In most cases, standard color targets are taken to characterize output devices. However, there is no reason why these color targets contain the best set of color patches to build an accurate printer model. For an offset printing press, for example, there is a significant difference between the dot gain of normal offset printing and newspaper printing. Hence, the optimal color target for both systems is likely to be different. Moreover, there is no reason to use color targets that are rather regularly sampled in colorant space such as the IT8.7/3 target.To overcome previous problems, a technique has been developed with which an optimal color target can be reconstructed to model an output device with a minimum number of color patches. In this way some insight is obtained into how many and which color patches are needed to model printers accurately. Based on this technique, an automatic color target generation system can be build for a dedicated output system or printer technology.