Fine-tune your inkjet photo printer

For your first color tests, print a few solid-color blocks. The values in parentheses are what you can enter into the Color Picker dialog of either Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to achieve the colors.

• Red (R, 255; G, 0; B, 0)
• Green (0, 255, 0)
• Blue (0, 0, 255)
• Gray (200, 200, 200)
• Cyan (0, 255, 255)
• Magenta (255, 0, 255)
• Yellow (255, 255, 0)
• Black (0, 0, 0)

Include a good photo on the test page, as well as some explanatory text below the color blocks. Change the text as required for subsequent tests, so that each printed test sheet contains its own description. That makes it a lot easier to sort out the test results later on.

Keep in mind that your printer cartridges use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks, not red, green, and blue. So, a printed red is a mix of magenta and yellow inks, green is a mix of cyan and yellow, and so on. Some printers use more than four inks, but the basic concept is the same. If your printer does its job properly, you should see accurate red, green, and blue blocks, and no color tinge to the gray block.

If the printed results are unsatisfactory, the printer driver may provide the necessary correction tools. Needless to say, such tools vary from one printer to another, so we can't provide a definitive list. Look for controls such as Saturation, Color Tone, and Brightness, and make whatever adjustments seem appropriate. If you find a combination that works, save it with a distinctive name and use it for subsequent printing jobs.