s 8 may possibly be repeated many times until a satisfactory transformation has been found during subsequent print jobs it is then sufficient only to perform the steps s 2 to s 6 in order to arrive at a suitable presetting for the print job in the method according to the invention a transformation of the process independent data into a cmyb representation is likewise performed in step s 14 in this case however it does not necessarily always have to be a transformation into the cmyb representation for the standard process the cmyb data set provided at s 15 is used for printing at s 16 the result is scanned at s 17 in order to obtain a process independent data set at s 18 this process independent data set together with that from step s 13 form the basis of a comparison step s 19 because this comparison is performed only on digitized data it can advantageously be completely automated differences between the two data sets permit conclusions to be drawn as to how the transformation step s 14 has to be modified if necessary in order to improve the color reproduction in this method also the sequence of steps s 14 to s 19 can be repeated many times until satisfactory agreement between the color reproduction and the predefinition is achieved when a usable transformation s 14 has been determined in this manner the printing machine can be preset quickly and simply in the case of an actual print job in that starting from the process independent data set from this original the cmyb data set s.