Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [47]
Display calibration and profiling
We now need to focus on what is the most important aspect of any Photoshop system: getting the display to show your images in Photoshop correctly and ensuring that the display colors can be relied upon to match the print output. This basic advice should be self-evident, because we all want our images in Photoshop to be consistent from session to session and match in appearance when they are viewed on another user's system.
The initial calibration process should get your display close to an idealized state. The next step is to build a display profile that describes how well the display actually performs after it has been calibrated, which at a minimum describes the white point and chosen gamma. The more advanced LCD displays such as the Eizo ColorEdge and NEC LCD3090 do provide hardware calibration for a more consistent and standardized output, but the only adjustment you can make on most LCD displays is to adjust the brightness.
Calibration hardware
Let's now look at the practical steps for calibrating your display. First, get rid of any distracting background colors or patterns on the computer desktop. Consider choosing a neutral color theme for your operating system (the Mac OS X system has a graphite appearance setting especially for Photoshop users!) If you are using a PC, go to Control Panels Appearance Themes, choose Display and click the Appearance tab (Figure 2.3). Click on the active and inactive window samples and choose a gray color for both. If you are using Windows XP, try choosing the silver color scheme. This is all very subjective of course, but personally I think these adjustments improve the look of both operating systems.
Figure 2.3 This shows the operating system Appearance options for Macintosh (top) and Windows XP (bottom).
The only reliable way to calibrate and profile your display is by using a hardware calibration system. Some displays, such as the LaCie range, can be bought with a bundled hardware calibrator, but there are many other types of stand-alone calibration packages to consider. The ColorVision Monitor Spyder and Spyder2Pro Studio are affordable and are sold either with PhotoCal or the more advanced OptiCal software. Colorimeter devices can only be used to measure the output from a display. Unlike the more expensive spectraphotometers, you can't use them to measure print targets, but when it comes to profiling a display they are just as good.
1.
An uncalibrated and unprofiled display cannot be relied on to provide an accurate indication of how colors should look.
2.
The calibration process simply aims to optimize the display for brightness and get the luminance within a desired range.
3.
The profiling process takes into account the target white balance and gamma. The profiling process also measures how a broad range of colors are displayed.
4.
To create a profile of this kind you need a colorimeter device. A calibrator such as the X-Rite i1Display 2 or i1Photo with the i1Match or Profile Maker Professional software will produce accurate results, although there are now several other devices that are equally as good. Once calibrated and profiled, you will have a computer display that can be relied upon when assessing how your colors will reproduce in print.
The X-Rite product range includes the i1 system which is available in several different packages. The i1 Photo (Figure 2.4) is an emissive spectrophotometer that can measure all types of displays and build printer profiles too when used in conjunction with the ProfileMaker 5 or i1 Match software, while the EZ Color is a low cost colorimeter device bundled with the i1 Display 2 software. The newest product in their range is the ColorMunki Photo, which is