About every
customer that sends one of their digital photos for photo
enlargement likes to work with, or enhance their photos. I
don't blame them. It's always fun to make digital
enhancements and color adjustments to alter the original
image. The only problem is that although you would think
everyone would realize the enhancements they are seeing on
their monitor may only apply to their particular monitor,
and they don't.
This is the way I like to describe the situation. Have you
ever walked into an electronics store that displays a wall
of TVs all on the same channel? They are all receiving
precisely the same color embedded signal, but what a
difference there is on the screens. This same principal
applies to monitors and digital color. It's called
additive color and the way the color gamut is interpreted
depends on how the color generating elements are
calibrated.
All digital systems use "color profiles" as a
type of standard to generate and display color. Digital
image files are usually embedded with a standardized
profile to help keep the color consistent during display
and printing. This is where color management comes in to
play.
The first and most basic step in achieving correct digital
color is having some sort or calibration and profiling in
use with your monitor. The first part of this process is
to take a look at the type and direction of ambient light
you are using around the monitor. You should not have any
direct light shining on the monitor screen, and using
fluorescent lighting will alter displayed colors. Other
types of light directly on the screen, especially bright
light, will alter the brightness, contrast and color
temperature levels of the display.
Next you want to establish at least a basic color profile
for the monitor. This will help the colors displayed to be
closer to the actual file embedded color. If you are using
an image editing program such as Photoshop, you should try
to calibrate the monitor first using Adobe Gamma, or
whatever system your image editor may provide. Doing this
will help to attain correct color, brightness, contrast
and color temperature levels.
The monitor profile you set in the operating system should
be based on the type of digital image you are working
with. As an example we will say you want to set the
profile for editing and enhancing digital photos.
Virtually all digital cameras use the sRGB color profile
as the default color space when capturing photos. You
should set your monitor to this color space in the
operating system. For Windows systems this can be done as
follows:
For Windows: exact procedure may be
different on various OS and monitors, but the steps will
be similar.
Open -
My Computer > control panel > display > settings
> advanced > color management.
Click Add > select sRGB Color Space Profile.icm >
Add
Select sRGB Color Space Profile > Set as Default
Click Apply > OK > OK
Your monitor should now display the sRGB color space.
If you are using Photoshop for image editing, the next
step would be to set up the color management in Photoshop.
Different versions of the software may be a slightly
different procedure, but similar. Some versions of
Photoshop do not support color management.
Open Photoshop program: click Edit > Color
Settings
and setup color settings as shown - click OK.
The sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is an enhanced sRGB profile, which
will give your digital photos just a little more vibrant
color. Photoshop will interpret the color profile set for
your monitor, read the embedded profile in the digital
photo and convert to the enhanced sRGB profile, and
display the photo correctly. When you make enhancements to
the photo, what you see on the screen will be much closer
to how the photo will be printed on a system that is
completely color managed, such as the system we use for
printing photo enlargements.
The best method for calibrating and profiling monitors is
to use software and hardware systems that are dedicated to
this purpose. While not extremely expensive, the cost can
be somewhat substantial, depending on how deep your
pockets can go. This is by far the best way to achieve
correct digital color when coupled with a good color
management system. |
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