Help Please - basic colour management
The_Mekon
office. What we do mainly is produce technical reports in Pages. These
are illustrated with photos, and my concern is getting these looking
good. We aren't as demanding as other trades may be, but the reports
need to look "good enough" that they are simply pleaseant to look at.
Previously we used a Xerox Phaser 8200, and while I never managed to
work out how to get the colours accurate, the output was good enough.
Now we have monstrous HP 5550DN colour laserjet, and the colours simply
aren't good enough. They tend to be very dark, and what should be grey
(according to the monitor) comes out s blue.
Have I calibrated my monitor? No, not really. It's a Dell 2005FPW, and
that is the the colour profile chosen in Displays preferences. I did a
trial and error test, and went through all the different monitor colour
profiles on the system. There were huges changes in gamma, but there
seemed to be no tonal changes at all. So while I have not properly
calibrated the monitor, the output seem credible in that there is
nothing leaping out as wrong. So to some extent I trust what I see on
the monitor. Plus, while most of the monitors in the office are same
model, there are one or two others, but I never notice a significant
diference between them. So, I don't think there is a problem with the
monitors.
So, back on the printer. As I said, images are very dark with what
should be nuetral gray coming out blue. I have adopted a trial and
error approach with all the colour management settings in the print
dialogue. I can get the output a bit lighter, but never get rid of the
blue.
This is taking a lot of time and I'm not getting anywhere. I don't
really know what I am doing. So I would be very grateful if some nice
chap could illuminate me on the Right Path to sort out colour management.
Ta muchly for any help.
This is 10.5.8 BTW
Graham J
"The_Mekon" <The_...@null.com> wrote in message
news:poydnfWRkvqkwLTW...@eclipse.net.uk...
Have you tried a different make & model of printer, or even another one of
the same as you already have?
There ought to be a process whereby you output a colour test image to the
printer, read the result using a colorimeter, and apply the corrections it
indicates to the output profile in the printer driver. If you send your
work to a trade printer for output to film this is what he will do when
calibrating the typesetter - film - plates - press operation.
--
Graham J
Martin S.
The_Mekon <The_...@null.com> wrote:
> Have I calibrated my monitor? No, not really. It's a Dell 2005FPW, and
> that is the the colour profile chosen in Displays preferences. I did a
> trial and error test, and went through all the different monitor colour
> profiles on the system.
The factory supplied profiles will get you in the right ballpark, but
it's better to calibrate your monitor. The calibration utility available
in the Displays prefs pane should get you fairly close:
<http://www.computer-darkroom.com/colorsync-display/colorsync_1.htm>
A hardware calibrator is only necessary for very critical colour work.
> So, back on the printer. As I said, images are very dark with what
> should be nuetral gray coming out blue. I have adopted a trial and
> error approach with all the colour management settings in the print
> dialogue.
Have you got a colour profile for that exact model of printer? If not
check the installation disks or on HP's website. Profiles need to be
installed in Library > ColorSync > Profiles.
Calibrating a printer is more involved and requires costly hardware, but
the manufacturers profiles will usually be close enough for most work.
For more info on colour management see here:
<http://www.colormanagementinfo.com/page1/page16/page16.html>
Bruce Horrocks
> Now we have monstrous HP 5550DN colour laserjet, and the colours simply
> aren't good enough. They tend to be very dark, and what should be grey
> (according to the monitor) comes out s blue.
Looks like you are not alone. Try the suggestion at the bottom of this link.
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2239297&tstart=0>
--
Bruce Horrocks
Surrey
England
(bruce at scorecrow dot com)