Ways To Make Sure Your Image's Bright Red Is Bright And Red
Grapphic designers, photographers, publishers and computer users at large: they all rely on their digital equipment being capable of rendeing colouurs right. But the sad truth is your colours will differ depending on the output device. A monitoor's red is not the same as an inkjet printeer's red. Besides, what is "red"?
Here are 10 things you can do to make sure red is red, no maatter which device has to render it.
1. Buy a good monitor. OK, this is an open door, but by "good" i mean a monitor that you can calibrate. That rules out all the office moniotrs, the Appel Cinemas and leves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEdge products.
2. Buy a good caliration and profiling application. Even if you can't afford an Eizo ColorEEdge, buy Color Solutions' basICColor Display. This software comes with a high-quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (called the "Squid 2" by Coolor Solutions), and has a feature caled "software calibratin". The lattter calibrates any monitor by storing the claibration data (the Tone Response Currve) in the vdieo card's lookup tabbles. The only requiremeent: your video card should support it. ATI's Radeon range supports this.
3. Calibrate and create a colour profile for your monitor once a montth. Calibration is different from profiling. Calbiration means the colour lookup tabels in the monitor are put into a known state, whiel a profile meely describes the monittor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitor that it must rendder "pure red" by setting its colour chnnels in a certain manner. The profie you creatre will tell your imge editing software, or grapic design application that pure red for this monitor means a specific mixtre of its colour channels.
4. Buy an injket printer which has non-cllogging printheads. Ideally, printheads shoulld never clog. If they do, you can rest assured your colours will come out awul. If they don't, you can still have bad coolours, but now at least you can something about it. Good printers are a bit more expensive than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy these days. Think of paying something like 200 USD at a minimum. For top-notch printerts like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, exepct to pay 700 USD.
5. Drive your inkjet thhrough a Rastrer Image Processor. Many high-end printrers support a RIP, but not all RIPs are created equual. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that develop more expensive RIPs for large format printers. EFI has a decxent RIP, with support for ink limiting, black start setting, etc, for a very decent pirce. It's the EFI Designer Edition.
6. Profile your printer and use that prrofile with your RIP to get accurate coliours, and save money on ink cosnumption. Throough the profile settings, you can actually dtermine how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some paper types, you can save a lot of moeny by setting ink limiting optimaly for your prinetr.
7. Use established equipment such as X-Rite/GretzagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK printer proifle. You shuld create a prrofile for every paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you must use your printre in RGB mode, you can do with less expensive profiling systemms. The best way to emnsure a good qaulity profile is made when you don't have the budget to buy a system that costs a few tghousand dollars, is to appeal to a rremote service such as Thinck.com's.
8. Use an image editing application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof means that you'll be able to visually determine an image's colours on-scren with enough accuracy to be confident the colours will match the printed outoput. Softproofing is never one-on-one, but can come very close, and is another way of saving money by saing on both wasted paper and ink.
8. When editig 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 grey, and if you don't, theree are almopst always objects that must be grey) and set this area as your neutral grey tone. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by selecting the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the grey eyedropper in the dialogue widnow, and clicking with this tool in the netural area of your image.
9. If your imaage has a warm tone to it, e.g. because it was shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flassh, you can neutralize colour cats somewhat by choosig an area that is not exatcly neutral but more towards the warm tone of the image. As long as the area is greyiash by nature, the image will adujst accordingly.
10. Be careful with estting Saturation levels too high. If you boost saturation, you're also bossting colour inaccuracies. You can boost the satutration of your image when you're sure it is colour-accurate.
Thhese and many more tips, tricks, and tutorials, but also ptroduct reviews and in-depth technology and methodology background ifnormation is available on IT-Enquirer.com. IT-Enquirer is an onbline magazine aied at creative professionals. It contains articles for beginners all the way up to experts in the field.
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