Just how good is the on-board XRite-powered printer calibration and profiling on the HP Z series printers?  Take a look...  the answer?  Remarkably good. 

Special shoutout to the folks at Parrot Digigraphic for letting us play with their stuff!

Although the Passport is a simple, classic Colorchecker target in a nice little plastic case, there’s a bit more to it.  Software. 
 

Let’s start with Lightroom. 
 

After you’ve installed the (free, with registration) plug-in from Xrite - ColorChecker Passport-, you need to start with a shot that has the Passport in it and go to File>Export with Preset>ColorChecker Passport.  This automatically takes the file, finds the target and starts building a profile from it. 
 

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The truth is, most photographers really only need to use one tool of Color Management, but they really do need to use it, and that’s a display calibrator.  You can have the best monitor in the world, but if it’s not calibrated, you’re still shooting in the dark.  The question is, how much of a device do you really need?

We decided to take out the big X-Rite Eye-One Pro and run it up against to Eye-One Display LT, X-Rite’s low-budget display solution and see if there’s much difference.  The Pro version is the standard of the industry, and the Display LT uses a very common calibrator with the standard Eye-One Match software.  As you can see by this screen, the LT does not unlock anything but a basic display option, but it’s the same package it’s big brother uses.  The Pro version unlocks all the options you see here, and does a printer profile that is the standard of the industry.

The test was simple.  Run a basic display calibration on a pretty standard monitor, using both devices.  Here’s what we got: