Pro tricks for mastering colour
18 The Professional Photoshop Book
PROFESSIONAL APPROACHES TO CALIBRATION
“Like most studios,” says Fred Muram, managing director of the Paradigm Color Studio (www.paradigmcolorstudio.
comthe moment we receive files. The goal is to make sure we ), “we have a host of issues we have to identify from
are able to translate colour properly to the standard the images will to be reproduced. Once we have submission
standards from the printing company, or media distributor, we go through all of the assets and make certain
everything we are delivering meets the standard. Every once in a while we have to figure out a complex project,
usually dealing with additional spot colours that need to get separated in a particular way and we have to figure out
a creative work-around.”“Most people think about colour theory with regards to
colour matching and graphic design,” notes Muram, “but there is a very scientific approach to colour theory when
discussing colour management. There is a great book by Jan-Peter Homann called Digital Color Management that
does a great job about the principles of digital colour and how to understand gamut for different standards (be
prepared for lots of equations and graphs).”Paradigm Color Studio’s “approach to colour on digital devices is to view the content on as many different
popular devices as we can and find a good balance,” says Muram. “We will sometimes create printed proofs for online work, but only so we can make notes about what needs to be revised. Jobs going to press we
absolutely create a printed contract proof to the print standard and media the job is being reproduced.”When it comes to calibration, Muram takes both hardware
and software seriously. “On the hardware side,” he says, “we use X-Rite i1 devices for calibrating monitors, printers,
and for creating profiles for our proofing devices to meet various printing standards. The quality of equipment is also
very important. Prepress grade monitors like EIZO and NEC make a huge difference. We have used Apple Cinema
Displays as well, but I have always felt they have a bit too much contrast. For output, I really love our Epson 9900 and
7900 models. They calibrate fantastically and hold colour quite well. On the software side we have quite a lot of tools
for managing colour. Our setup includes monitor calibrations, Photoshop colour setting, InDesign and PDF
creation colour management, and then our RIP software. We have two kinds of RIPs, which allow us to produce
extremely accurate colour on our proofing devices for contract proofing.”BEAR THE LIGHT SOURCE IN MIND
The new Cintiq 27QHD comes with Wacom® Colour
Manager, which is a customised version of the X-Rite
i1DisplayPro. According to Wacom you’ll be able “to
achieve a more precise adjustment of gray scale
gamma, white point, and other primary settings.” The
profiler software has two modes, basic and advanced.
With the former you knew little understanding of
colour science or calibration, with the latter you have
“infinite control over white point, luminance, contrast
ratio, gamma and more.”
And those extremes are appropriate, given that
colour is incredibly complicated to manage perfectly
across the myriad of devices we all use and the variety
of inks and papers an image could be printed on, but in
the end it is quite simple, and about achieving the colourthat you want. X-Rite’s Simon Prais says “We love to
blame a computer and technology and to get concerned
about complex settings whilst overlooking the obvious. If
the objective is to match the printer to the screen,
remember that just because the print is a tangible
object, the colours can still vary considerably depending
on the viewing conditions. Taken to an extreme, switch
the room lights off and you have a black sheet of paper,
switch on the lights and there is potentially a colourful
image. But the colour balance and intensity on the
image is totally dependent on the type of light under
which you are viewing the print. Room lighting will
change throughout the day and will be affected by
reflections, how you see a print will also vary depending
on how close the image is to the light source.”© Bracket Studios/Paradigm Color Studio© WACOM© Jennifer Marx Photography / Paradigm Color Studio© Saverio Truglia /Paradigm Color Studio© Paradigm Color Studio016-027 Colour Feature.indd 18 06/10/2015 16: