Color Printing and Monitor Calibration

[David Kassan]

I just got a new cpu and monitor, How is the best way to make PS, my printer and my screen all work together?

[Snarfevs]

Your cpu won't make a jot of difference to your calibration. If you currently have photoshop installed (i'm going to assume you're running under windows) goto control panel, select adobe gamma and follow the prompts. Within photoshop, hit shift-ctrl-K and ensure that your working RGB colour space matches your monitor RGB colour space.

As far as your printer goes, it uses a CMYK colourimetric model. To play in CMYK either turn on the CMYK proof option in view->proof setup/proof colours or kick your document into CMYK mode, under image->mode. You can get finer control of CMYK correspondence by playing with the proof settings, or you can directly edit the CMYK colour space by hitting shift-ctrl-K again and changing your CMYK working space to the profile of your choice. Bear in mind that they are fairly generic as far as OTS printers go (as far as I have explored it) as PS is geared towards professional (e.g. offset) printing.

Hope this helps. For more infos, consult your manual.

[Stahr]

I'm also trying to get my monitor colors right.
so i should just for the easiest way run adobe gamma and set photoshop to use that profile as working rgb? i always thought that i should use adobe RGB?

[Snarfevs]

As far as I know, running adobe gamma will assert a new colourimetric profile for your system. If PS is set to working RGB (should have a funny name like sRGB IEC61966-2.1) after that (by default it should be), your adobe colour space should match your monitor calibration. This is what you want, for adobe to be working on the same grounds as your monitor, so that when you save your document it doesn't change colour. Then all that is left is for your monitor to be well calibrated, which can either be achieved with a skillful eye or a calibration probe. A good measure of the quality of a calibration is if you can open the colour picker and scroll through the range of hues and you don't see areas of just one colour, indicating out-of-gamut colours.

[Stahr]

ok, i always thought that sRGB always was for web, i mean i want my images to be ready for print.
i saw another color alternative under working rgb, that was adobe monitor profile, might this be what adobe gamma created?
i'm quite at a loss when it comes to calibrating.
i got the problem before with adobeRGB that i didn't got the same color when i saved it, but I got by that by asigning a new profile for it, converting it to sRGB...
ok, so now when i have calibrated as best i can with adobe gamma, set photoshop to sRGB for workingRGB, am i set?
i work in other programs like artrage, and they don't seem to have profile, do they use the profile I entered on the graphic-options in windows?

somebody should make a tutorial for calibrating...

[Snarfevs]

CMYK is for print: RGB is an additive colour model for self-luminous displays. I have little to no experience with CMYK. I do however know that if you change proof colours to CMYK (this makes no changes to your document) and hit 'gamut warning' (both under 'view') you will be able to easily see which colours will be outside of the default CMYK gamut (they will be greyed out). The default CMYK gamut will do pretty well for most entry level printers. PS is geared towards a lot of fine control for things like offset printing as it is geared towards industrial workflow. If you're *really serious* about printing and CMYK colour matching, look at proper colourimetric calibration probes, as getting perfect CMYK calibration is probably too hard to eyeball, both due to environmental subjectivity (CMYK colours depend on what light is illuminating your paper) and nonlinearity inherent in the CMYK model.

Hope this helps