Recently, I had a problem with a purple band in the middle of the blue strip that was due in part to having a notebook LCD screen tilted at slightly the wrong angle. If the image looks fine here, but shows banding in Photoshop, suspect a monitor profile that incorrectly specifies different gamma values for red, green, and blue, or is otherwise broken.

Open the image in Photoshop and look for color shifts or abrupt changes in brigthness aka banding, an indication that your monitor is out of kilter. The Prinect color book V3 test chart provides 1900 Lab color patches for analysis of the color space and the accuracy of the spot colors. Right click on the image below, and save it to your hard drive. The second set of three bands, in particular, will often show up problems with LCD displays that have been calibrated using an instrument. This image test for banding in your video lookup tables. Print out 256 colours, with each number printed in its corresponding colour. Software based packages - Wiziwyg is one - that use a scanner to read a test print are hit and miss - I don't recommend them, but for dye based printers they sometimes work very well. On the next tab, add more text or colors (optional). There are good services that will create a profile for you, and they are an economical alternative to spending a small fortune on printer calibration equipment. How To Perform a Printer Test With PDFs Choose one of the printer test PDFs above. Down the road, if you switch inks or paper, you can use your accumulation of test strips to help predict your next set of adjustments. Keep your test strips in a folder for later reference.

Test printer colors