Calibrating monitors for digital printing

DadaKopf

Hello.

I want to colour match my monitor to digital print output. Wanna get my scans printed digitally on photographic paper. SO I have to get the brightness and gamma sorted. I'm currently running a ColourMatchRGB ICC profile but it still doesn't seem calibrated. I guess I need to fix the gamma.

Can anyone help me out?

RicardoSmith

To be honest even with the right gear you have to keep calibrating your monitor for the ambient changing in the room, morning, day evening and night time. Some Sony and La Cie monitors come with a calibration gizmo to help you do it. Not sure if you can get one without a monitor as they seem to part of a complete system.

You'd also need to keep the ambient light controlled. Some places do this by working in the dark which I thought was a bit stupid, or by just using artifical light and making sure any extermal light sources like windows and doors were light proof.

Any place I've worked that needed to do this consistantly just printed up a load of reference sheets of colours, pantone or whatever, with the colour and ID number on each so they had a guide of how the colours would print.

I have a feeling you are doing photographic kinda stuff, and this is harder to judge. But again I'd probably just print out a load of reference material and reference it onscreen against the printed version before printing and then adjusting the onscreen as appropriate.

DadaKopf

I'm trying to adjust my monitor so that I can get a pretty good representation of what my photos will look like when printed digitally onto photographic paper using the Fuji method.

I got this done only once before and was disappointed with the results.

I found a small program that lets me adjust the gamma, brightness, temperature and colour settings. I also found a page that explains how to configure your monitor.

I'm just not sure I'm doing it right so any advice would be great.

havok*

(this from print design experience, but it applys to all prints anyways )

I'm sorry to tell you this, but your asking for the impossible. If you print a file on 3 different printers it'll come out different on all three. Ink levels, tempature of the room ect, is enuff to change the colours of a finished print. This is not by any small margin either. Tbh u really dont know what your gonna get untill you test print. You can adjust computer file from there - needs more cyan or whatever.

If you need a colour bang on (e.g if you wanted the exact red coke use) use pantone values.

DadaKopf

Here's what I'm doing:

Scanning in 6x4 prints for enlargement. Adjusting them to taste then printing them. Beats working in a darkroom, which I know nothing about anyway.

If I use the same lab (Fuji on Abbey St.), would this work: get the prints home then adjust my monitor settings to fit the printout thereby calibrating it to that particular machine. Then I save that as, like, the Fuji Abbey St. colour profile?

Would that work?

RicardoSmith

Well it would get you in the same approx range as the printed output but never the exactly the same. As havok says it varies too much day to day. Even with sending the same batch to bureau a few times you'll find the output from them varies quite a bit. You just haven't noticed it yet. Even with normal photo development the exposures can vary a lot.

Put it this if it was that easy even the pro's would send it in to the high street labs' or print at home on their own printers. And they don't. The reason being is that its not consistant enough.

Again as Havock says, you have to do a proof each time and just judge based on that. But it doesn't really have to be perfect, as 99% of people won't notice anyway. After a bit of experience you'll need less proofs as you'll get a feel for the process. But theres always a bit of trial and error involved.