Scanner calibration for colour managed workflow
 

I want to do an accurate as possible calibration of my Epson V750 Pro scanner to achieve a colour-managed workflow. I have the latest version X-Rite i1 Photo Pro 2 calibration kit, and although this enables me to calibrate my monitor and printer, it does not support scanner calibration. I do have Silverfast Ai Studio which includes a scanner calibration facility - is that the best available to me or are there any other options, possibly using the i1 spectrophotometer, as I know that it used to be possible to carry out calibration with the older versions of that equipment? Other than that, I'm using an Espon 3880 printer, running Vista x64 and using Photoshop CS5.

Hello, and welcome to the site. :)

There's really not a whole lot that can be done for scanners, aside from selecting the proper pre-defined film/slide profiles when scanning film/slide sources. For flatbed-scanned prints, you'd have to first calibrate the monitor. Once that's done, you'd use a spectrometer against the print, scan it, and then compare the readings of the print against the readings of the monitor, and adjust (if possible) accordingly.

Because prints and negatives/slide are often just source materials -- and not final output, which is where calibration is most important -- this isn't often done. And what is done tends to be somewhat basic, using predefined profiles for film type or paper type.

You can also "eyeball it" if you want to avoid buying overly costly calibration tools.

Hmm... I was tempted to answer this earlier, but http://www.silverfast.com/highlights/autoit8/en.html

You need to buy a reflective IT8 scanner target.

The calibration is just a click away after that :)

I've used http://www.targets.coloraid.de/ together with http://lprof.sourceforge.net/ to create profiles for print and slide (negative film cannot practically be profiled). It's not possible to just "calibrate the scanner". It depends what medium you are going to scan. I've found that Kodak target will work ok for most reflective stuff. For slide film, you need target for each emulsion type.

edit: Silverfast will propably automate this for you a bit, it's not my cup of a tea. Most often I do raw files with Vuescan and apply profiles to them manually.

Scanner calibration for colour managed workflow
 

I should have stated in my original posting that the work I'm doing at the moment does not involve photographic scanning but producing giclee fine art prints, This involves scanning an original piece of artwork (watercolour, oil painting, mixed media etc.), 'tweaking' the scan file in Photoshop, then producing the final prints on my Epson 3880. As you would imagine, the objective is to get the colours on my prints matching as closely as possible those of the original artwork. As originally mentioned, I believe I've got my monitor and printer calibrated pretty well with the X-rite i1, but I'm still having to do quite a bit of the 'tweaking' in Photoshop before I can get the colour-matching to my satisfaction, and I want to make sure that the scan isn't the weak link in the chain. Does this additional information affect the comments you have made?

Regarding jmac's posting re Silverfast - my scanner is already calibrated using the facility in Silverfast Studio Ai v.6 (I have the relevant IT8 reflective target). Is Silverfast v.8 calibration going to be any more accurate?

To be honest, I'm undecided if that changes anything or not. I do recognize what you're doing, and what you're wanting/trying to do. But I just can't think of a way to better accomplish it beyond what's already been suggested here, or beyond what you've already been doing.

The problem lies in how scanners work vs how calibration works.