Graphic designers, photographers, videographers, publishers and PC users at large: all of them rely on their digital equipment being capable of rendering colours right. But the sad reality is your colors will differ depending on the output gizmo. A monitor's red is not the same as an inkjet printer's red. Besides, what's "red"?
Here are 10 things you can do in order to make sure red is red, whichever device has to render it.
1. Purchase a good monitor. OK, this is an open door, but by "good" i mean a monitor you can calibrate. That rules out all of the office monitors, the Apple Theatres and leaves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEdge products.
2. Purchase a good calibration and profiling application. It's easy to get software that comes with a fine quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (called the "Squid 2" by Colour Solutions), and has a feature called "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibration information (the Tone Response Curve) in the video card's look up tables. The sole requirement: your video card should support it. ATI's Radeon range supports this.
3. Calibrate and create a color profile for your monitor once a month. Calibration isn't like profiling. Calibration means the colour look bup tables in the monitor are put into a known state, while a profile only describes the monitor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitor that it must render "pure red" by setting its color channels in a particular way. The profile you create will tell your image modifying software, or graphic design application that pure red for this monitor means a particular mixture of its color channels.
4. Buy an inkjet printer that has non-clogging print heads. Ideally, print heads should never block. If they do, you can be assured your colours will come out awful. If they do not, you can still have bad colors, but now at the very least you can something about it. Good printers are a bit more costly than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy nowadays. Think of paying something similar to 200 USD at a minimum. For first-class printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, expect to pay 700 USD.
5. Drive your inkjet through a Raster Image Processor. Many top of the range printers support a RIP, although not all RIPs are made equal. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that develop costlier RIPs for large format printers. EFI has a decent RIP, with support for ink limiting, black start setting, etc, for a very decent cost. It's the EFI Designer Edition.
6. Profile your printer and use that profile with your RIP to get accurate colors, and economize on ink consumption. Thru the profile settings, you can actually work out how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some paper types, you can save a lot of cash by setting ink limiting to it's optimal level for your printer.
7. Use established equipment such as X-Rite/GretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK printer profile. You must make a profile for every paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you have got to use your printer in RGB mode, you can do with more cost-effective profiling systems. The best way to ensure a high quality profile is formed when you do not have the budget to get a system that costs a couple of thousand dollars, is to make an appeal to a remote service such as Thinck.com's.
8. Use an image modifying application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof means that you'll be able to visually determine an image's colors on-screen with enough accuracy to be assured the colours will match the printed output. Softproofing isn't one to one, but can come very close, and is another way of saving money by saving on both wasted paper and ink.
8. When modifying your image, set the grey balance first. Select a neutral grey area in your image (if you took a photo, you'll remember what was gray, and if you do not, there are virtually always objects that really must be grey) and set this area as your neutral grey tone. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by picking the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the gray eye dropper in the dialogue window, and clicking with this particular tool in the neutral area of your image.
9. If your image has a warm tone to it, e.g. As it was shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flash, you can neutralize colour casts moderately by selecting an area that's not precisely neutral but more towards the warm tone of the image. So long as the area is greyish naturally, the image will adjust. In an appropriate way.
10. Take care with setting Saturation levels too high. If you boost saturation, you are also boosting colour screw-ups. You can turbo-charge the saturation of your image when you are sure it is colour-accurate.
These and lots more tips, tricks, and instructions, but also product reviews and detailed technology and technique background info is available on IT-Enquirer.com. IT-Enquirer is a web magazine aimed at creative executives. It contains articles for noobs all the way up to specialists in the field.
Here are 10 things you can do in order to make sure red is red, whichever device has to render it.
1. Purchase a good monitor. OK, this is an open door, but by "good" i mean a monitor you can calibrate. That rules out all of the office monitors, the Apple Theatres and leaves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEdge products.
2. Purchase a good calibration and profiling application. It's easy to get software that comes with a fine quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (called the "Squid 2" by Colour Solutions), and has a feature called "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibration information (the Tone Response Curve) in the video card's look up tables. The sole requirement: your video card should support it. ATI's Radeon range supports this.
3. Calibrate and create a color profile for your monitor once a month. Calibration isn't like profiling. Calibration means the colour look bup tables in the monitor are put into a known state, while a profile only describes the monitor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitor that it must render "pure red" by setting its color channels in a particular way. The profile you create will tell your image modifying software, or graphic design application that pure red for this monitor means a particular mixture of its color channels.
4. Buy an inkjet printer that has non-clogging print heads. Ideally, print heads should never block. If they do, you can be assured your colours will come out awful. If they do not, you can still have bad colors, but now at the very least you can something about it. Good printers are a bit more costly than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy nowadays. Think of paying something similar to 200 USD at a minimum. For first-class printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, expect to pay 700 USD.
5. Drive your inkjet through a Raster Image Processor. Many top of the range printers support a RIP, although not all RIPs are made equal. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that develop costlier RIPs for large format printers. EFI has a decent RIP, with support for ink limiting, black start setting, etc, for a very decent cost. It's the EFI Designer Edition.
6. Profile your printer and use that profile with your RIP to get accurate colors, and economize on ink consumption. Thru the profile settings, you can actually work out how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some paper types, you can save a lot of cash by setting ink limiting to it's optimal level for your printer.
7. Use established equipment such as X-Rite/GretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK printer profile. You must make a profile for every paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you have got to use your printer in RGB mode, you can do with more cost-effective profiling systems. The best way to ensure a high quality profile is formed when you do not have the budget to get a system that costs a couple of thousand dollars, is to make an appeal to a remote service such as Thinck.com's.
8. Use an image modifying application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof means that you'll be able to visually determine an image's colors on-screen with enough accuracy to be assured the colours will match the printed output. Softproofing isn't one to one, but can come very close, and is another way of saving money by saving on both wasted paper and ink.
8. When modifying your image, set the grey balance first. Select a neutral grey area in your image (if you took a photo, you'll remember what was gray, and if you do not, there are virtually always objects that really must be grey) and set this area as your neutral grey tone. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by picking the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the gray eye dropper in the dialogue window, and clicking with this particular tool in the neutral area of your image.
9. If your image has a warm tone to it, e.g. As it was shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flash, you can neutralize colour casts moderately by selecting an area that's not precisely neutral but more towards the warm tone of the image. So long as the area is greyish naturally, the image will adjust. In an appropriate way.
10. Take care with setting Saturation levels too high. If you boost saturation, you are also boosting colour screw-ups. You can turbo-charge the saturation of your image when you are sure it is colour-accurate.
These and lots more tips, tricks, and instructions, but also product reviews and detailed technology and technique background info is available on IT-Enquirer.com. IT-Enquirer is a web magazine aimed at creative executives. It contains articles for noobs all the way up to specialists in the field.
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