Colors similar to those which would be used in calibrating a target printer are printed on a printer of the same model and with the same materials set as anticipated for the printer calibration. These all lie within a substantially reduced portion of the gamuts of both the printer and scanner. A scanner characterization is derived only for those portions of color space corresponding to the printed colors. This may be done using spline fitting in one or more dimensions. While generic scanner calibrations generally have errors in excess of .DELTA.E=7, with these techniques values generally less than 1.7 were obtained. This is sufficient for printer calibration.