To gain control of calibration, the first decision to be made is to decide if the rip based calibration should be duplicated into a second print queue or if the rip calibration should act as a baseline, where the baseline is modified within a graphic application. I've done it both ways, and a combination of the two. There is no "right way"
With rip based calibration, multiple queues are defined. One "print queue" would print exact as you print today. The second print queue would define a different set of calibration parameters. The print queues are named to be meaningful, such as you might have a queue for high opacity white, a second for underbase white, a third for a semi opaque inf family and a forth for process inks. The person outputting would need to send the correct separation to the correct queue and the predefined calibration will happen.
In application based calibration, you would have similar calibration curves to define high opacity white, a second for underbase white, a third for a semi opaque inf family and a forth for process inks. In the case of photoshop, the curves would be defined as the curve shown above. For illustrator, a .ppd file can be defined with similar curves. The biggest problem with application based curves, each application does calibration in a different way, so once you calibrate photoshop, you need to calibrate illustrator, then corel, then quickseps or some other sep program.
One way to conceptualize calibration is as a graphic equalizer for an audio system. Rip based calibration is like the head unit, where application calibration is the things which plug into the head unit. For rock music, the calibration can be pushed to "11". A 50% screen might be best printed at 50% or maybe 67% looks better. With calibration control, you can choose your choice. For screen printing, does anyone SERIOUSLY want a 5% screen printed on a shirt?? or should the 5% print as a 15% or more?
