On 11/02/2011 08:59 AM, scott wrote:
>>> I'm not even a professional and I spent more than that on a camera or
>>> two.
>>
>> You're obviously drastically richer than almost everybody I've ever met
>> in my life then. :-P
>
> What, you don't know anyone who has spent $1000 on a hobby? I find that
> extremely hard to believe.

I know a few people who have probably ended up spending something like 
that over the course of the ten or twenty years they've been doing a 
hobby, sure. But to spend that amount of money on a single purchase... I 
don't know too many people who could afford that without taking out a 
loan or something.

>> I think you'd have to be doing some pretty high-end print work for this
>> level of precision to actually matter. Time Magazine probably does it,
>> but I doubt my local newspaper does.
>
> If your local paper has any colour pages then surely they will, the
> advertisers will demand it to ensure their company colours are correct.

Surely you don't actually need an expensive specially calibrated monitor 
just to ensure that IBM Blue comes out as IBM Blue. Presumably there are 
standardised ways of describing specific print colours, and the 
advertisers will just tell you what colour they want according to some 
such standard.

>> Given that, it seems that there's
>> only going to be 10, maybe 20 customers on the face of the Earth who'd
>> want to buy this product. WTF?
>
> Did you ever actually look in a newsagent, there are hundreds of
> full-colour magazines just displayed to the public in a shop, there are
> orders of magnitudes more that are not sold in shops. They all will use
> colour calibrated displays to ensure they print exactly what they think
> they are printing.

I can believe that the likes of the billion-selling top magazines would 
go to these lengths. But Linux Format? I rather doubt it. Generally if 
an image looks reasonable on a regular screen, it looks reasonable in 
print too. Unless it's crucial for your images to look "perfect", I 
can't see anybody blowing such a huge amount of money just on a monitor.

> You really do seem to have a problem with estimating things like this,
> you just need to think for a bit before guessing.

Well, I suppose I don't work in professional printing, so I can only 
guess. But it does seem rather far-fetched to me.

> You calibrate subtractive ink sets (and every other reflective product)
> under specifically calibrated light, designed to match the expected
> viewing conditions. Shops use very specific lighting with an exactly
> specified emission spectrum, products are designed and checked according
> to the lighting in the shop. That's why often when you pick up an item
> of clothing it looks a slightly different colour outside compared to in
> the shop.

Now there's something I hadn't thought of... For most magazines, exact 
colour probably isn't critical. But how about those huge colour 
photographs that shops sometimes have on their walls? I guess you 
*might* conceivably want precise colour matching for that.

>>> I wonder how long before this sort of thing is available in color eInk?
>>
>> I wonder how long before colour eInk exists.
>
> I wonder how long it would take to google "color eink"?

I presumed this wouldn't produce any remotely useful information.

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