Real World Adobe Creative Suite 2

2017-07-07 02:10:07

Before we go any further into the subject, you should calibrate your monitor so that the colors you see are set to a known standard. You can't deal with an entire chapter on color let alone an important color-sensitive job if your monitor is showing you bizarre colors.

Don't worry, though. This process isn't quite as difficult as you might imagine. There are two separate techniques for monitor calibration, one for Macintosh and one for Windows. However, before you get into calibrating your monitor, you need to know what methods are available and you also need to take a few steps to ensure your monitor is ready to be properly calibrated.

Our Color-Management Bible

Neither Steve nor Sandee pretends to be a color-management guru. In fact, the most important thing we know about color management is where to turn for the best information on the subject. That's why we recommend Real World Color Management, Second Edition by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, and Fred Bunting (Peachpit Press).

These guys have covered every aspect of color management from color theory to practical workflow advice. In between they look at the specifics of the Macintosh and Windows operating systems, color management in programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and QuarkXPress. They also cover color management ideas and solutions for scanners, monitors, desktop printers, and high-end press systems.

If you are serious about color management, you must read this book! For the rest of this chapter, when we talk about the information in Real World Color Management, Second Edition, we'll just refer to our "color guys."

Steve also recommends the PDF document "Color Workflows for Adobe Creative Suite," which is on the Creative Suite 2 installation CD. This is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to set up a color-managed workflow among the Creative Suite applications.

Calibration Choices

There are several different ways to calibrate a monitor. You need some sort of hardware input device (colorimeter or spectrophotometer) that attaches to the monitor and reads the exact color values on the monitor. This input device also needs some sort of software that reads the values of the input device and creates a monitor profile that records all the settings from the input device.

Many monitors come bundled with input hardware and software. You can also buy input devices that can come with their own software and can be used on any monitor. Finally, if you already have a monitor and an input device, you can buy just the software that supports various input devices.

Hardware and software combinations are the most professional ways to calibrate a monitor. However, if you don't have access to them, you can use visual calibration that consists of looking at your monitor and adjusting it using your own judgment. This is the most inexact way to calibrate a monitor and is not recommended for those who work on mission-critical color documents.

What Is Mission-Critical Color?

Most designers need color to come out fairly close to the original images. No one will be that concerned if the images of the company picnic are a tad too yellow or too red. However, consider if you are the art director for all the packaging for a line of women's hair-color products. You could have over 75 different boxes, each with a photograph that has to correctly display a photograph of the exact hair color shade. Or what if you are the art director for a line of wines you must ensure that the glass of pinot noir you display in an ad doesn't turn up looking like a merlot.

This is the type of mission-critical color that requires the most sophisticated and consistent color management.

Before You Calibrate

Before you start any calibration, whether visually or with specialized hardware, there are a few things you need to do.

Warm up the monitor. Make sure the monitor has been turned on for at least a half hour, and hasn't gone into the sleep mode. (Screen saver mode is OK, though.) This gives it sufficient time to warm up and produce more consistent output. People used to think this warmup time was important only for CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, but it is also important for LCD ones.

Set the number of colors. Make sure the monitor is set to at least thousands of colors, although the millions-of-colors setting is better.

Set the desktop to neutral gray. Change your monitor desktop to get rid of the picture of your kids, the cat, swirling rainbows, or other busy patterns and bright colors. Switch to a middle-tone gray that is neither too red nor too blue. All that color nonsense will interfere with how the monitor is calibrated. In Mac OS X, you can also go to the Appearance preferences and choose Graphite from the Appearance menu to set menus and windows to gray. In Windows you can open the Control Panel Display settings to change the menus and windows to neutral gray colors. (See the sidebar "A Minimum of Color in Photoshop" for how seriously Adobe takes this.)

Clean the screen. You'd be surprised what a layer of dust, fingerprints, soot (if you live in New York City), or cigarette smoke (nasty habit) can do to throw off your judgment.

Lower the lights and cover the windows. You want the monitor to be the brightest object in the room. Glare from overhead lights or the outside can affect the appearance of the screen. And don't change everything back after you finish the calibration you should always work in this kind of darkened environment to replicate the ideal viewing conditions.

Change your shirt. No, we're not kidding about this one. Make sure you're not wearing something that has such vibrant color that it reflects that color back onto the monitor.

You now are ready to do the monitor calibration. But before you jump in, note the difference between the software used on Macintosh and Windows computers.

Tip: Calibrate Every Month

Your monitor's output will change over time. So it is necessary to recalibrate and profile approximately every month.

A Minimum of Color in Photoshop

For years the Photoshop team kept all of Photoshop's interface elements as color-neutral as possible. The tool icons were in black and white, and very few color elements were on the screen. This was so that no colors could interfere with the screen display.

That is still the case today. Although the tool icons do have colors, you see those colors only if you pass the mouse cursor over the tool. In its normal state, the icon is in shades of gray. Even the Photoshop feather at the top of the Tools palette is in gray unless you move your mouse over the icon. In Illustrator and InDesign, their icons at the top of the Tools palette are in color.

Calibrating in Macintosh OS X

Adobe has turned over the visual monitor calibration control on the Macintosh to the Calibrate utility that ships with OS X. This is because Apple uses the same technology that Adobe uses in its own Adobe Gamma software. These are the steps to visually calibrate a monitor on the Macintosh OS X system. Your monitor is probably already set to a profile, but not to one that you created in your own work environment. You therefore need to create your own custom calibration.

1.	Open the System Preferences, and click the Displays setting.
2.	Click the Color tab. The monitor display profiles appear.
3.	Click the Calibrate button. This opens the Display Calibrator Assistant.
4.	Check the option for Expert Mode, and then click Continue.

5.	Set the native gamma (the curve that describes the correct behavior) for your monitor: specify neutral settings for the red, green, and blue tones of your monitor as well as the brightness levels.
6.	Repeat this process five times. This is how the calibrator refines your visual settings. Click Continue and repeat until you have reached the next step.
7.	Use the Target Gamma screen to set the appearance of the final printer. This gives you a better indication of how colors will look for your destination printer. Click Continue to go to the next screen. Sandee was taught many years ago that the target gamma should be 1.8. Our color guys explain that this number comes from the dot-gain curve of the Apple LaserWriter. Considering that nobody is printing to a LaserWriter machine any more, the color guys now recommend changing the target gamma to 2.2. This makes sense to us. That number happens to be closer to the native gamma for the iMac as well as other newer displays. The other benefit of choosing 2.2 as a target gamma is that when you view web pages, you will be viewing them at a setting that is the same as for most Windows monitors. With a setting of 1.8, most web pages display much too bright. Setting the gamma to 2.2 creates a web page display that is closer to what the original web designer had in mind.
8.	Use the Target White Point screen to set the appearance of white. Enter a value of 6500 K, and then click Continue. Our color guys recommend 6500° K, which is much cooler than the 5000° K that we were taught years ago. We've never liked how yellow 5000° K looks. However, the iMac machines that both of us use have a native white point of 6509° K. Since it's difficult to adjust the slider to exactly 6500° K, we just choose the option to Use Native White Point, which is close enough.
9.	Set the Administration Options to allow others to use your calibration, and click Continue.
10.	Use the Name control to set a name for the calibration setting. Steve had the brilliant idea to include the date that you calibrated in the name of the setting. That way you'll remember when you calibrated last. Click Continue.
11.	View all your settings in the last screen.

The profile that you have named will appear whenever you need to designate a monitor profile in the Creative Suite color-management controls.

Calibrating in Windows OS

On the Windows platform, use the Adobe Gamma utility that was automatically installed when you installed Creative Suite 2.

1.	Launch the Adobe Gamma utility, located in the Control Panel.
2.	Choose between the Step-by-Step Wizard or the Control Panel to go through the calibration process, and then click the Next button. There is no significant difference between the two choices. However, we find the Wizard easier to use (so the rest of these directions will assume that you have chosen the Wizard).
3.	Name the profile. If you already have a profile, click the Load button to choose that profile, and then click the Next button.
4.	Use your monitor's hardware controls to set the contrast and brightness as described in the Wizard, and then click the Next button. The contrast and brightness controls are set using the hardware controls for your computer. These are usually on your keyboard. If you have an LCD monitor on a laptop computer, you may only have brightness controls without any contrast.
5.	Choose the type of phosphors in your monitor. (Phosphors are the chemical compounds that give off the flashes of light that are the basis of a CRT monitor display. This setting is not particularly useful if you are working with an LCD monitor that does not have phosphors.) Click the Next button.
6.	Deselect View Single Gamma Only and then adjust the sliders for the red, green, and blue tones. Your goal is to make the squares in the middle blend into their surrounding patterns.
7.	Set the Gamma amount to 2.20, and then click the Next button. As our color guys have recommended 2.2 for the Macintosh, they also recommend the same amount for a Windows machine.
8.	Set the hardware white point to 6500° K, and then click the Next button. Once again, this number comes from our color guys. Unless your monitor manufacturer has given you a different number, stay with this daylight setting.
9.	Set the Adjusted White Point to Same As Hardware (which you just set to be 6500° K), and then click the Next button.
10.	Click the Before and After buttons to see the effect of your settings, and then click Finish.
11.	Name the profiles, and then click Save. (As we mentioned in the Macintosh instructions, it may be helpful to include the date in the profile name so you'll remember the last time you calibrated!) This adds the profile to your Color directory. The profile will be available for all Creative Suite 2 applications.