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advice needed on color management


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hello everybody,

 

i'm shooting mostly dngs and am using apple (24' imac), aperture (2.1.2.) for post processing and a canon pixma for printing. i am facing the known color inconsistencies between the m8, the imac monitor and the printer. i've tried to educate myself about color spaces and available profiling tools, but need further advice -

 

1) which tool do you use for profiling and calibration of your monitor? the manual approach offered by apple obviously is not satisfying. what are pros and cons of the most common tools offered, esp. gretag-macbeth eye-one display, lacie blueeye2, spyder2express, spyder3studio, color munki etc.

 

2) is there any need to align the m8 and the monitor? if so, which product can you recommend?

 

3) what about monitor - printer calibration? right now i am doing this manually via the printer software in trial and error mode. any good tool for simplifying?

 

comments and suggestions appreciated, many thanks in advance,

 

markus

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I use a Colormunki.

The big advantage for me is the that I can use it for the monitor and the printer.

 

Works for me, but then again, I am for from being a perfectionist.

 

Not sure what you mean by "allign M8 and Monitor"? Sure, you can profile your camera, but so far I fail to see the use of that.

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I use X-rite eye1 pro and calibrate my monitor with it, reducing the luminance of the monitor to 80 cd/m2 (otherwise my prints will always be darker than the screen of my i-Mac)

Using the eye1 pro I also make printer profiles for each of the papers I use.

I have not needed to profile my M8 as both Adobe Camera Raw and therefore Lightroom, and Capture One have very decent basic camera profiles.

Adobe Camera Raw (and Lightroom) profiles can be tweaked, using the DNG profile editor from Adobe.

Capture One camera profiles can be tweaked using the profile editor in C1pro.

 

Maurice

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{snipped}

Capture One camera profiles can be tweaked using the profile editor in C1pro.

 

Maurice

 

Just to clarify, since I don't think many people will do this... C1 profiles are actually just standard ICC profiles; any ICC profile editor can change a C1 profile (I've used solutions from Fuji and from Gretag-Macbeth) in addition to C1 Pro. Lightroom and ACR "profiles" need to be changed within Lightroom or ACR.

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Markus,

 

I would recommend the first thing you do for a colour managed workflow is invest in a monitor calibration tool. I use the x-rite display one with very good results.

 

Link here in German X-Rite: Get exactly the color you need, every time, anywhere in the world.

 

Only when you have your monitor calibrated (or profiled to be correct) can you reasonably begin to compare printer output.

 

Some have suggested 80cdm as the setting point for the brightness of the monitor during the calibration but the tip I use is to take an A4 sheet of paper and place on on the monitor during the luminance phase of the calibration and make sure there is not too much of a difference between the brightness of the paper and the monitor it's self. Usually I end up settling on a value between 85-90cdm.

 

Once you have the monitor profiled then you need to work with your printer settings. Some here profile their printers but the hardware and software required can be quite expensive. I have had great results with the various paper profiles I've downloaded from the paper manufacturers websites.

 

In essence when you install your printer on the mac it installs a set of ICC profiles for the printer you are using and the various printer makers paper types. In canons case and your case there is profiles installed for the 9500 and various canon paper types such as matte paper, photo paper plus glossy, photo paper pro if I recall correctly.

 

If you were to use a paper form some one like Ilford, such as the galerie gold fiber silk you need to visit their web site and see what suggestions they recommend you set the printer to and you also need to download the ICC profile for that paper.

 

In this example, with the screen shots, I have set the coloursync profile to the Ilford profile I down loaded and installed.

In the printer settings I have selected the media type to the recommended paper type suggested by ilford.

I have also made sure in the 2nd screen shot that the colour mode in the colour options is greyed out. This means Aperture will manage the colour using the profile we have set in the coloursync option and the printer will not apply another colour management profile on top of it again.

 

You will also see a gamma box under the coloursync profile. You can add some brightness to your print by adjusting this value. I would usually have a setting of 1.05 to 1.10 in here depending on the paper I may be printing on.

 

There is also another function in Aperture called on screen proofing, use this to give a visual on screen impression of what your printed output will look like before you print. It is a very useful tool to make any adjustments to colour or contrast to compensate for the various papers and profiles you may be using. It is under the View menu, on screen proofing. Then use view, proofing profile, and select the ICC profile for the paper you are using.

 

That's a basic crash course in colour managed workflow via Aperture. I'm sorry if it's basic and you knew this already. I have no idea of your understanding of colour management. But I hope it helps

 

Regards

 

Eoin

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For Calibration of Monitor and printer, I use Spyder 3 Studio. It provides both and I find it is very close.

 

After using Capture 1, I do a final tweak in Photoshop and print from there, using the profiles I created with the Spyder 3 Printer Profiler.

 

Based on those profiles, I usually have to add a bit of contrast and saturation with some papers, but once you get that down, it's pretty much right on.

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guys, thank you very much! special thanks to eoin, your explanations are exactly what i was looking for (i confess i'm still pretty much a rookie on color management and far from fully utilizing capabilities of aperture ... :))

 

i just got back from town - my favorite computer store did not have i1 in stock, i got a spyder elite 3, i checked specs, looked pretty good. will calibrate tonight and am looking forward to results.

 

markus

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