The present invention implements a CMYK to CMYK pre-transform in front of at least one printer to be clustered where the transform is designed to ensure that the printers addressed through the pre-transform have substantially identical output color for substantially identical input CMYK values. As one form of implementation a method is disclosed to build CMY to CMY 3D-LUTs and 1D-LUT for K using sensors in the field. Making use of a system LUT--CMY to CMY 3D-LUT and a K to K 1D-LUT--improves consistency and provides a coherent control strategy and a means to provide standardized input CMY and K values in a clustered environment so that single or multiple vendor DFEs see substantially identical CMYK values.