10 Ways To Ensure Your Photo Red Light is not bright, and the Red

Graphic designers, photographers, publishers and computer users in general: they all rely on their digital equipment capable of rendering colors right. But the sad truth is your colors will vary, depending on the output device. A red monitor red is not the same as this inkjet printer. Moreover, what "red"?

Here are 10 things you can do to make sure the red is red, no matter what device should make it.

A. Buy a good monitor. OK, this is an open door, but with "good" i mean that you can calibrate the monitor. That rules out all the monitor's office, Apple Cinemas and leaves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEdge products.

2. Buy a good calibration and profiling applications. Even if you can not afford an Eizo ColorEdge, buy Color basICColor Display Solutions. Software is equipped with high-quality colorimeter GretagMacbeth Display 2 (called the "Squid 2" by Color Solutions), and has a feature called "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibration data (Tone Response Curve) on the video card lookup table. The only requirement: your video card will support it. ATI Radeon range supports this.

3. Calibration and create color profiles for your monitor once a month. Calibration is different from the profile. Calibration means the color lookup table in the monitor is placed into a known state, while the profile only describes the perception of a color monitor. By calibrating your monitor to tell her she must make a "pure red" by setting the color channels in a certain way. Profiles will let you create an image editing software, or graphic design application that pure red means to monitor this particular mixture of the color channels.

4. Buying an inkjet printer that has a non-clogging printhead. Ideally, should not be clogging the printhead. If they do, you can be sure your colors will come out horrible. If not, you can still have a bad color, but now at least you get something. A good printer is a bit more expensive than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy today. Think of something like paying 200 USD minimum. For top-notch printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, expect to pay 700 USD.

5. Encouraging your inkjet through a Raster Image Processor. Many high-end printers support RIP, but RIP is not all created equal. EFI makes good RIP, as well as the vendor who developed the more expensive RIP for large format printers. EFI has a decent RIP, with support for ink limiting, black start setting, etc., with a very reasonable price. EFI Designer Edition is.

6. Profile your printer and RIP using a profiles with you to get accurate color, and save money on ink consumption. Through the profile settings, you can actually determine how much ink is sprayed onto the page. For some types of paper, you can save a lot of money by setting ink limiting optimally for your printer.

7. Use of existing equipment such as X-Rite/GretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your printer CMYK profile. You must create a profile for every paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you must use your printer in RGB mode, you can do it cheaper profiling system. The best way to ensure a good quality profile is created when you do not have the budget to buy a system that costs several thousand dollars, is to appeal to a remote service such as s Thinck.com '.

8. Using an image editing application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. For softproof means that you will be able to visually determine the color of an image on a screen with sufficient accuracy to be confident the colors will correspond to the printed output. Softproofing never one on one, but can come very close, and is another way to save money by saving on both wasted paper and ink.

8. When editing your image, adjust the gray balance first. Choose a neutral gray area in your image (if you take a photo, you will remember what the gray, and if you do not, there is almost always the object that should be gray) and establish this area as a neutral gray tone you . In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by selecting the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the gray eyedropper in the dialog window, and clicking with the tool in a neutral area of ​​your image.

9. If your image has a warm tone to it, such as being shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flash, you can neutralize color casts somewhat by choosing areas that are not exactly neutral but more towards the warm tones of the image. During this area greyish by nature, the image will adjust accordingly.

10. Be careful with setting Saturation levels too high. If you increase saturation, you also bossting color inaccuracies. You can increase the saturation of your image when you are sure it is color-accurate.

These and many more tips, tricks, and tutorials, but also in-depth product reviews and information technologies and methodologies available in the IT background-Enquirer.com. IT-Enquirer is an online magazine devoted to creative professionals. It contains articles for beginners all the way up to the experts in the field.