Which Color Synchronisation on CD's ??

[montespluga]

hallo everbody

This question is not purely photographical, but it will became more important fo r photographers, also: It has become popular to photographers, to bring CD's in stead of prints or slides to the customer. There are some adventages about it, but there is one big disadvantage as well: How do you synchronize your screen to see the right color and contrast: I know, there are different possibilities, CMM. Color sync, etc. Any experienced lister s ?? Thanks

[William Leviit]

You're talking about setting up your scanner, monitor and printer so that the colors appear the same at all stages of your work. You need to use a color software like CMM (Heidelberg) or ColorSync to create a profile for your monitor and scanner. This works fine as long as the images are viewed in your environment. The problem is, evey computer monitor is calibrated differently. Even if you imbedded a ICC proflie in your images, that won't insure the same results every time. Another factor is the gamma used. The standard Mac monitor gamma is 2.2 whereas the standard PC monitor is 1.8. This means that the brightness of the images will also appear different, for example, an image that looks good on a Mac standard monitor will appear darker on a PC. Unfortunatly, finding the perfect solution is going to be just about impossible.

Bill

[Christopher Campbell]

There is a lot to know about this subject, but it's not so hard to get started anymore. Try doing some reading on the Apple web site and you can learn a great deal:

http://www.apple.com/creative/digitalimaging/

Barry Haynes wrote a series of articles for "Communication Arts" magazine last year, and they are available in PDF format from his web site (Go to the "Latest Tips" area):

http://www.maxart.com/

As for a relatively inexpensive solution to color management, especially for profiling your monitor and flatbed scanner, I've used Monaco EZColor very successfully, available from:

http://www.monacosys.com/

To avoid spending thousands of dollars on spectrophotometers and professional profiling software, you can also buy superb printer profiles from:

http://www.inkjetmall.com/store/techsupport/index.html

The color management articles at inkjetmall are also very well done, and the profiles for a specific Epson printer/ink/paper are only $50. With a calibrated monitor, a basic understanding of digital color, and a profiled Epson printer, you can reliably produce beautiful prints. Enjoy!

[montespluga]

thanks for your response,it will take a while to get all the stuff read - in my opinion, its not so hard to get my "chain" organized, but rather the exchange wi th others- within a work-flow that is out of my control. My experience was, tha t they all use different systems, and sometimes, they even disynchronize their screens, and have a sort of cast, but it seems that this is easier for them to handle it that way, than having strict profiles. I'm thinking about adding a print or a slide to the CD, to give them sort of r eference .