Monitor Calibration

[lesmcdonald]

Thanks for the reply.......I'm just hoping that someone out there will be able to help. I don't mind paying someone to come set me up.

[ronocnikral]

you may want to fire off a print to a commercial printer to see how that comes back...perhaps even that color palette thing (the name escapes me at the moment!).

[andyz]

X-Rite periodically has webinars for free on this. Check their site.

My experience and reading tells me that often major issues are having lights that are directly illuminating the monitor which may add a color cast and keeping the monitor bright because we like it that way. But the monitor is lit from behind, the print is not. A bright monitor is easier on the eye for much of our computer use, but not great when working on a print.

[res0pi6d]

Les, it seems you have all the right stuff. There are many good books and web articles to get you started and see you through. The first place to start is at the beginning, of course: calibrate your monitor and keep it in calibration. Control your workspace - lighting on the monitor, proper warm-up if applicable, general brightness. Define your color workspace. RGB? sRGB? Pro Photo? Then do your color corrections on your image.

As to output, you must know precisely your printer, the inkset (if not the manufacturer's inkset, that changes things too), the paper. Do you have the printer profile(s) for the paper you are using? Can't get there if you don't have a map, and color management is a map.

In Photoshop choose view, proof setup, custom, then select the printer profile for the paper you want to use. Here is where you make a soft proof, adjusting your image so that it approximates the printer translating it to paper. Remember, you are going from a bright, backlit RGB image to a front lit, duller CMYK translation of that. You'll never get it all, but you'll come close.

Those steps are what you'll do. A good resource will get you there. It also helps to standardize on a paper, keep your software up to date, and keep your standards high, but not impossible. Good luck!

[LaurentiuTodie]

Miller is in the printing business to make money. I don't blame them, that's what business is usually for.
They give relatively good color management advice to people who don't know how to manage color. The problem is that they're selling their own ideal color short, by demanding sRGB (color for dummies). Their printers are most likely capable of reproducing wider gamuts or at least different ones.

I am not a calibration guru and I have never met someone who can give me usable advice in my complicated system situation. I hope for Apple to come up with a better OS for my needs, but they seem shy of being sued by a large number of creeps who are in business to protect their blindfolding devices.

Good luck!

My advice is to calibrate your monitor as close as you can to Adobe RGB and to soft proof your workflow to the printer's profile (case by case).

Miller's printers are not even close to the best there is but not many are and nobody seems to care.