of them do). Targets will run you anywhere from $8-$100 or more, depending upon where you buy them and what type of scanner targets you need (i.e. type of paper, and whether it is a flatbed, photo, or slide/film scanner, etc).

This is for your future reference (as they indicate they aren't presently shipping to the US due to Covid19), but this German company used to produce some really excellent for the cost IT8 targets:

http://www.targets.coloraid.de/

I ordered some of them a few years ago for a family member to use in calibrating her photo scanner, and she was very impressed with the improvement in color accuracy of the resulting photo and slide scans after her scanner was recalibrated with the targets.

Wherever you get your IT8 targets, if you order multiples you need to make sure to pay attention to their storage requirements. I dimly recall the ones I bought needed to be stored in a sealed, low humidity, temperature moderated, and zero light container to maintain their accuracy.