A standard printer characterization target is printed with a reference printer and measured. From the measured data, a model is derived that describes for each ink the behavior of each individual ink in combination with different combinations of the other inks. In order to reduce the complexity for obtaining a printer model of a second printer, a second target is printed that includes only a subset of the color patches in the standard printer characterization target. With the model and interpolation, it is possible to reconstruct colorimetric data for missing color patches in the reduced target.