color management survey

[davidhanson]

dear fellow lister,

here's a survey that i am doing. i'd like to get your opinion about
your color management problems and solutions. please answer the
following questions:

1. do you experience color infidelities between your monitor and
printer? if so, what printer do you use? do you also face the same
problem with color labs? if so, which color lab do you have problems
with?

2. what solution or steps do you follow to ensure color fidelity of
your images from monitor to print? do you use adobe gamma,
calibrating hardware?

3. if you're using a calibrating hardware, what brand and model do you
use? what made you choose this particular brand and model?

thanks for your time in answering.

regards,

david

[peter_ob]

It is almost WYSWYG for me. I use Adobe RGB 1998/Adobe ACE for Pro outputs saved as TIFF/CMYK, sRGB for photo lab and my Epson printer outputs.

Calibrate your monitor well ( although today LCD monitors are great, I still use CRT. I still find having the edge when it comes faithful colors). Make sure it is fired-up at least 30 minutes before calibrating it in thesame lighting environment as when you work.

I use Adobe Gamma & ColorSync. Not unless you have a close working relationship with your printing service providers I found calibrating hardware impractical (i.e. cost over real advantage)

[UberGeek]

colorsync all the way, been having color cast problems with printing to hp, epson is perfect!

[Edited on 5-6-2004 by UberGeek]

[super_ed]

forgive my ignorance but how do i calibrate my screen, i did some adjustment before but i dunno if i did it the right way...

[peter_ob]

Go to System/Displays/Color. Click on calibrate and follow step by step instructions.

[super_ed]

o thankies, i did that already.. do i need to calibrate my screen from time to time? like how frequent?

[peter_ob]

Yes you have to calibrate it from time to time since monitors fade over time. Frequency would depend on your usage. I calibrate mine every 6 months or so.

[Henjie]

Originally posted by davidhanson
1. do you experience color infidelities between your monitor and
printer? if so, what printer do you use? do you also face the same
problem with color labs? if so, which color lab do you have problems
with?

Yup, minor color infidelities between my monitor and my el-cheapo printer. I use it mostly for text though so no worries there. I'm still using an old HP Deskjet 840C. Will most probably spring for a 6-color Canon printer one of these days.

For color labs, I mostly use Oriental Photographix's services (Escolta branch). No problem there 'coz my monitor is now calibrated to match their Noritsu minilab's output (with no color adjustments applied). I used to have problems with the Fuji Frontier minilab in Megamall (their gamma is set way too high). I had better results with the Fuji Frontier minilab in Glorietta (Gift Gate).

2. what solution or steps do you follow to ensure color fidelity of
your images from monitor to print? do you use adobe gamma,
calibrating hardware?

Purely software for me. I used to rely on OS X's built-in calibrating software. I'm now using SuperCal. Not much difference vs. OS X's built-in software but I like it better (probably because I sometimes have too much time to mess around with the settings, hehe).

To ensure that the images I'm seeing in my monitor matches Oriental Photographix's final output, I had them print some of my images without any color adjustments whatsoever. Took the final prints home, then calibrated my monitor to match the prints. Dunno if this is the correct way of doing it but I'm pretty happy with the results. :-)


~Henjie

[davidhanson]

Originally posted by UberGeek
colorsync all the way, been having color cast problems with printing to hp

do you mean you still have color cast problems after using colorsync? or colorsync helps you solve your color cast problems?

david

[UberGeek]

Originally posted by davidhanson

Originally posted by UberGeek
colorsync all the way, been having color cast problems with printing to hp

do you mean you still have color cast problems after using colorsync? or colorsync helps you solve your color cast problems?

david

i believe its a problem with hp (take your pick: the ink, drivers, the printer itself), since i print mostly to epson with out problems... the color cast comes out when moving the file to another machine (also calibrated) and print to an hp inkjet.