Colour Management - a simple question

[antonv]

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Why does one need to invest in separate hardware for colour calibration?

 

Just think, we all have a digital camera, so we take one photo of screen+colour chart, a photo of the printout + colour chart and then some software can do the necessary profiling - or is this just a dream?

[ptarmigan]

Why does one need to invest in separate hardware for colour calibration?

 

Just think, we all have a digital camera, so we take one photo of screen+colour chart, a photo of the printout + colour chart and then some software can do the necessary profiling - or is this just a dream?

 

From personal experience I don't think there is much that's simple about this subject:D

 

Every piece of hardware; camera, monitor, video card, scanner, printer etc will all have their own colour profile. To manage colour properly you need everything set up in relation to the same base line. There needs to be a single point of reference and I would guess, though I am no expert, you would need a physical 'print' of a colour chart on designated medium which you scan - you need a proper HQ print scanner/profiler to do this.

 

Next comes the printer. Of course there are colour profiles for each paper medium - though generic ones are pretty good, you should print, scan and create your own custom profiles for each type of paper. Then there's setting up your monitor for which you need the appropriate hardware. So in theory you now have your computer and monitor profiled to the right level.

 

Photographing the same 'reference' colour chart used above would allow you to create a colour profile for each camera - maybe even each lens on each camera. I suspect you'd need to do this for every RAW converter as well and you would still find some colour swatches closer than others. Different lighting conditions would likely affect this too.

 

I have seen a number of reports that say that the improvement of 'calibrating' the camera is minimal though as always it would be interesting to see how a camera behaves. Most important though is to get the monitor calibrated.