Let me offer an analogy to audio, one that you may be easily able to reproduce on your own.
What is pleasing in audio is subjective as are visuals.
If your PC's sound hardware has a graphic equalizer, open it.
Next open a media player with it's own equalizer leaving the software's equalizer off, play a song while tweaking the hardware's equalizer to your taste.
Now, with the hardware equalizer still active and tweaked, tweak some more with the software's equalizer.
I've found there's about nothing I can do to get pleasing results with both equalizers running on top of each other.
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Back to color management for printing.
Calibrate your monitor. Best to use something like the
x-rite i1Display Pro that takes ambient light into consideration.
Run the calibration in a darkened room on a well warmed up monitor that's been on at least two hours.
If your monitor has it's own hardware LUTs, use that.
If no hardware LUT, use the calibration software's monitor adjustment.
If your results come out like mine did, colors will be very bright and vivid to the point it almost hurts to look at the brightest and most vivid. LEAVE IT THAT WAY.
Any other adjustments made through the OS will result in the equivalent of using multiple equalizers on audio signals.
Now, when the PC hardware and software send a red signal to the monitor, the monitor will display the truest red it is capable of and the same for all colors, white point, black point.
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Printer can't print the same though, it needs profiling for each and every printer/ink/paper combination to be used.
A device and software such as a
Datacolor SpyderPRINT is used to profile.
Profiling software sends a print job to the printer of many many different colored squares, software knows exactly what colors were sent to print.
Profiling hardware is then used to read to the profiling hardware exactly what the printer actually did print for each color, software then creates a difference or error file which is an .icc or .icm file. Name this file distinctly and descriptively.
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Now in your photo editing software, edit using soft proofing or print proofing with the appropriate .icc/.icm file. If your editor has no such option, get one that does.
DO NOT ADD IN THE PRINTER'S DRIVER SOFTWARE, if you do, you're back to the multiple equalizer analogy. Print directly from the photo editor's print function.
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Short version......
Calibrated monitor displays the truest color it is capable of.
Printer profile in photo editor displays what printer can and will do.
Any other tweaks result analogous to multiple equalizers.
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With end to end color management in mind I spent many hours over several months reading most everything I could find, much of what I found left me more confused than when I started.
The best reading on the topic I found was at Keith Cooper's most excellent Northlight Images site, specifically starting from this page......
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/what_is_colour.html
Keith has written so extensively on this and so many other topics I wonder how he finds time to shoot.
Shoot he does and very well, up on a level I aspire to.