The first step towards calibrating your printer is to make printer, media, ink and output settings. You can calibrate many different ink channels.

1. Select your printer, printer type and ink type.

   By default, Color Tools creates a generic white calibration for printers that support white ink. It is applied automatically when you select the printer's white ink settings in Server Manager. The generic white calibration usually makes it unnecessary to calibrate the white channel. However, if you notice too much dot gain when printing white gradations, you can create a custom white calibration, by selecting a printer with "White" in its name here.

   It is not possible to calibrate the white channel of all printers. In this case, you can improve the output quality by applying a visual correction file

   Some printer models support more than one ink type. Make sure that you select the correct ink type.

2. Select your measuring device.

   Device-specific settings are available for some measuring devices.

   If your printer has an embedded measuring device, select the appropriate check boxes if you want Color Tools to create a calibration file and go on to create a media profile automatically.

3. Select a calibration intent (standard calibration only).

   • Proof—Automatically calculates the ink limitation, based on the offset color gamut (coated paper).

   • Photo or production—Automatically calculates the best saturation value for the largest possible color gamut by adding light ink earlier and in greater amounts in the full-tone areas.

4. Type a name for the calibration file (optional).

   The default name is generated from the printer model, the resolution, the date, and the time. You can type a custom name by clearing the check box Generate name from settings.

5. Under Media Settings, do the following:
   1. Select the media type that best matches the media in the printer.
   2. Select a media name or type in a custom name. This is the name that you select later in Server Manager.
   3. Type the actual values to adjust the media feed to the target (optional). Command WorkStation helps you resolve horizontal banding, by adjusting the output size of your printouts. If you have previously printed and measured the Lineal_01.ps file provided with the software, you can incorporate the result into the calibration file.
6. Under Output Settings, do the following:
   1. Resolution—Select the targeted resolution. Higher resolutions lead to improved output quality, but affect processing and printing performance. If you want to incorporate a screening file, make sure that you select the same resolution here.
   2. Print mode—The print mode defines the quality of the output. Print modes are printer-specific and are also dependent on the selected resolution.
   3. Print direction—Bidirectional printing is faster than uni-directional printing, as the print head prints in both directions. However, uni-directional printing achieves more accurate results. Not all printers support bi-directional printing.
   4. Halftoning—For contone printers, the halftoning method of the printer manufacturer is selected by default.

      For non-contone printers, select Error diffusion (SE1) for maximum quality, or select Stochastic halftoning (SE2) for a faster RIPing speed, or for a variable dot size.

   5. Color mode—Make sure that the number of inks and the ink colors are correct for your printer.
   6. Dot size—Some printers support two dot sizes: Fixed means that each dot is one ink droplet in size. Grayscale means the ink droplets have variable sizes.
   7. Screening—If you have previously created a screening file using a legacy version of Fiery XF, you can incorporate it into the calibration file. The screening file must be located in the Screening folder at C:\ProgramData\EFI\EFI XF\Server. Select Screening as the halftoning method, and then select the screening file.
7. Select Include 'Gray Balance' step for neutral grays even without color management (optional) (advanced calibration only).

   This setting balances the C, M and Y curves to produce neutral grays even before the media profile is created.

8. Select Include 'Quality Control' step for gamut comparisons (optional) (advanced calibration only).

   This setting creates L*a*b* data for solid colors, and allows you to evaluate the gamut of the calibration file and compare it to a reference profile, such as GRACoL or ISOcoated_v2, or to a custom profile before creating a media profile.

9. Click Advanced (optional) (standard calibration only).

   In the Advanced window, you can define the percentage of light inks in the solid colors.

10. Click Next.