Photoshop SIG |
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Unless you are amazingly lucky, what you see onscreen rarely matches what comes our of your printer. Depending on how much time and money you wish to devote to learning color management, you can get anything from good to great results.
You can get good results without spending any money.
I spent the money and bought a color management system I am very happy with. Thanks ColorVision!
I am writing this for those of you who are not ready to take the plunge and want to get started color managing your art without spending a dime.
These are all my opinions based on my experience and reading. The big difference between this and what I do is that I use a hardware and software system to create my profiles.
This is a set of basic instruction, I will not go into theory, explanations or alternative choices here.
I AM interested in other people's methods and opinions and I welcome feedback and corrections.
Most of us use three input/output devices when we do digital art:
These devices all send data to or get data from Photoshop.
The fist thing you need to do is tell Photoshop that you want to use color management.
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From Photoshop's EDIT menu
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What you are doing here is setting a standard color space (Adobe RGB (1998)) and telling Photoshop that if you open and image that is not in this color space, to convert it. By checking off Ask When Opening, Photoshop will inform you that the image you just opened it not in it's default color space and to give your go-ahead before converting it. Unless you are using a scanner or camera profile, let it do the conversion. The image will be saved in the default color space and you will not be asked this question again for this image.
Some cameras have their own built-in profile you can retain this profile or convert it to Adobe RGB (1998).
When printing ALWAYS use Print With Preview with the following settings:
Adobe Gamma is a free monitor calibration and profiling tool that comes with Photoshop and Elements. There are others available on the web, both free ones and commercial ones. I have never used any of the others. I found Adobe Gamma helped a lot.
You may need to dig out the manual that came with your computer. You need to know how to set brightness, contrast and color temperature. Set your monitor to 6500.
To calibrate and profile your monitor, go to your Windows Control and run Adobe Gamma.
Use the step by step wizard to walk you through the process. When you get to the point where is displays a box with a square within a square, make sure you check the box that allows you to set the red green and blue colors separately.
At the end of the wizard you will be asked to name the profile and set it as the default. I call mine Monitor because I only use one monitor profile. You must set it as the default so it will load when WIndows starts.
Make sure Adobe Gamma loads at startup. Each time your computer is rebooted, Adobe Gamma will run and load the profile you created into memory on your video card. It then exists and does not continue to use memory or other WIndows resources.
LCDs generally are not as good at showing color and not as adjustable as CRTs. However, they are much more stable. You should recalibrate and profile an LCD screen once or twice a year. CRTs are very variable and should be re-profiled at least every 3 months, preferable once a month.
Ideally you would have a profile for every combination of paper and ink that you use. Since most of us use only one set of inks, this narrows things down. The good news is that printers, inks and papers are very stable and once you find a profile that works for you keep using it until something changes and you need to find a new profile.
Epson provides generic profiles for it's printers. They are generally somewhere on your installation CD and can also be downloaded from their website.
Some altruistic artists post free profiles they have created on the web. I have heard good things about these, but I did not get good results from the ones I tried.
If you use non-Epson papers or inks, many of the third-party vendors will provide you will profiles for your printer using their ink or paper.
Do not pay a service to make profiles for you. Each time there is a new printer driver, you change paper or ink, or the paper or ink is reformulated you will need a new profile. This gets expensive fast.
You will need to copy the printer driver into the directory appropriate for your computer. This caries from one operating system to another and sometimes from one machine to another. Search your hard drive for files with and ICM file extension and put the profiles there. You will have to exit and re-launch Photoshop for the profile to appear on the drop down list.
The driver specified in the Printer With Preview dialog box, shown in the Photoshop section above, will allow Photoshop to do the color management for the printer.
Turn off all color management in the printer driver. This options appears in different places in different drivers. Here is the driver control panel for the Epson 2200 as of April 2004. It was moved in this version of the driver, and may be moved again in a future version of the driver. |
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You can use a profile for a scanner, but you don't have to. Once you bring the image into Photoshop with the color setting described above, Photoshop will assign the image it's default profile and you can work from there.
Profiles are available for many scanners, they are generally available on the installation CD and from the web site. The profile is enabled in the TWAIN driver for the scanner and it will be different for each TWAIN driver.
If you are not using a profile turn off any color "correction" built into the TWAIN driver. You want the raw data from the scanner. Everything I have read tells me that all automatic sharpening and color correction in the scanner driver should be disabled. Ashod has been running tests and prefers doing some sharpening in the scanner and some in Photoshop. You will have to try it and decide for yourself.
If you use a profile for your scanner you can retain that profile in Photoshop or allow Photoshop to convert it to it's default color space, Adobe RGB (1998). If you will be giving the file to anyone else. I suggest converting it to Adobe RGB (1998), it makes like easier for the other person.
© Text Copyright Laura Balsam 2004
Screenshots from Photoshop are copyrighted by Adobe