When
viewing images, once the data is read from your image file,
it undergoes several transformations until it is displayed on
your monitor or printer. The actual view of the image that you
see depends on your monitor or printer settings. Specifically,
on your monitor or printer brightness (black point), contrast
(white point), and gamma settings. In addition, monitors and
printers are very different creatures. Monitors will reflect
light on a screen, while a printed page will absorb light reflected
on paper. Monitors will use an RGB color space while printers
might use other color spaces, such as CMYK.
Overall, The way images look on screen is different from the
way they will look on a printed page. Calibrating your monitor
provides a screen display that simulates what you would see
on paper.
Device settings are defined by an ICC Profile. an ICC Profile
contains the information needed by Color Management systems
to translate color information between different devices, such
as a monitor and a printer.
A calibrated monitor and an ICC profile provide a common denominator
between those different devices and will enable predicted color
output on your monitor and printer.
How do I calibrate my monitor?
The simplest calibration methods involve adjustments to the
Contrast and Brightness settings of your monitor and specifying
its desired gamma. calibration methods. There are many tools
that will allow you to calibrate your monitor.
The Adobe Gamma Utility (installed on your system as part of
Adobe PhotoShop 7.00 is one of them). It will allow you to calibrate
your monitor and save its ICC profile. You will later point
the DigiLab software to this profile.
The DigiLab software will tag your images (when sent to print)
with your specific monitor ICC profile, so the printing device
can safely produce the right colors to match your screen display
of the image.
Can I use a non calibrated monitor with DigiLabs software?
If you don't have a tool to calibrate your monitor or just don't
want to do so, the DigiLabs software can use its internal calibration
engine to manage colors for print.
Use your normal room lighting but avoid reflections or glare
from lights or windows.
Set your monitor contrast to its higher settings.
Turn the brightness control all the way up to its lightest setting.
Start turning the brightness control down until the black just
begins to be true black. When done, you should just barely see
a difference between the 95% patch and the 100% patch or the
0% and the 5% patch on the scale bellow. You should see distinct
tones in each patch. You would like the 0% to be pure white
and the 100% pure black.
In the DigiLabs Color Option dialog box, select the Automatic
Gamma Adjustment option and follow the instructions of the screen.
Learn more about monitor calibration
http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/weekly/aa070102a.htm
http://www.lenswork.com/calibrate.htm
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