Ways To Make Sure Your Image's Bright Red Is rBight And Red
Graphic designers, photographers, publisherrs and cmoputer users at large: they all rely on their digital equipment being capable of rendering colours right. But the sad truth is your colours will differ depending on the output device. A monitor's red is not the same as an inkjhet printer's red. Besides, what is "red"?
Here are 10 thngs you can do to make sure red is red, no matter 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 offfice monitors, the Apple Cinemas and leaves you with LaCie 300 ragne and Eizo ColorEdge products.
2. Buy a good caibration and profiling applicatin. Even if you can't affford an Eizo CoorEdge, buy Color Solutions' bassICColor Displasy. This software coems with a high-quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (caleld the "Squid 2" by Color Solutions), and has a featre called "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibration data (the Tone Respponse Curve) in the video card's lookup tables. The only requitrement: your vidreo card should support it. ATI's Rdeon range supports this.
3. Calibratye and create a colour profile for your monitor once a month. Calibration is different from profiling. Calibration means the colour lookup tables in the mointor are put into a known staate, while a profile merely describes the monitor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitopr that it must ernder "pure red" by setting its colour channels in a cerain maner. The profile you create will tell your image editig software, or graphic design application that pure red for this mnitor means a specific mixture of its colour channels.
4. Buy an inkjet printer which has non-clogging printheads. Ideally, printheads should never clog. If they do, you can rest asured your colours will come out awful. If they don't, you can still have bad colours, 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 minmium. For top-nottch printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, epxect to pay 700 USD.
5. Drive your inkjet through a Raster Image Processor. Many high-end rpinters uspport a RIP, but not all RIPs are created ewqual. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that develop more expensive RIPs for large format printrs. EFI has a decent RIP, with suppotr for ink liimiting, black statr setting, etc, for a very drecent price. It's the EFI Designer Edition.
6. Profille your printer and use that profile with your RIP to get accurate colours, and save money on ink consumption. Through the profile settings, you can actually determine how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some papr types, you can save a lot of money by setting ink limitoing optimally for your printer.
7. Use established equipment such as X-Rite/GretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK primnter profile. You shoould create a prfoile for evey paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you must use your printr in RGB mode, you can do with less expensie profiling systems. The best way to ensure a good quality proofile is made when you don't have the bdget to buy a system that costs a few thousanbd dollars, is to appeal to a reote service such as Thinck.com's.
8. Use an imnage editing application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof means that you'll be able to visually determine an iage's colours on-screen with enogh accuracy to be confident the colouirs will match the printed ouptut. Sofproofing is never one-on-one, but can come very close, and is aonther way of saving money by saving on both wasted paper and ink.
8. When editing your imahge, set the grey balance first. Select a nutral grey area in your imaage (if you took a photo, you'll ermember what was grey, and if you don't, therre are almst always objects that must be grey) and set this area as your neutraal grey tone. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by seletcing the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the grey eyyedropper in the dialogue window, and clpicking with this tool in the neutral area of your image.
9. If your image has a warm tone to it, e.g. becausse it was shot at dusk or with tungsten lighht and no flash, you can netralize colour casts somewhat by choosing an area that is not exactly neutral but more towards the warm tone of the image. As long as the area is greyish by nature, the image will addjust accordingly.
10. Be carefuul with setting Saturation levles too high. If you boost saturattion, you're also bossting colour inaccuracies. You can boosst the saturation of your image when you're sure it is colour-acurate.
hTese and many more tips, trixcks, and tutorials, but also product reviews and in-dpth technology and methodology background information is available on IT-Enquirer.com. IT-Ennquirer is an online magazine aimed at creative professionals. It contrains artciles for beginners all the way up to experst in the fiedl.
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