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Color Printers
Secondly, monitor quality can be *very* important to this process. In addition to
simply using Photoshop's gamma control to 'calibrate' the monitor, ideally you
should be able to calibrate the monitor for different ambient light settings
(adjusting for different 'white point' settings, essentially). If you've ever had the
opportunity to do this on a monitor that supports it (read: a more expensive
monitor), you know how important this aspect is. Depending on the monitor type, a
little silverish card (or other implement) is held up to the monitor to match colors
on the card to the screen. When you do this for sunny daylight vs. cloudy daylight
vs. night incandescent or fluorescent desk lighting, you see just how much the
apparent color shift of the monitor is with different ambient light sources. Change
to the 'wrong' setting, and you'll see what I mean.
In any event, a couple of things came to mind that were absent in your discussion
of relevant info to your process. First of all, if you have obvious color casts,
something is *very* wrong with the scan (I'm sure you know this). I've found that
the most difficult part of the entire process is getting a good scan; as you noted,
scanner software and documentation is lacking, to say the least. Try, try again, the
result you want is out there (assuming your scanner has the density range to capture
your image properly; this is an important, and expensive, aspect).
Now, assuming that you have a good scan, one aspect of Photoshop that wasn't
mentioned was hue/saturation control. Obviously a good scan shouldn't need too
much fussing with hue (color casts aside...), however I've found the saturation
control to be invaluable to matching color to originals (referring to transparencies
here, as 'color matching to originals' doesn't strictly apply to color negatives, only
to color prints from negatives, which are subject to their own initial interpretation).
You obviously have a pretty good grasp of Photoshop and how to correct an image;
my recent 'discovery' of the power of the saturation control compels me to include
it, since you didn't mention it.
A couple of quickie notations to your post:
*Don't* use a Kodak PhotoCD; PhotoCD and color fidelity are mutually exclusive
(there are several websites that discuss this in detail)!!!
If you have the money for a Polaroid Sprint Scan 4000, Microtek Artixscan 4000,
or one of the just-announced high-res Nikon film scanners, buy one!
Lastly, Shutterbug magazine's 'Digital Help: Q&A for Digital Photography' section
by David Brooks has been an *excellent* source of cutting edge digital
photography and printing information, especially for those interested in producing
'fine art' quality prints.
http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/printers/primer (30 of 36)7/3/2005 2:20:36 AM