Color Management

[ron]

Finally got serious after accumulating thick file of articles.

Took careful White Balanced close up of page in my ancient Kodak Color Dataguide which included gray card, gray scale, and simple color chart. Using Levels, set white point, black point, and gray point. All RGB numbers checked out neutral, and monitor perfect after calibration below.

All agreed that monitor should be calibrated. I bit the bullet and bought Huey (list $120). Fantastic job on color: beautiful neutral gray screen. I couldn't understand the contrast/brightness procedure, so just used Adobe Gamma for that (which came with Elements).

Decided to use printer color management. Following are the terms used by the driver for my Epson 1270 using Windows XP and PE3.

Print Space: "Printer Color Management"

"Automatic" gave decent print, but slightly magenta.

Went to "Custom"/"Advanced"/"Color Controls"
Set sliders to -20 magenta and -10 yellow. Gray now neutral, but color saturation weak, even when setting saturation slider to +25. Reset saturation slider to midpoint, but changed "Mode" to "Vivid" (rather than "Automatic" or "Photo-realistic"). Perfect prints.

Thus I have followed the group (such as Ken Rockwell's website) that says just use sRGB, calibrate monitor, and use printer color management.

I tried in vain to use the method of most articles to use RGB, calibrate monitor, turn off printer color management, and let Photoshop manage color.

All comments will be interesting.

[Codebreaker]

Ron....

A good many steps in the right direction BUT - there's always a but :-)

Don't do anything with the Adobe Gamma Wizard - it will kill any monitor profile you've worked out with the Huey. You must only use one method to establish the profile and that would be the Huey. You must also stop the Adobe Gamma loader from running at startup.

I'd also go in a different direction than using 'Printer Colour Management' and that's to let Elements do it by selecting the Profile for your printer and paper. Epson 'canned' profiles are very good.

My own experiences show Elements gives better rendered prints than letting the printer do it. Of course 'mileage may vary' as they say and use whatever works for you. Key thing though is not to double colour manage - so this means setting Elements and the Printer Driver correctly.

If you want some more info take a look at my website.. here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/colin_w/colour%20problems.htm)


Colin

[TonyW]

Color Management is one of those things that if you get what you were looking for even if it's not by the "official" method then you've got it right :) So what you've done sounds good to me. I suspect that the reason that you can't get turning off printer color management to work is that if you did that then you'd need to have printer/paper ICC profiles and the 1270 is getting a bit long in the tooth so even if you have profiles I'm not sure they would be relevant. I think both inks and paper formulations have changed in the meantime so the profiles would have needed to be updated and I doubt that they have been.

So congratulations on getting it right and stick with the method that works for you!

Tony

[Storm1]

Can someone please tell me which what AGU looks like in the Startup List . Its all double dutch to me though I have sorted out a lot.
I have got Java Update Checker in there-juched-.
I went to see about removing it c:/program files/java & find I have 2 there .!
Ni 1 Jre1.5.0_03
No2 Jre 1.6.0_03
There are LOTS of files in both with the Icon -Windows cannot open ...does not know program...
I open both & lots in there also though No1 BIN seems OK & there is a File icon in there says Jucheck.exe. Should I delete this File ? Is it the one in Startup List ?
What do I really need Java for. ?
Quicktime I unchecked its box in Startup List. Reboot & get message that i should go to Normal Startup but took no notice of it.
Hope you can understand my mumblings & give me some answers.
Thank you . Storm