[HamstersFromHell]

Not to distract from the printing aspect of things, but I’ve a question on the monitor calibration side. Is there freeware for such a task? I’ve occasionally wondered if what I’m seeing is close to what others see in my images. I have and ACER laptop, and use the system defaults for viewing, which claim to all be set for ‘photography’. But I still wonder…

There are freeware monitor calibration tools, and all of them work pretty much the same as the Adobe one you get with Photoshop. However, Adobe has quit packaging their tool with PS (I know it’s absent in CS4 and later, and maybe with CS3 as well). Adobe now says not to use those tools to calibrate flat displays, as they were intended to use with CRT monitors, which behave differently than flat panels.

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html is a good place to start on learning hows and whys of calibrating monitors. He also links to the freeware calibration tools.

For the money, the basic Spyder can’t be beat. You can often pick one up on eBay for cheap, use it, then resell it if you’re not going to recalibrate all the time. (And even getting it right once is better than not at all…even with monitor drift, you’re still well in the ballpark for all but hypercritical viewing.)

Hammies

[HamstersFromHell]

I’ll try to make this brief, but it’s a very complex subject.

I used to manage the color printing dept. for the oldest blueprint house in Nashville. I’ve dealt with it all from architects and photographers wanting their colors “right”.

First off, calibrate your monitor. You have no idea what you really have color wise if you don’t. Tweaking your monitor settings to make it look right isn’t helping if the original image is not color correct to begin with.

Second, if your printer software installs a color profile (*.icm), make sure it’s installed and make sure the printer driver is set to actually use it. Note that most profiles are meant to be used only with that manufacturer’s ink and paper. Using anyone else’s ink and paper is probably going to be disappointing and a waste of material.

With most digital cameras nowdays, the image will have a color profile embedded in the file. Make sure your camera or film scanner is set to do so if it isn’t already. Most should produce sRGB or Adobe profiles embedded in the image file.

This should get you in the ballpark. Tweaking the printer color settings might get you really close to perfect, if not there.

If you really want to do it right. You have to establish a color workflow, follow it every time and calibrate everything on some standard you’ve established. Yes, this does cost some money up front, but in the long run, it’s way cheaper than fiddling and tweaking and making countless reprints to get one that looks right!

1. Calibrate your monitor.

2. Standardize on an ink and a paper (or papers). Buy in bulk to reduce batch variations, if possible.

3. Use a printer calibrating service to generate custom *.icm files for each combination of ink and paper you’re using. (see Google for some places which do this. Typically, they send you a file, you print it using the combination of ink and paper you want to profile, mail it to them, and they send you a profile file to use.)

4. Print color accurate (WYSIWYG) prints on your own system! (Profit?)

If your printer doesn’t support multiple .icm files or none at all (a lot of large format printers are like this…it’s external for them and usually applied in RIP software), you can use Photoshop to do the work for you. Place your new .icm files where Photoshop expects to see them, load your image, do whatever tweaking on it you want, save your file (still in some RGB format) then Edit > Convert To Profile. From the drop box select the profile you’ve been sent for the paper and ink combo you’re going to print with, and convert. This is usually going to be into CMYK, so don’t be upset if it suddenly looks different. (This is usually from gamut limits in different profiles.) Then send the file to the printer making sure the printer is NOT using any profile. (You just converted it, right?) This should give you 99.9% accurate color if you’ve followed the steps and have everything in calibration.

Hope this helps!

Hammies

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