colour calibration

8/13/2019 Colour Calibration

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Colour Calibration

Its important that in industry you should make sure that your screen is calibrated to

industry default colours. This involves using a colour calibrator. You can get many

different kinds from just calibrating screens to calibrating printers to certain paper

types. For my equipment I used the X-Rite Eye One Display 2.

This particular device fits over monitors

and laptop screens only. The dedicated

software cycles through different shades

of colours to work out what it needs to

change depending on the settings you use

on the screen. For this particular device

you need to tell the software a couple of

settings. For example you need to setup

the luminance of the screen, whichdetermines the brightness of the screen

depending on the light conditions you are

working in. The recommended conditions

are in the dark where there is least

amount of glare and interfering light. For

my screen I used a luminance of 80, which

is the equivalent to using my screen in

standard daylight. You then need to setup

the white point and the colour gamma

depending on your screen. Because thecolours on my screen are bright I use a gamma of 1.4. I then set my white point to

D65, as it is the default setting for an sRGB colour space. Its also the most common

colour temperature in the mass market of monitors. Its also important to leave your

screen on 30 minutes before you calibrate so that the screen is up to operating

temperatures. You should also calibrate in the conditions you plan to work in. Once


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you have set up the pre calibration steps, the software will take a few minutes to

alter the colours of your screen. When its done you can save the profile as an .ICC

file. Depending on the screen you should re-calibrate every week or every time you

alter any screen setting or working conditions.

Printer Profiling

As well as making screen calibrations you can also make printer profiles. These

devices can calibrate both the printer and the screen in a more sophisticated way

using one device. The benefits of products like the X-Rite i1 Pro are that they are

three times more accurate than a standard screen calibrator. The main reason being

is that you print out colour charts onto the paper that you wish to print on. Once you

have done this you put the chart into a grid and run the device in lines down the grid

until you get to the bottom. The good thing about this is that the profile you make

from this device will be applied to both the printer and your computer so that you

can guarantee a good colour match from the screen to the printer. The device can

record both CYMK and RGB profiles. However for printers its worth calibrating to aCMYK profile, as they are the colours of the ink that they use. You also need to make

sure that you pick the right colour test chart for you as you can print out many

different types of charts with a varying amount of patches. The more colour patches

you have, the more accurate the profile will be to the printer and the screen.


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Putting the profile into Photoshop:

When printing onto different kinds of paper its important to check that the colours

are going to match up on the screen to the print. Applying the .ICC profiles to

Photoshop is actually fairly easy.

You firstly need to go to View > Proof Setup > Custom, here a dialog box will appear.

You need to make sure its set to custom andthat you either have a Perceptual or a

Relative Colorimetric rendering option. Perceptual will hold the shadow detail but


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may cause a slight tonal shift, where as Relative Colorimetric will hold the tone of

the image but may loose shadow detail.

Once you are happy with your print profile you need to save it so that you can use it

next time. To do this go to Edit > Convert to Profile. You need to use the same

settings that you used to preview. When you save the profile also remember to

rename it so you dont save over the master file.

colour calibration

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