COLOR management

4 easy steps to consistent colors

capture - editing - print

An e-book by
photographer Klaus Bjarner

Web:
www.klausbjarner.com
Mail:
kb@klausbjarner.com
Skype:
klausbjarner
©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo
Why do we need to worry about color management?
Color management is the
process of ensuring, that
colors are consistent through
the entire workflow, from
capture to editing to final print
or display.
Having an ICC profile for every
device, the operating system
knows the faults of each device
and can compensate for those and
ensure consistent colors from start
to finish. If you hand off you work in
the middle of the process (for off-
site printing), color management is
even more important, and the only
way to avoid costly mistakes and
reprints.
Every device displays colors differently. Printer,
scanner and monitor each have their own
interpretation (or margin of error). Even two
monitors of the exact same model and age will
have slight differences, that may not be
important to the average office user, but have a
huge impact on the work of a photographer or
creative professional.
In color management each devices characteristic
of displaying colors are mapped to an ICC
profile, which is the devices color fingerprint.
When the operating system of the computer has
the ICC profile of a device it knows exactly
where it has its faults, and can compensate for
those, so the displayed colors are exactly as
they should be. 100% correct and free of errors.
©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo
 1. Calibrating your monitor
Years ago it was easier to calculate
the speed needed for a space
shuttle to escape the gravity of
earth, than to figure out and perform
color management. But thanks to
companies like for instance
Datacolor and their Spyder2 range
of monitor calibrators, profiling your
computer monitor is today as easy
as 1 - 2 - 3 and is the cheapest and
best investment you have made for
years. A calibrator costs today the
same as a couple of flash cards for
your camera, but will save you
hours and hours of agony and pain
trying to get the colors right on a
non calibrated system.
So how does it work? Calibrators
from Datacolor comes in three
flavors. Which one is right for you
depends upon the level of
sophistication of you setup. All three
calibrators delivers the same 100%
correct calibration, but where you on
the entry level Express version have
fixed settings, you are all free to
play around with individual settings
in the PRO version, which is top of
the range, and handles projector
calibration and dual-screen setup as
well.
If this is your first time reading about
monitor calibration, the Spyder2
Express is the right choice for you.
All settings are fixed for optimum
calibration. All you have to do is
install the software, that supports
both Mac and Windows. Attach the
Spyder2 to you computer and
answer a few questions about the
type of monitor you are using, and
off you go. The rest of the
calibration process is fully
automated, and after 10 minutes
you have a calibrated monitor. The
software even shows you a before
and after view, so you can see the
effect of the calibration. All first
timers finds the calibrated monitor to
yellow or warm, but that is because
they have been used to looking at
wrong settings for to long. Almost
every monitor I have seen, have
been set too cool from the factory,
with to much
blue tone.
As show on
the box shot
here on the
right, the
S p y d e r
calibrator
hangs on the
screen during the calibration and
electronically measures the colors
the calibration software displays.
That way we have an electronics
measuring of the displayed colors
set up against the color values the
software sends. That enables the
software to make a color profile of
the display. A profile that tells the
operating system how this monitor
displays colors, and what faults it
have, so the operating system can
compensate for those. That profile
is called an ICC profile, and is
industry standard for color
management profiling. Calibration is
done on a regularly basis (every 2-4
weeks) because a monitor changes
over time.
©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo
 2. Calibrating your printer
If you read the first part about
profiling you monitor, I am quite
sure, that you will agree, that it was
fairly easy, even if you did not fully
understand the concept behind.
That is exactly the thing that is so
nice about the calibration products
from Datacolor. They make color
management easy for every day
users, without you having to take a
ph.d. in color management first.
The process of calibrating your
printer is just as easy, even-though
it involves significantly more labor
work from you. This is because your
printer changes color tint based on
the paper you print on. That is why
your printer manufacturer in the
supplied printer driver have included
different papers you have to chose,
to indicate on which type of paper
you print. Simplified you have an
ICC profile for each paper type. But
as a photographer we like to use a
wide varsity of papers to find just
the right expression in the print to
suite the image. Having for instance
bought an Epson printer, Epson only
provides profiles for their own
Epson paper in the driver. This is
good for the Epson share holders,
but bad for you as a consumer and
creative professional.
With the PrintFIX PRO calibrator
Datacolor unleashes your creative
energy and right to chose what ever
paper you like. With the software
you print a sheet with patches
ranging from 256 to 729 depending
on your degree of accuracy in the
profile. With the PrintFIX PRO you
measure each printed color sample,
which together combines to an ICC
profile of that particularly paper,
printed with your chosen ink and on
your chosen printer.
That opens Pandora
s box to a wide
range of 3rd party ink and papers.
Boosting your creativity and
probably lovering your cost. It also
makes great sense to profile your
printer even though you uses the
original ink and paper, since a
custom made profile is actually
more precise than the one supplied
with your printer.
If you would like to be able to profile
your printer as well as your monitor I
suggest you take a look at the
PrintFIX PRO Suite, that combines
the best monitor calibrator
Spyder2PRO with the calibrator for
print PrintFIX PRO into one
combined package. As a customer
you save a great deal of money
buying the bundle instead of buying
them separately.
Datacolor was awarded the EISA
Award 2006 for “Best Color
management system” for the
PrintFIX PRO Suite package.
©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo
 3. Calibrating other input devices
Just like you have calibrated your
monitor and printer, you also need
to calibrate other input or output
devices used in your workflow.
Calibrating the monitor and printer
does it for most people, but if you
use a high-end projector or plasma
screen for you display, those need
to be calibrated as well. Luckily with
the Spyder2PRO you can also
calibrate a front light projector and
plasma screen. If you use a TV for
presentation you need the
SpyderTV calibrator instead, that is
specifically designed for TV
calibration, since a TV doesn
t have
an operating system like Windows
or Mac OS X, and as a result can
t
use ICC profiling
I hope you have a better product and the profiling
understanding about what color process. You are never left
management covers, and that it has alone, which is always a good thing
been demystified. When broken to know. The telephone number is
down to basic color management is +800 700 800 70 (Europe).
as you see quite simple. It is just a
matter of making a characteristic of But having profiled your devices
how the device displays colors and doesn
t do it all the way, if your final
the build in faults. When we know destination is print. Read on to find
the faults in the device, we can out how to use the print profiles you
compensate for those, and that way have just made.
achieve real accurate colors.
Doing color correction on a system
that is not color calibrated is like
driving a car looking through the
rear view mirror all the time. Making
adjustments you could be changing
wrong to worse, without even
knowing.
Color management is about
accuracy and respect for you time
and your work. As a side note I can
mention, that Datacolor have a free
call european (one in the states as
well) hotline, with qualified people to
help you with your Datacolor
©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo
 4. Printing using a profile
To be able to use your new printer
and paper specific profiles, you
need to use a program, that
understands profiles. Programs like
Word and Excel don
t have a clue
about what color management is,
and why should they? They are for
printing a letter and calculating a
mortgage, not for color critical tasks.
You need to use programs for
graphical use like Quark, Adobe
Photoshop and Adobe InDesign.
They all have build in color
management systems to take full
advantage of your new ICC profiles
for both display and print.
How to get the program to use the
profiles differs from program to
program, but to make an example
let
s take Adobe Photoshop, that all
photographers use.
In Photoshop CS2 just using the
print command didn
t instruct
Photoshop to use or take any
profiles into consideration, what
confused a lot of users. Instead you
had to use the “Print with preview”
command to be able to enable color
management and select a paper
profile.
With the just released Adobe
Photoshop CS3 thing have gotten a
lot easier. Luckily the programmers
at Adobe have combined the “print”
and “print with preview” modes, so
you just have one print dialog box.
Making it a whole lot easier for all of
us. In the right side of the dialog box
all the settings for color
management are grouped together.
But to take full control of your print
in Photoshop, I am afraid you have
to learn one more thing.
Having calibrated your monitor and
printer isn
t enough to ensure same
colors on print as on screen,
because the colors on the screen
are made of light, where the colors
on the paper are made from
reflected light, where the color of the
paper also influences on the color.
To take this into account Photoshop
have a clever solution in the “View”
menu, where you can enable “Proof
colors”, which simulates the paper
color and characteristic. To use this
setting you first have to setup “Proof
setup” in the “View” menu, where
you specify which paper profile
Photoshop has to use for the
proofing.
I know it is a lot to swallow at one
time, but having read this e-book
you already know more about color
management than most people.
©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo
 About the author

Klaus Bjarner is an Aarhus based

photographer in Denmark with a
broad range of experience in
photography and color management
implementation.

In combination with doing

photographic commercial work,
Klaus Bjarner is also an experienced
instructor in photography, color
management, workflow optimization
and Photoshop training.

Besides working as a photographer, Photographer Klaus Bjarner

Klaus Bjarner is associated with
Datacolor as Scandinavian Country
Manager in the Colorvision business
unit. Datacolor is the company
behind the world renowned Spyder2
and PrintFIX PRO line of color
calibration equipment.
Datacolor have not been involved in
the making of this e-book.
e-mail:
kb@klausbjarner.com
website:
www.klausbjarner.com
skype:
klausbjarner
Websites of interest
Colorvision - www.colorvision.ch
Adobe - www.adobe.com
dp Review - www.dpreview.com
Registered Trademarks
Brand names mentioned in this
e-book are protected by their
respective trademarks and are
acknowledged by the author.
Copying and quoting from this
e-book is legal, as long as the
source is clearly identified.

©2007 Klaus Bjarner Photo