There are many keys to keeping your colors accurate
I was doing booth duty at an outdoor art festival at the local mall last week (coincidentally across from the Apple store) when a frustrated man strolled over to talk to me. “I don’t get it, I bought the cool iMac and a 5 megapixel camera and one of those photo printers, but my pictures don’t look anything like these! I can never get my prints to match what is on the screen.” To placate him, I told him that I was using much more sophisticated equipment than he had which lessened the burden, but you and I know the real difference is color management (and experience, but don’t get me started!). So, how do you learn the color management secret handshake?
As much as the hardware and software manufacturers in the digital imaging world would like you to think that buying a digital camera and a photo quality printer will make you Ansel Adams, those of us that earn our living as pixel jockeys battle with color management in one way or another every day. Depending on your workflow and the final destination of your images, there are a number of ways to keep your colors accurate.
As always, your workflow, clients and budget will dictate a lot of this. Your level of color skills will also determine how far you need to go down this path. Jurgen, my BMW mechanic, always asks, “How fast can you afford to go?” It’s pretty much the same story here, you can complicate this process as much as you want but remember critical color takes time, whatever your method might be (remember my PhotoShop Anonymous story, Sept. 2001) so make sure your clients have the budget to pay for all your expertise.
Do you work in an open or closed loop system? I run a fine art studio and print only my work. Not having to match PMS spot colors, client’s logos or even flesh tones makes my life pretty easy. I use the same monitors on both of my critical color workstations and use a target image that I have matched to our four printers so that the screens are very close to the printed output. I work in RGB from capture to print, so this is pretty painless. I call this a closed loop system, because I am self-contained for all aspects of my imaging process.
Most of you are in an open loop system. In addition to digital capture, you get scans from a number of places and perhaps you print at a few different service bureaus or print shops, making this a difficult, but not impossible task to manage. Next, you will have to determine what technology makes the most sense for your shop. While I am still an old school color person, I have to admit that color management tools are getting better every day. For those of you that work in a very large facility or have multiple facilities these tools will probably pay for themselves relatively quickly.
Before you start writing checks, make an honest assessment of you and your staff’s color skills. Try to determine your clients needs as well. See how happy they are with your color performance. You may be just fine right where you are. My advice is to perform the inexpensive upgrades first and add the more expensive things as needed. Regardless of which path you choose, here are some tips to keep those colors looking good:
Use the same monitor at critical workstations
All monitors have their own color signature and even two of the exact same monitor will not have exactly the same color, but they will be much closer than mixing different types and brands. The same goes for flat screen LCD monitors. Experts still say that a tube monitor will give you the last degree of color accuracy over a LCD monitor, but right out of the box, the flat panels are pretty impressive. When my last 21-inch Trinitron went to monitor heaven, I purchased a LCD and haven’t been unhappy.
Calibrate on a regular basis
How finicky you and your clients are will determine some of this, but it is good to calibrate at least once a week. People I know in critical prepress environments calibrate every day to make sure that colors stay accurate. If you are not in a position to keep color critical monitors on 24/7, wait until your monitor has been on for at least an hour before calibrating. For those of you using LCD monitors, this is not a problem (shut those off when not in use, otherwise the backlights will fail prematurely).
If you don’t already have one, go out and get a densitometer and learn how to use it. This is the only way to make sure that your color is consistent from day to day. Armed with your reference print, you can always make sure your color percentages (and hence, calibration) are staying spot on.
Consistent Lighting is Key
Your eye is a very sophisticated color device and will compensate for whatever light you are in. Just look at adjoining rooms with different lighting. The room with florescent lights looks green while the room with regular light bulbs looks yellow.
Unfortunately, your digital file does not have this luxury. To accurately view your output and subsequent changes, you need to have lighting that is consistent.
Forget about Tungsten or Halogen lighting, set up an area with color corrected 5500k (degrees Kelvin) florescent tubes. Paint the walls in your viewing area the whitest white you can find (I like Ralph Lauren studio white, myself) or an 18 percent neutral gray, so that your output does not pick up any tone from the walls. You will be amazed at how much easier it is to see subtle color changes after making this change in your workspace. If you have a tube monitor, a hood is not a bad idea either.
Take this all a step further and eliminate any on screen graphics. I know we are all creative types and want a picture of our wife, child, car or the last vacation on the screen to eliminate boredom, but this will make color perception more difficult. Go to 18 percent gray for your screen color and this will make judging color a lot easier.
Profile Combinations
If you have to use more than one output device or service bureau, have your test files output there and keep them in a safe, dark place so you can refer back to them when necessary. If you are printing large format inkjet prints, profile and test every paper and ink combination that you use. Even though we only use about four different papers, we use four different ink combinations as well, so having a reference for each really helps. Again, every device has a different way of rendering color, so it is important to know how your files will print under different circumstances.
Stick With a Good System
One of the secrets to good color is consistency. Keeping everything the same, not only makes it easier to maintain correct color, it makes troubleshooting much easier. If you are implementing a lot of this for the first time, now is better than ever to make your workflow consistent. Whatever technology you decide to pursue, try and get as much training as possible.
Back it up!
Make sure you back up all of these calibrations somewhere and take good notes! I know this sounds trivial, but all of this will probably take more time than you thought, and the last thing you want is a bad crash wiping out all of your research. Keep samples of jobs that were difficult to produce and any notes you may have taken during production. When something similar comes in the door six months later, you can save a lot of setup time.
Color Me Done
I hope this will help you get closer to that world of perfect color that we all crave. A well-planned color strategy will save time and money which should lead to less stress and that’s a good thing for all. If this all sounds like too much work, wait until OS 11! My friends at Apple say it is going to have a “perfect color” button. Can’t wait to check that out. D
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