May 2010 - Digital Group Meeting - Colour Workflow

Meeting Notes March 2009 to 2018.
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spb
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May 2010 - Digital Group Meeting - Colour Workflow

Post by spb » Fri May 07, 2010 12:20 pm

Many thanks to Peter Lovelock of Colour Confidence for giving up his evening to try to demystify Colour Management for us.

Within the wealth of information, there were a few key nuggets of gold. Here is my summary;

Everyone sees colour differently, we can't trust our eyes to make reliable judgements because they are auto-balancing devices which discount colour shifts and are fooled by adjacent colours and contrast changes. Consequently we need hardware calibration devices to achieve accurate and consistent colour and tone between screens, printers and projectors.

In the days of film, it's production was carefully managed for colour consistency and each film had a calibration code printed down one side so that the lab could produce predictable prints. In the digital era, there is no consistency and we are responsible for the entire camera/monitor/printer process ourselves.

MONITORS

Uncalibrated flat screen monitors 'out of the box' are typically extremely bright and 8,500 to 9,500 deg K ie blue-white. The modern white standard is 6500 deg K.
Both traditional tubed monitors and flat-screen monitors should ideally be calibrated on a monthly basis. Only the latest LED screens are more consistent. The screens on laptops (including Macs) have a very limited colour range and connecting an external monitor will be a major improvement.

CAMERA

For most people, it is not necessary to calibrate their camera but important pictures under consistent lighting can be improved by taking a reference image using a standard grey target or set of colour patches. Examples are the Colour Confidence Total Balance collapsible grey card and the Colour Checker Passport .

COLOUR SPACES

There are two popular colour spaces; sRGB and Adobe RGB. Because the web, projectors, monitors and desktop printers have colour range approximating to sRGB, Peter recommends setting the camera and Photoshop to sRGB. This is what I have been recommending for a couple of years now, but flies in the face of the perceived wisdom which is to use Adobe RGB. As I have been saying - just set everything to sRGB and forget about it!

PHOTOSHOP SETTINGS

Photoshop CS; Edit>Color Settings should be set to sRGB for the RGB Working Space, Preserve Embedded Profiles (3) Ask (3) and under More Options; Perceptual Intent.
Photoshop Elements; Edit>Color Settings should be set to Always Optimize Colours for Computer Screens.

CALIBRATION DEVICES

The benchmark devices are the Eye One Display 2 and the Spyder 3 Elite. Cheaper options are the Spyder 3 Express and the Huey but these have compromises. All of these devices are limited to monitor calibration only.

The ColorMunki Photo is capable of profiling monitors, printers and projectors to a high quality. Although this is expensive, the society has one available for loan to members. Contact Mike Hynes for details.

Peter gave the following tips for using the ColorMunki with monitors;
- ensure that Start>All Programs>Startup does not include the Adobe Gamma Loader. If it does, delete it
- use the physical buttons on the screen to choose the default settings and always leave them there
- let the screen warm up for an hour before profiling it
- use the Advanced Mode, setting the luminance to 110 and the White Point to D65
- don't use any dual screen mode or clone mode as the software will probably crash
- after creating a profile, compare an image with it's print under controlled lighting conditions. If too bright or too dark, repeat the process with a lower or higher luminance figure until they match.

PRINTER PROFILING

The ColorMunki software produces printed colour patches which can be scanned by the device to quickly achieve optimum results for each paper and ink combination.

Peter recommended experimenting with the many printer and paper type settings to achieve the best results for you. His experience mirrors mine, which is that the highest resolution settings on Epson printers does not produce superior prints and just wastes time and ink.

Having produced a printer profile, it is possible to simulate the printed result before wasting money and materials on an actual print. This is called Soft Proofing. With Photoshop CS choose View>Proof Setup>Custom then choose the paper profile and Perceptual Rendering. Switch the simulation on and off with View>Proof Colors. Profiles for matt papers will produce a more dramatic difference than gloss. For Photoshop Elements, the simulation is only visible in the Print Preview window.

BLACK AND WHITE CONVERSION

Peter briefly demonstrated the Nik Silver Efex Pro which converts colour images to black and white in a quick and intuitive manner.

FURTHER HELP

Detailed advice on how to use printer profiles with Photoshop is available to download from the APS website on the Digital Group page.

Help is also available to download from the Colour Confidence Learning Centre. This includes a document Guidance to Digital Photography.

Cheers, Steve Brabner

Mike Hynes

Re: May 2010 - Digital Group Meeting - Colour Workflow

Post by Mike Hynes » Fri May 07, 2010 6:53 pm

spb wrote: . . . . . . . .
Peter gave the following tips for using the ColorMunki with monitors;
- ensure that Start>All Programs>Startup does not include the Adobe Gamma Loader. If it does, delete it
- use the physical buttons on the screen to choose the default settings and always leave them there
- let the screen warm up for an hour before profiling it
- use the Advanced Mode, setting the luminance to 110 and the White Point to D65
- don't use any dual screen mode or clone mode as the software will probably crash
- after creating a profile, compare an image with it's print under controlled lighting conditions. If too bright or too dark, repeat the process with a lower or higher luminance figure until they match.
. . . . . . .
As more people are using dual screens, I think it's worth mentioning that the monitor profile usually will only apply to one of the monitors, not to both of them. So colour adjustments will normally be carried out (or finalised) on the one, profiled monitor.

Mike Hynes

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