I thought this might happen. dip my toes into the area of monitor calibration and print and one of my professional mates was bound to comment!

Humphrey has sent me these words of wisdom, and they are well worth reading. His thoughts on papers and the use of printer profiles are important. Good print services such as those highlighted earlier will allow you to download the ‘profiles’ for the print machines that they use. Humphrey is using professional monitors but before I let him loose, it is the case that those of use of more modest equipment will still benefit.

Anyhow, Humphrey provides some really useful advice.

From Humphrey Weightman

I’ve spent the majority of my working life dealing with the vagaries of colour. Over the past few years I’ve had to increasingly deal with third-party material and effect all manner of colour correction. Here are a few notes which may or may not be useful. They’re offered in a spirit of friendship, and are in no way a critique of your excellent pieces.

Transmitted vs reflective colour

This is at the very heart of the issue. Monitors display colour using transmitted light in an additive mode – if we push through the maximum on all three channels – Red, Green and Blue – we achieve a pure white. When we print, however, we subtract. If we coat the substrate with 100% Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black we achieve total cover. As we decrease the ink coverage we create colour. The Process Black in the CMYK model is simply used to give greater differentiation.

With the exception of transmitted light, all colour results from light-waves reflecting from the surface material. This is why printing onto differing paper stocks results in wildly differing colour variants, even before we consider absorbency or ink transfer.

Hardware calibration

To achieve consistent colour throughout the workflow we need to attach an ICC profile to all our hardware devices. Typically these may include camera, scanner, monitor and output device (domestic printer, plotter, commercial press and so forth).

Software calibration

Additionally we need to ensure that the ICC colour profile is present on all our application software. In my case this is Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. We can also specify the Output Intent when converting material through Adobe Acrobat. For example, the press might reuqire an output intent of ISO Coated v2 as against the default US Web Coated v2.

Colorimeters and spectrophotometers

Both can be used to calibrate monitors. Spectrophotometers are used to calibrate printer output. We all have our favourites. I happen to believe that the Spyder3 Studio does a good job for both monitors and printers, but it does cost around £350. My point is that calibrating your monitor is but the first step.

Monitors

I still use a couple of Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070u CRT monitors, simply because there are very few LCD monitors that offer complete control over all aspects of colour correction. The exception is the NEC SpectraView series. The 20″ model costs around £670 and the 21″ £900. Both of these include a hood for masking ambient light.

The majority of low-end flat-screen monitors have very limited controls, and force the user into a fixed viewing position. To my mind they are unacceptable for professional use. Alas, many of your readers may using these monitors.

Domestic Ink-Jet Printers

The only ones worth buying are those with individual print-heads and cartridges. You’re looking to calibrate the ink-flow on an individual ink basis. So you need discrete physical components.

Working environment

In an ideal world the studio should be painted using a matt 50% grey, lit with artificial light at around 6400K

Third-party output

This is my bread and butter. I am continually preparing graphic material for output to commercial print. A critical component is the choice of stock. I favour a silk finish with a slight blue cast, together with a high air content. A 130gsm stock will feel and present some 20% heavier, and the silk finish will give good colour rendition without excessive absorbency. With the exception of C-type prints a high-gloss finish will cause the ink to shift slightly. A matt or matt-art paper, however, takes up too much ink. Worst of all is using cheap matt paper with a domestic inkjet printer.

A subset of this is third-party output via monitor. I continually remind my customers that we have absolutely no control over the end-users’ monitors, and that all we can try for is to get a consistent tonality. The hue is out of our hands.

Summary

Calibrate all the hardware in your workflow. Attach a common ICC profile to all software components. And remember, it’s the picture that counts!

Thanks Humphrey!