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Tips and Tricks: Color Management
Alright, class is back in session, get out your pencils and notebooks. Each month, I choose a topic to discuss with the photographers out there that hopefully will allow them to improve in their own photography. I've covered lots of different aspects of photography over the time I've been doing this articles. Today I will be discussing how to take your creative vision from the camera to the computer to the printer and end up with the same picture that you intended. What's so difficult about that you ask? Well, think about it...every manufacturer and each product will put their own twist on colors...think about that last trip to the electronics department when you saw the 50 big screen televisions on display. You thought to yourself, "Hey that one has a great picture, the colors are so much better". The truth is, all of the televisions can actually display the same colors the same way, but they have to be calibrated first. The same goes with your computer monitor and printer. If they aren't calibrated, and speaking the same "color language" then your results will be different than you anticipated.
Now that I've got your attention, lets jump right in and talk some color management. As this is a relatively new technology, I am enlisting the help of Debbie Grossman who wrote the article Inkjet Printing 2.0 for Popular Photography & Imaging in the January 2008 issue. There are more and more resources for this turning up on the web, so don't think that this article is the end all and be all of color management. This is just to present some of the problems and solutions for your own work flow. The things that I am suggesting that you do here are the same steps that I have taken to achieve proper color rendition in my final prints.
Step #1
This will have the biggest effect on how color is handled throughout the image process. Since the monitor is the largest and single most important human interface to the computer it is essential that you calibrate and profile your monitor. This has gotten very easy to do over the years, which is a good thing. When I first got started with photography I had achieve proper calibration by printing a picture and then fiddling with the contrast, brightness, and color controls on my monitor...this was kind of like doing surgery with a chainsaw. I was lucky and was able to get quite close to an accurate display.
However, as technology has improved over the years, this process has become increasingly simple. There are countless products out there that will assist you in color profiling your monitor, and they range in price from $100.00 up to $1500.00. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be concentrating on the Pantone Huey PRO which is on the cheaper side of the spectrum. Whether you have a CRT or an LCD monitor, or even a laptop, the Huey will work beautifully with it. One of the reasons I chose this product over some of the others is that it actually measures the ambient light in the room giving a much more accurate rendition. This means that it stays hooked up to the computer all the time and must be near the monitor for this feature to work correctly. As you will see in the below picture, the Huey is fairly unobtrusive, and can been seen beside the right speaker.
The Huey PRO comes with software that has to be installed on your computer, but installation is very simple, and there are onscreen guides that tell you what to do. Whether you are calibrating your monitor for the first time, or you are recalibrating at the recommended twice a month, the software guides you through the steps in great detail. After starting the software, it will measure the ambient light of the room to get an accurate reading and will instruct you to place the spider, or colorimeter on the screen as seen below.
The colorimeter is held on with suction cups that secure it to the screen without damaging it. The device is wired, and that wire goes to a standard USB port. The cord is relatively short, but there is an extension included in the package. My USB hub is actually right behind the monitor so that works out very well for me.
After the colorimeter is secured to your screen, the software will start to do its magic. It will flash up colors for a period of time. These colors are specifically chosen because they are true colors. The spider reads how the monitor is displaying them and decides what corrections need to be made to the monitor to make them the same true colors that the software is sending the colorimeter.
There is a status bar to the left of the screen that shows where you are at in the color display. This takes about a minute or less to complete. everything is automatic and there is no need to do anything during this phase. Once this part is complete, you will see a corrected vs uncorrected picture on the screen so that you can see the changes that have been made. You will also be asked about choosing a white balance setting as well as a gamma (mid tone) setting. You are given three options each, and these can be changed at any time through the preferences. This is where it is handy to have a printed picture handy so you can pick the settings that most closely resemble what has been printed.
You will also be given the option for the Huey to constantly monitor ambient light in the room (can be turned off if you don't want to keep the Huey plugged into the computer). There is also an automatic reminder system that you can set anywhere between one and fourteen days before the software notifies you that it is time to recalibrate your monitor. That's right, monitors change as they get older and the way they display color will also change.
By doing just this simple step, your monitor will be much better suited for image editing, image viewing, video watching, gaming, pretty much your whole computer experience will improve with much better color accuracy.
Step #2
The monitor is just part of the equation, you also have to tell your camera and software that you are in charge of the color rendition. It is essential that you are able to capture the colors that you are wanting to reproduce. Check your camera's owner's manual and find out if you can set the color space to Adobe RGB. This setting will only apply to JPEG images as RAW will be converted to Adobe RGB at the time of conversion based on your output options. By selecting Adobe RGB, you are telling the camera to capture a wider gamut (range of colors) which can then be used for better color rendition.
After setting up your camera to capture in the Adobe RGB color space, you need to go in and tell your image editing software that this is the space you want to be working in. For Photoshop users, you will go to Edit>Color>Settings and choose Adobe RGB (1998) as your working color space. You can also set it to convert non Adobe RGB images into a working Adobe RGB image which is recommended. The dialog screen that you will see will look like this. I have found these settings to be very helpful in my color management, and before any changes are made, I am prompted by the computer.
Step #3
This might be the most frustrating part of this whole equation. That is to install your printer's profiles. There is actually enough information here that a book can be written on this topic. Also, each printer will be a bit different so I will not be able to get into too much detail here. However, there are some basics that apply to most printers being sold these days. They come from their respective factories with the profiles built in for that company's print media. So what exactly is a "profile" and why do we need to be concerned with it if the factory already includes it?
Well, a profile is needed because each type of paper (matte, satin, glossy, textured, etc...) will reproduce the colors that the printer lays down a little differently. To make matters worse, the brand of paper makes a difference as well. For instance, with my Canon ImagePROGRAF iPF5000, there are many profiles already installed to account for a wide range of Canon papers. However, I have chosen to use Red River Glossy paper with the printer. The closest profile for this combination was for Canon Photo Paper Plus which gave me a washed out look in the final print. The contrast was off, as were the warmer tones. Red River provides a downloadable printer profile for my printer and after installing that, we were back in business.
All the printer profile does is tells the printer how the color is going to look on a particular sheet of print media. It actually functions just like the monitor profile we set up in Step #1 that tells the monitor how to accurately display the colors as sent from the CPU. Of course, as you change print media, you will need to change your profile options, but this is easy to do through the printer color management settings menu in your print dialog box. If you stick with the proprietory papers, then you will be able to use the included settings.
So there you have it...the crux of color management from capture to print. It sounds like a lot of information to process and it is. However, I am not the most technically savvy person, and I have been able to muddle my way through these steps. There are plenty of online resources for color management, so for some more detailed information a few google searches is all you should need. The main thing that I wished to get across is that from the manufacturer your camera, computer, monitor, and printer are not automatically set up to accurately communicate with one another. If you are tired of your pictures being printed and not looking like they did when you captured the image, it might be time to look into color management for your work flow.
Written by Greg A. Kiser
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Holy cow....I am going to have to read this again. I did learn quite a bit though, for example I didn't know monitors change as they age.
Lisa -
This article just made my head spin! I'm not even close to being ready for this! LOL! Martha :-)
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Greg, I am excited about the Huey Pro and some of the solutions to my problems.
I will print this out so I can use it as I go along. I am technically quite ignorant but slowly I will figure things out with your help.
Thank you.
Myke -
I really think all this is over my head and I do think you are a
technically savvy person. Older minds find this is a tecnically challenged project. Or at least mine does LOL. Thanks for all that info. You did a great job explaining it. Helen
4/6/08 9:37 PM
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