Interplay of Color Management Items

Color management items and how they are linked.

When setting up your printer in GMG ColorProof, you see all media and media sizes supported for this printer. Each printer–medium combination, for example, Epson Stylus Pro 4880 and GMG ProofPaper semimatte 250, (1) is grouped into Print Settings within a calibration set (2). A calibration set contains all files and information required to calibrate a set of printer and media types, for all supported measuring devices. In other words, each calibration sets contains multiple printer calibrations, one for each measuring device.

As you can see, the calibration set (2) plays a central role in the database and links the different kinds of files that hold the information for color management. When printing a job, your specific selection of a printer, medium, and print mode points to the required calibration set.

In the same way, a spot color set (5) is also linked to a calibration set in the database. Proof standards (3) contain the proof profiles for a given printer–medium combination (MX4 for ContoneProof,MX5 for DotProof,MXN for OpenColor, ICC for ICC based color management and soft-proofing). Proof standards are linked to the calibration sets in the database (4).

Each calibration set is generally linked to multiple proof standards, for example, ISO Uncoated Yellowish (30L)and ISO Coated v2 (39L). This reflects the fact that you need to calibrate a printer–medium configuration only once for proofing all kind of different print standards. There is a separate Proof Standard item for each printer–medium combination in the list in the Database view. If you open a proof standard item in the list, you see a list of all calibration sets that are supported by this proof standard.