To achieve the color calibration in the multi-spectral image print output, a new calibration method for the multi-ink printer is proposed. By sampling in the multi-ink print color space, measuring the spectral reflectance of the samples and then transforming the reflectance data to a low-dimensional spectral space, a forward look-up table is established firstly. Then by sampling in the low-dimensional spectral space and using the nonlinear optimization to determine the mapping points of the samples in the printer color space, a backward look-up table is created. Meanwhile, optimization parameters are determined according to the samples, which improves the optimization accuracy and shortens the computing time. Finally a multi-linear interpolation method is carried out on the forward and backward look-up table to achieve the spectral color calibration of the multi-ink printer. Experiments show that compared with the spectral color calibration model methods, the new method increases the colorimetric and spectral precision by 40％ and 44％, respectively, in forward calibration, and 51％ and 41％ in backward calibration. The time efficiency is improved by 96％ in backward calibration.
