HOW DO YOU LOOK?

When dealing with images it is critical that your monitor be calibrated and balanced to see the image in its true light. Many times people are viewing and processing images on an old or non-calibrated monitor and wonder why their pictures do not look right or comes back from the lab with weird colors.

Example: I was setting a layout for a client (who owns a printshop) and he wanted me to set a job from a scan he did. The background on this one was a pattern with red and had photos in the panels. He wanted me to change the text only. When I pulled it up on my system I immediately saw that the background was pink not red. The background had a very intricate pattern and I advise him to him to redo the job from scratch and let me build it up to match the original. He said no because of the money and time. I think his quote was, “I scanned it myself so I know it’s right.”

Two days later he was running the job and I get a call. “There’s a problem with the job.” He said. “it’s coming out pink.”

I’m thinking to myself, “DUH”. I reminded him of our conversation.

“How can we fix this?” I repeated the conversation.

It is a necessary evil that monitor calibration needs to be done. There is also a number of ways to do it and while some will cost you an arm and leg, I found a few online charts that will do the job for most people. I take no credit for these as they belong to others and I have linked accordingly. Click on the links below them and it will take you to their site or article that will give you full descriptions and how to’s.

This first one comes from an artical by Giovanni a member at photosig. I do not have a website for him but I will try and find one.The link for this artical is http://www.photosig.com/articles/1562/article



The next one is from photofriday, the direct link can be found at http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php