So I finally decided to stop wasting valuable paper/ink on guessing games and get myself into a color managed workflow. For those that may not fully understand this relatively abstract concept, color management basically means maintaining color accuracy throughout your workflow, from capture (scan, dSlr) through viewing/editing (monitor) and finally to output (in my case that'd be an Epson 3800 with whatever paper I might've selected).
To save the newbies a lot of headache (which I have myself endured as one!) I'll offer this short primer:
Different devices express (or "see") color differently. This is in part related to the mechanical limitations of each device in our digital food chain. Your camera is able to capture an enormous variety of colors, but a large part of these are "lost in translation" as your monitor can display only a small fraction of these. Enter "printing" and you lose even more. Sound like the stock market yet? Your printer, inkset and paper combination, together with print resolution (720dpi, 1440dpi, 2880dpi, etc) will determine how many of the colors you "see" on your monitor actually make it to your final print.
So what happens to the "lost colors" ? Depending on your rendering intent (perceptual, relative colorimetric, saturation, etc) they are "remapped" to the color gamut (range of colors) that your destination device is capable of reproducing. That is to say, that gorgeous light-light-green will have to settle for being just plain light-green on your selected paper because your choice of printer/inks/paper can't go any lighter in that shade.
So how is remapping determined? Who makes those choices? Well.. In no small part, those choices are determined by a set of guidelines contained in a small file known as an icc profile. Most devices have (or should have) their own ICC profile. This profile contains a map of all the colors the device is capable of reproducing. Whether you know it or not, your software/device is always using an ICC profile of somekind. If your prints look like crap, its most often because the ICC profile that's been assigned to your device contains inaccurate data.
In the hopes of improving the quality of our prints and making the most of our investment, and by this I mean both time and money, not just money, it is important that we retake control of this fundamental, if obscure, workflow element. In this post I focus on my own experiences, having bought and tested the two most common (do-it-at-home) devices for creating custom icc profiles.
1. X-Rites ColorMunki :
The ColorMunki (available from CalumetPhoto.com at US$429.00) is a photospectrometer. What this means by definition I don't fully understand myself, but the important thing is, it reads colors. This device can be used to create custom ICC profiles for BOTH your monitor AND your printer, ensuring (or attempting to ensure) that what you see on your screen closely resembles what you see coming out of your printer.
The idea is pretty simple. To profile your monitor you simply hang the tape-measure-like device off the top of your screen, launch the software that comes with it, and follow the on-screen step by step instructions. ColorMunki will create a display profile that corrects your monitor's color balance, brightness/contrast, gamma, etc. It also factors in ambient light.
For printer profiles ColorMunki asks you to print out a page of color swatches and then has you read these back using the device. Based on the results, ColorMunki generates a second page of swatches to fine-tune your profile. That's it. The idea is that now you can simply apply the resulting ICC profile to your print work (in Photoshop or other graphic apps) and voila! Perfect colormatching prints.
While I give them an "A for Effort", ColorMunki falls hopelessly short of my expectations for it's price tag. It's a system that's not unlike rolling the dice; a hit or miss sort of thing. While ColorMunki's profiles offer substantial improvement over OEM (paper manufacturer's) freely-available ICC profiles, they leave room for improvements without a way to actually make these. You take what you get and basically, that's that.
2. Enter Spyder3Studio:
Spyder3Studio is developed by Datacolor, a NJ-based mom-and-pop shop (all things relative) that has been doing this for years and years. Back in the day, the company used to be called Colorvision. Unlike ColorMunki (a first-generation product), Spyders have been around for at least a decade. The current Spyder3Studio is a mature product and this is apparent when working with it.
The core principal is the same as with ColorMunki, but Datacolor's Spyder3Studio uses two separate devices for each half of the job. A screen sensor dedicated to display calibration/profiling (Spyder3Elite), and Spectrocolorimeter (yet another fancy word) that deals exclusively with printer profiling (Spyder3Print).
Unlike ColorMunki's fixed number of patches, Syder3Print offers you a choice. You can go with bare-bones 150 patches, more advanced 225, or my personal favorite, High-Quality 729 patches. Scanning each patch with the Spectro device is a pain. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! The ColorMunki offers the ability to scan each strip of patches continuously simply by sliding the Spectro over each strip. With the Spyder3 spectro you actually have to take a reading of each and every individual patch!
It takes about half an hour to scan 729 patches. It's a pain. Is it worth it? Try comparing my mother's home-cooked meatloaf to a $5 microwave dinner. You bet it's worth it! The difference in the quality of the resulting profile is dramatic! Or at least that's been the case with my own Epson 3800 using Ultrachrome K3 inks and an assortment of papers.
Additionally, with Spyder3Print you get to SEE your profile in action on the sample images provided to you within the Spyder3Print application, and with remarkable accuracy I might add. Think you need a bit more shadow detail? Just hit "back" and adjust the many available sliders to tweak-and-preview your profile until it is entirely to your liking.
NOTE: If you buy Spyder3Studio make sure you are using vs.3.5 (beta) and NOT vs. 3.x. It is available as a free download from Datacolor's website.
My conclusion:
If I'm going to go to the trouble of profiling my printer/paper/inkset, I want to make the most of my investment. While ColorMunki does produce "acceptable" results - You can get "acceptable" for free by downloading an ICC profile from the website of most paper manufacturers that will match your printer/inkset.
I bought Spyder3Studio to improve on "acceptable" and it lives up to it's word. Tricky at first, but you get the hang of it after a while and can happily kiss guesswork goodbye.
Price difference? The Spyder3Studio is about $100 more expensive then ColorMunki but well worth the added bite.
Hope this thread helps folks looking for information on this workflow element. I certainly would've loved to come across something similar in my hours of toiling.
To save the newbies a lot of headache (which I have myself endured as one!) I'll offer this short primer:
Different devices express (or "see") color differently. This is in part related to the mechanical limitations of each device in our digital food chain. Your camera is able to capture an enormous variety of colors, but a large part of these are "lost in translation" as your monitor can display only a small fraction of these. Enter "printing" and you lose even more. Sound like the stock market yet? Your printer, inkset and paper combination, together with print resolution (720dpi, 1440dpi, 2880dpi, etc) will determine how many of the colors you "see" on your monitor actually make it to your final print.
So what happens to the "lost colors" ? Depending on your rendering intent (perceptual, relative colorimetric, saturation, etc) they are "remapped" to the color gamut (range of colors) that your destination device is capable of reproducing. That is to say, that gorgeous light-light-green will have to settle for being just plain light-green on your selected paper because your choice of printer/inks/paper can't go any lighter in that shade.
So how is remapping determined? Who makes those choices? Well.. In no small part, those choices are determined by a set of guidelines contained in a small file known as an icc profile. Most devices have (or should have) their own ICC profile. This profile contains a map of all the colors the device is capable of reproducing. Whether you know it or not, your software/device is always using an ICC profile of somekind. If your prints look like crap, its most often because the ICC profile that's been assigned to your device contains inaccurate data.
In the hopes of improving the quality of our prints and making the most of our investment, and by this I mean both time and money, not just money, it is important that we retake control of this fundamental, if obscure, workflow element. In this post I focus on my own experiences, having bought and tested the two most common (do-it-at-home) devices for creating custom icc profiles.
1. X-Rites ColorMunki :
The ColorMunki (available from CalumetPhoto.com at US$429.00) is a photospectrometer. What this means by definition I don't fully understand myself, but the important thing is, it reads colors. This device can be used to create custom ICC profiles for BOTH your monitor AND your printer, ensuring (or attempting to ensure) that what you see on your screen closely resembles what you see coming out of your printer.
The idea is pretty simple. To profile your monitor you simply hang the tape-measure-like device off the top of your screen, launch the software that comes with it, and follow the on-screen step by step instructions. ColorMunki will create a display profile that corrects your monitor's color balance, brightness/contrast, gamma, etc. It also factors in ambient light.
For printer profiles ColorMunki asks you to print out a page of color swatches and then has you read these back using the device. Based on the results, ColorMunki generates a second page of swatches to fine-tune your profile. That's it. The idea is that now you can simply apply the resulting ICC profile to your print work (in Photoshop or other graphic apps) and voila! Perfect colormatching prints.
While I give them an "A for Effort", ColorMunki falls hopelessly short of my expectations for it's price tag. It's a system that's not unlike rolling the dice; a hit or miss sort of thing. While ColorMunki's profiles offer substantial improvement over OEM (paper manufacturer's) freely-available ICC profiles, they leave room for improvements without a way to actually make these. You take what you get and basically, that's that.
2. Enter Spyder3Studio:
Spyder3Studio is developed by Datacolor, a NJ-based mom-and-pop shop (all things relative) that has been doing this for years and years. Back in the day, the company used to be called Colorvision. Unlike ColorMunki (a first-generation product), Spyders have been around for at least a decade. The current Spyder3Studio is a mature product and this is apparent when working with it.
The core principal is the same as with ColorMunki, but Datacolor's Spyder3Studio uses two separate devices for each half of the job. A screen sensor dedicated to display calibration/profiling (Spyder3Elite), and Spectrocolorimeter (yet another fancy word) that deals exclusively with printer profiling (Spyder3Print).
Unlike ColorMunki's fixed number of patches, Syder3Print offers you a choice. You can go with bare-bones 150 patches, more advanced 225, or my personal favorite, High-Quality 729 patches. Scanning each patch with the Spectro device is a pain. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! The ColorMunki offers the ability to scan each strip of patches continuously simply by sliding the Spectro over each strip. With the Spyder3 spectro you actually have to take a reading of each and every individual patch!
It takes about half an hour to scan 729 patches. It's a pain. Is it worth it? Try comparing my mother's home-cooked meatloaf to a $5 microwave dinner. You bet it's worth it! The difference in the quality of the resulting profile is dramatic! Or at least that's been the case with my own Epson 3800 using Ultrachrome K3 inks and an assortment of papers.
Additionally, with Spyder3Print you get to SEE your profile in action on the sample images provided to you within the Spyder3Print application, and with remarkable accuracy I might add. Think you need a bit more shadow detail? Just hit "back" and adjust the many available sliders to tweak-and-preview your profile until it is entirely to your liking.
NOTE: If you buy Spyder3Studio make sure you are using vs.3.5 (beta) and NOT vs. 3.x. It is available as a free download from Datacolor's website.
My conclusion:
If I'm going to go to the trouble of profiling my printer/paper/inkset, I want to make the most of my investment. While ColorMunki does produce "acceptable" results - You can get "acceptable" for free by downloading an ICC profile from the website of most paper manufacturers that will match your printer/inkset.
I bought Spyder3Studio to improve on "acceptable" and it lives up to it's word. Tricky at first, but you get the hang of it after a while and can happily kiss guesswork goodbye.
Price difference? The Spyder3Studio is about $100 more expensive then ColorMunki but well worth the added bite.
Hope this thread helps folks looking for information on this workflow element. I certainly would've loved to come across something similar in my hours of toiling.
