It became pretty apparent from the start that most of the thing that I was reading about on how to solve my printing problems (i.e., profiling printers, cameras, scanners etc) I would not be able to test due to cost and lack of equipment. After plowing through endless piles of research i did manage to come across things that i could implement.

These things were:

• How to calibrate and profile my monitor using Adobe Gamma
• Understanding and selecting the correct workflow for the job
• How to soft proof and use adobes gamut warning to identify problematic colours
• understanding which colour space to use for a specific pourpose
• Colour constancy and how to use this principle to get better results from my digital stills

At the beginning of this research topic i wanted to “determine the right recipe for the perfect print” and have i achieved this? Well the answer is no. What i really wanted was a what you see is what you get result, and that is impossible because there are allways going to be some colours that your monitor can display that cannont be reproduced by ink and vise versa. So i was really setting myself up for failure. At the end of the day all I could really do was to educate myself so that I can identify the problems that can occur and learn how to manage them better.

Have you ever wondered why you get orange tinted photographs when they were taken inside under florescent lights? Why can’t the human eye see the orange tinge that the film can? the answer is that you don’t see the orange tinge because the human eye has colour constancy.  

“Colour constancy, sometimes referred to as “discounting the illuminant”, is the tendency to perceive objects as having a constant colour, even if the lighting conditions change.” (Real world colour management p.46)

My understanding of this is that your eye changes its colour response depending on the light in the scene. Cameras don’t have colour constancy that’s why you get orange tinted photographs. However, today’s digital cameras allow you to change the white balance, which changes the cameras response to the illumination in the room. This is something that I have had a chance to do and yes by changing the white balance on your digital camera you get rid of the orange tinge and get a more true to life (or at least the human eye) representation of colour.

Why use Raw? 
“The RAW format is your “digital negative”.  It contains all the information that the camera has about a picture.  Information is lost in the conversion to JPEG in the camera.  If you get the settings wrong in the camera and take a picture, it’s too late.  You’re stuck with the picture and can do only a limited amount of correcting in your favorite image editor.  So when you need the best from your camera, shoot RAW.” (Logical designs, http://www.logicaldesigns.com/Imaging1.htm, viewed 21.9.06)

With a Raw file you can manipulate the original data captured by the digital camera, thus giving you the ablity to fine tune tonal ranges, change the exposure etc whilst still retaining the maximum amount of detail.

This link explains most of the settings that you can change in the camera raw option. http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_04/essay.html – viewed 21.9.06

Here is a link with a list of Digital Photo Labs that you can get profiles for. (http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/Profiles/Australia_profiles.htm)

Profiles By Paper type
Kodak
Illford Galerie
Lyson paper 
PerfectProof paper

 Monitor Black point check, developed by Bruce Fraser (author of Real Worl colour management) it lets you to see if your monitors black point is set correctly. I can see the changes in colour on my LCD screen at about the 10 point, that’s in a super bright sunlit room, but when I drew the curtains I could notice a change at the 5 mark. I suppose that just goes to show the importance of the ambient light you work in. The article explains that for best results CRT monitors need a darkened room, where LCD monitors have a higher luminance so you have more flexibility with them. My results are pretty average.

•  A top quality monitor using an excellent calibration system can show the difference between levels 0 and 1.
• A typical monitor in a dimly lit room will not show anything until level 5-8.
• Only the best monitors that are also well calibrated will distinguish between all patches

“It is better to have the black level set slightly too high than too low” [1]

[1] http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm

The first is to use the generic or out of the box profile that comes with your printer or you can download them from the makers site to use. These are free, the downside being that these profiles are produced for all the printers of the printer type that you have. It does not take into account the characteristics of your specific printer. Remember at the start of the seminar when I said the all devices are unique.

The second way to profile a printer is to have one custom made. The downside to this is that the average price for a custom made profile is about $100 each. This can get quite expensive because you need different profiles for each paper, ink and printer combination. To custom profile your printer all you need to do is to print out a reference target sheet on the printer you want to profile. Then send this sheet away where it is then measured with a scanner, patch reader, or spectrophotometer. The colour variations are recorded by there software which then creates a unique printer profile.

Places you can get custom profiling done…
CHROMiX – ColorValet
Dry Creek Photo 
 

The third method is to do it yourself. This is highly expensive because you need to purchase the proper equipment which can range in price from several hundred to several thousand dollars.  This is not a recommended method unless you truly know what you are doing. So I’m not going into specifics on that one.

Image Science has a good article on printer profiles. It goes through an introducton of printer profiles, how the process works, and explains what a profile will do and won’t do.

“Accurately calibrating + characterising your monitor is the crucial first step in developing a colour managed workflow.” [1] 

Because each monitor displays colour differently you need to create a monitor profile to compensate for colour inconsistency.

Monitor calibration is a two stage process.
Stage One = calibrate
Stage Two = profile
In most cases monitor calibration and monitor profiling occurs simultaneously.

Adobe recommends that you use third party software like E-Color Colorific or Apple ColorSync 2.5 or greater. However, if like me you don’t have any third party software than Adobe recommends that you use Adobe Gamma which is bundled with recent versions of Photoshop. Both Johnson and Harradine suggest you use Adobe Gamma if you don’t have a third party software as well.

Eyeballing it
Harald Johnson likes to call the first software based method “eyeballing”. He explains that the problem with the eyeballing is that the software relies on peoples ability to compare and evaluate colours as well as viewing conditions. But he goes on to say that, eyeballing is better than no calibration at all. So far I have come across two ways that I can calibrate and profile my monitor. These are using adobe gamma and online calibration. 

Adobe Gamma
Adobe Gamma is a visual calibration process. With it you adjust your monitors
- white point
- contrast and brightness
- and the Phosphor and RGB levels 
By the end of the process you end up with a monitor profile that can be used to display colours correctly on screen in any ICC enabled applications.  I did find one major drawback however, if you have a flat screen monitor than adobe gamma will not produce a reliable profile for a colour managed workflow. According to Adobe. As I have an LCD screen I am hesitant to try this method however, I do know some people who have LCD screens and use adobe gamma and say that it works for them. So I have decided to at least test it.

Online/download Calibration 
EasyRGB-PC Ver. 1.30 is a windows based application that is free to download. Go here for all the specks
http://www.easyrgb.com/easyrgbpc.html
I have also come across this website that allows you to calibrate your monitor by eye using its test images. http://www.imagescience.com.au/ColourControl/monitorCalibration.html

It takes about 10 mins to calibrate and profile your monitor and experts say that this should be done on a regular basis. Some sources recommend that you do this weekly and others recommend that you do it monthly. So you should really make this part of a weekly or monthly routine. Note that it is recommended that you should allow your display to warm up for an hour before you calibrate your monitor.

Some of the questions at the end of my seminar concerning monitor calibration were…

Why do you have to calibrate your monitor regularly? You need to calibrate your monitor regularly because the characteristics of your monitor will change overtime.
Why do you have to let your monitor warm up for an hour? at the time i did not know the answer, and yes i have been trying to find that out and as soon as i do i will post it up. i have read this in a few places and one of them is http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm, but it dosn’t say why.

[1] www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/32106.html – accessed 10/08/06

RGB   

• RGB is the dominant colour space for digital artists.
• It is the default space for most digital cameras and scanners.
• And is the preferred colour space for inkjet printers. Some inkjet printers actually prefer RGB files rather than CMYK. If you send a CMYK file to an inkjet printer that printer will then covert that to RGB for printing.

I’m not sure that by sending an RGB file you would get better results from an inkjet printer rather than printing a from CMYK. Perhaps this is something that I can test as I have an Inkjet printer at home.   

The most recommended RGB working spaces are:

sRGB

This is the default setting in Photoshop and other devices such as digital cameras. This colour working space is better for working with images/graphics inteded for the web, as it was designed to simulate the average uncalibrated monitor. This is a good mode if you don’t really understand colour management because the colours will look pretty much the same on colour managed and non-colour managed applications.  David Harradine explains that “…to see what your Photoshop images will really look like on the web convert them to sRGB—it’s like the CMYK of the web.” The downside to sRGB is that it is not reccomended for printing. Why? The gamut is small, you need a larger workspace to get better results from an output device. And Deep saturated colours maybe clipped or discarded.

Apple RGB

This is another colour working space that is recommended for web and not for print. It has a slightly larger gamut than the previous sRGB.

Adobe RGB ( 1998 )

Has one of the the largest colour spaces. Its gamut covers the range of CMYK devices (Inkjets, digital photo printers).

ColorMatch RGB

A good All purpose colour working space for photographers and digital artists. It has a smaller gamut than Adobe RGB and is considered to be the best/first choice if you are doing a lot of CMYK commercial printing, Adobe RGB being the second choice.

Harradine, D, Understanding Colour Management, part 3, electronic version, http://www.whack.com.au/pdf/ColourMangement_Part3.pdf