Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [50]
These days, some LCD displays can be way too bright for digital imaging work. I recently tried to calibrate one of the new glossy Apple displays and measured a brightness of 250 candelas m 2 at the minimum brightness setting. Brand new LCD displays do lose their brightness after 100 hours or so of use, which may make them become more useable. However, some of the new glossy displays appear to be incapable of revealing detail in the extreme highlight range. The thing is, these types of displays may look great for playing video games and watching TV, but they are not ideal for image editing work. This isn't just a problem with Apple, there are lots of unsuitable displays out there, which is why I now recommend purchasing a display that is specifically designed with digital image editing in mind.
Figure 2.8.
In this last step, the i1Match software starts measuring a sequence of colors that are flashed up on the display and from this builds an ICC profile of the display, which is automatically saved to the correct system folder where it will be picked up by the system and referenced by Photoshop's color management system.
Do you want good color or just OK color?
Let me summarize in a few paragraphs why you should pay special attention to how your images are displayed in Photoshop and why good color management is essential.
These days the only real option is to buy a good quality LCD display that is designed for graphic use. Once you have chosen a good display you need to consider how you are going to calibrate and profile it. This is crucial and if done right it means you can trust the colors you see on the display when determining what the print output will look like. In the long run you are going to save yourself an awful lot of time and frustration if you calibrate and profile the display properly right from the start. Not so long ago the price of a large display, plus a decent video card, would have cost a small fortune and display calibrators were considered specialist items. These days, a basic display calibration and profiling device can cost about the same as a medium-sized external hard drive, so I would urge anyone setting up a computer system for Photoshop to put a display calibrator and accompanying software package high on their spending list.
All the display calibrator products I have tested will automatically place the generated display profile in the correct system folder so that you are ready to start working straight away in Photoshop, with your display properly calibrated and with the knowledge that Photoshop automatically knows how to read the profile you have just created.
Eyeball calibration
Another option is to use a non-device calibration method, such as the Display Calibration Assistant that is part of the Mac OS X operating system. This is better than doing nothing, but is still not a proper substitute for proper hardware calibration and profiling. If you don't invest in a calibration/measuring device, your only other option is to load a canned profile for the display and keep your fingers crossed. This approach is better than doing nothing, but rarely all that successful, so I would still urge you to consider buying a proper calibration device and software package.
Color management settings
One of the very first things you should do after installing Photoshop is to adjust the color management settings. The default Photoshop Color Settings are configured using a general setting for the region you live in, which will be: North America, Europe or Japan. If you are using Photoshop for design work or photography, you will want to change this to a regional ‘prepress’ setting. Go to the Edit menu and select Color Settings, which opens the dialog shown in Figure 2.9. Next, go to the Settings menu and select one of the prepress settings. The individual prepress settings only differ in the default RGB to CMYK conversions that are used, and these will depend on the geographical area you are working in (I also suggest you check out pages 647–648 for instructions on how to check if you