Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
The ICC CMS workflow. The input side (left) is only one-way because color isn’t viewed or output on cameras or scanners.
Photoshop is the ultimate ICC-aware software since Adobe, its maker, is a founding member
of the ICC. (Adobe Photoshop LE is not ICC-aware, but Photoshop Elements is in a
limited way.) Painter, CorelDRAW, PhotoImpact, and Paint Shop Pro are also ICC-aware
to varying degrees. You also need an ICC-friendly operating system, but with the exception
of WindowsNT, virtually all currently used ones are.
Assuming that you now believe in color management, let’s see how it actually works with
our two main areas of device concern—monitors and printers.
Monitor Calibration and Profiling
Good monitor-to-print coordination starts with the monitor in a two-step process: calibration
then profiling. The point of monitor calibration is to bring the screen back to a
group of standard settings for white point (the color of white), white luminance (the brightness
of white), gamma (a simple curve to relate to the eye’s non-linear response to light),
black point (the darkest black the monitor can display), gray balance (neutrality of grays),
and tonal response (how evenly a gray ramp runs from black to white). When you calibrate
a monitor (more accurately a “display” that includes the monitor and video card and driver),
you actually change its settings and its behavior, and those new settings are in effect every
time you start up the computer. And that, in turn, affects how you view and correct your
images. If, for example, your monitor is set too bright, then your prints may end up too
dark because you erroneously tried to darken them onscreen to look better. That’s why monitor
calibration is so important for a correctly color-managed digital workflow.