Neutral Chart Creator

Finding a truly neutral grey on your printer is hard. Neutral Chart Creator makes a set of charts from dark to light, each with a grid of greys that lean slightly warm, cool, green or magenta. Print them, pick the patch that looks (or measures) neutral, and you have your printer's real neutral grey at each lightness.

See it in the shop · Version 1.1.5 · Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later

Open the PowerScripts panel (Window > Extensions > PowerScripts) and choose Neutral Chart Creator from the Color Charts scripts. The script has three tabs: General, Layout and Luminosity.

1. On General, choose Color: CMYK (or RGB if your printer takes RGB files).
2. Leave First page only ticked and press Create Neutral Chart. Check the layout of the one test page.
3. Untick First page only and press Create Neutral Chart again for the full set.
4. Print the chart with colour management set the way you print jobs.

Each page is one lightness (shown in the page heading, for example “Lightness 50”). The patch in the middle of the grid is the mathematically neutral grey (Lab a = 0, b = 0). The patches round it step away by the Variance: across the page towards yellow or blue (the b axis), down the page towards magenta or green (the a axis). Under each patch is its CMYK or RGB formula.

If your printer is perfectly balanced, the middle patch looks neutral. If not, the neutral-looking patch sits off-centre, and its formula is the one to use, or to give to your profiling software.

The footer of each page records the colour mode, colour profile, rendering intent and page number, so a printed chart always tells you how it was made.

• Color: make CMYK or RGB patches. The formulas come from your Illustrator colour settings.
• Chart Size: how many patches in each grid, from 3 x 3 to 15 x 15.
• Variance: the step between patches (in Lab Delta). Smaller numbers make finer steps for fine-tuning, bigger ones cover a wider range for a printer that's well off.
• Axis Labels: label the rows and columns with their a and b values.
• First page only (Use for testing layout): make only the middle-grey page (lightness 50), to check the size and layout before making the full set.
• Create Neutral Chart: makes a new document with one page per lightness.

• Swatch Width, Swatch Height and Swatch Gutter: the size of each patch and the gap between them, in mm.
• Label Height, Label Offset and Font Size: the space for the formula under each patch and its text size.
• Axis Space and Axis Font Size: room for the axis labels and their size.
• Page Border: the margin round each page.
• Page Gutter: the gap between pages.
• Header Height, Header Text Offset, Header Font Size: the grey band at the top with the lightness.
• Footer Height, Footer Text Offset, Footer Font Size: the band at the bottom with the colour settings.

The list of lightness values to make a page for, from 0 (black) to 100 (white). It comes with 10, 20, 30 … 90 and 95. Add, remove or change rows to check the greys you care about most, for example more steps in the shadows.

1. Make a first chart with Variance 1.5 and find the most neutral patch.
2. Make a second chart with a smaller Variance (for example 0.5) and only that lightness on the Luminosity tab.
3. Pick the best patch again: its formula is your neutral grey.

• View the prints under the light they'll be seen in (a daylight viewing booth is best). Greys can look neutral in one light and tinted in another.
• A spectrophotometer takes the guesswork out: measure the patches and pick the one closest to a = 0, b = 0.
• Save your layout as a preset (see Using Presets) so every chart you print matches.

• In trial mode the chart uses a fixed list of lightness values instead of the Luminosity tab.
• The CMYK or RGB formulas depend on the colour settings in Illustrator (Edit > Color Settings). Make the chart with the same settings you use for real jobs.

• 1.1.5: General bug fixes and reliability. Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later.
• 1.1.4
  • Fixed: with some variances (for example 0.7) the chart no longer loses its last row and column.
  • Fixed: the swatch, gap, border and axis sizes say mm, the unit they always used.
  • Improved: general bug fixes, reliability and speed.
• 1.1.3: Updated for PowerScripts 3.8.32.
• Older changes: PowerScripts Release Notes