On 2/11/2011 3:14 AM, Invisible wrote:

>> 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.
>

No, they could give you the coordinates in CIE L*a*b, either that or you 
take a photospectrometer to a swatch they sent you, which would cost 
roughly the same as the monitor with built-in calibration.

> 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.

Really, any time you have a photo (or really, anything else) printed 
(even, say someone's portrait) you want to use calibrated color. Here's 
the deal: When adjusting the color balance and tone density of a photo, 
you want to be sure that 1) the picture will appear on paper without 
losing any detail in shadows or highlights, 2) [Most critical to have a 
calibrated monitor for] the color balance is correct. If you're 
adjusting color on an LCD monitor and that monitor has a green cast, 
your perception will shift, once you have the picture balanced the way 
you think it should be, and you send it to a press or lab for printing, 
or e-mail the image to a friend, you'll soon discover that on all of the 
other media, even though the picture looks fine on your screen, the 
shadows are blocked up, the midtones are too dark, and everything looks 
like it was tinted with a bit of pepto-bismol (everything's magenta). 
That is why you want a calibrated screen.



-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message