Digital Prints

What Is Your Intent?
Monitor profiling is step two, and it measures and describes the personality of that particular
monitor. Profiling doesn’t actually change anything, it just keeps track of how the monitor is
set up. You calibrate before you profile, although in many instances, calibration and profiling
occur in a continuous process, especially if you’re using third-party software packages.
Monitors should be calibrated and profiled regularly; weekly is a good target. As
Pennsylvania digital printmaker Jim Davis recommends, “first thing Monday morning,
calibrate your monitor. It takes 10 minutes, and then you are set for the week.”
There are two basic ways to calibrate and profile a monitor: eyeballing it visually using
software alone, or using a measuring tool on either a non-calibrator (“dumb”) or calibrator
(“smart”) monitor.
A “smart monitor includes its own measuring device (colorimeter) that’s attached to the
screen and wired back into the computer’s processor. The instant feedback from the colorimeter
allows the system to adjust each individual RGB gun as part of the calibration
process. The advantage of this system is that color management is automatic; the RGB
guns are adjusted for you. One disadvantage to such a system is the higher cost. Others
Chapter 4 ■ Understanding and Managing Color 129
Rendering intents are the guidelines or the rules that color engines follow to handle their color gamut transformations or “mapping.” Here are the
official ICC definitions with my comments following:
■ Perceptual. The full gamut of the image is compressed. Gray balance is preserved but colorimetric (measured color) accuracy
is not. This preserves the visual relationship of all the colors as a single unit. Everything stays relatively the same
(including in-gamut colors), but not absolutely the same, so it’s a good choice if you’ve got a lot of out-of-gamut colors.
■ Relative Colorimetric. The white point (the lightest area) of the actual medium is mapped to the white point of the reference
medium. The colors map accordingly. This one changes only the colors that are out-of-gamut, which will, by
necessity, be compressed. Useful when proofing a commercial printing press on an inkjet printer. Often preferable for
general printing, as long as out-of-gamut colors, if any, have been dealt with in advance.
■ Absolute Colorimetric. The white point of the source profile maps to the white point of the reference illuminant. The
colors map accordingly. This allows a proof of dull gray newsprint to be made on bright white proofing stock, with the
newsprint gray emulated by ink. Otherwise, AbCol is just the same as RelCol.
■ Saturation. The saturation of the pixels in the image is preserved, perhaps at the expense of accuracy in hue and lightness.
This is typically used for business-type graphics where vividness is the most important thing; color accuracy takes
a back seat. It’s not normally recommended, although after Steve Upton suggested giving it a try when I wasn’t happy
with a profile’s saturation, I did and found that certain images gained more punch this way. Color expert C. David Tobie
offers that a well-designed Saturation intent may suit general photographic needs, and is especially useful for flowers,
red sports cars, and other brilliant content.
Any of the four ICC rendering intents
can be selected in Photoshop.