Print CMYK test in margin of print (Photoshop)

[pisquee]

Yeah, was thinking of using an additional layer if I had to, but what looking if there was an inbuilt way of doing it.

[arthur.daley]

Yeah, was thinking of using an additional layer if I had to, but what looking if there was an inbuilt way of doing it.

I lookerd at this yonks ago for putting a test patch on the side of image files I sent for photo printing - kept the boys in the lab on their toes as they knew that the colour/greyscale would have to be right as any errors would be spotted a mile off ;o) - I couldn't find an auto function in any of my versions of Photoshop. To be honest though it only takes 10 minutes to create a custom function that will give you your cmyk patch and I built in a box with two grey scales in it, one from 0 - 255 and one aligned with it from 255 - 0. That way you can see how much you are losing at each end of the greyscale and colour casts, especially green/magenta really show up in a grey scale.

If you don't already use actions - its well worth spending an hours tinkering and getting the hang of them for repetitive tasks.


Arthur

[John G]

I think I may be on the wrong lines, if its not the print option choices - but here's what I thought you were talking about - calibration bars!
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/ ... press.html

PS: Found calibration bar in "Print with Preview" (old version of photoshop) but mines greyed out as I don't think my print drivers (home laptop) cover postcript.

[pisquee]

Yeah, if the printer/driver did PostScript this would be OK, but yeah, using actions would solve it - thinking of having a transparent layer saved with the test swatches in it, and an action assigned to load this in on top of everything. Even if it's a bit of work, most of our designs are preset, and then printed 100s of times, so once the image is saved, it doesn't need doing again.