I have bought some transparency film (brand: Pelikan, Inkjet Photo Quality) but I am not sure what settings would be best to use when printing. I use an Epson R200. As I am only going to use this to print a colour spectrum i do not need to calibrate the printer for what the display shows (or do I?). The chart covers about all the colours in an 8-bit image file, but I know this will never be able to show all colours exactly as intended (even if I wanted to).
To sum it up I need to know if I should have some special settings for printing transparency film such as: paper quality, ICC-profiles, ink settings or so?
Most printer drivers have a setting along the lines of “backlit film” or some such thing. I’ve certainly seen it in the Epson drivers I’ve looked at. This is great for transparencies and a lot of other difficult media too. It seems to put out a lot of ink, and do it in an evenly-graduated way.
You need a paper profile for the printer. This sets the ink restrictions. Check out the website for the company who makes the media. I am assuming you are using the printer drivers and do not have any sort of profiling solution or RIP. Using a canned profile if you can find one will get you moderately decent results, as they do not account for many variables with your printer such as the linearity or lack of linearity of your printheads, and the environmental variables that affect this. These are the reasons why i use a rip (Ergosoft Texprint 2009), and not the manufacturers profiles and drivers. Ill be frank, what you are getting yourself into, is more difficult to do well with the included software from the manufacturer of the printer… The easiest way is to go to a service provider that has a profile or can build a profile, i.e. has a rip.
