Colorimeter

[Redpb]

After messing with photo restoration and trying to print out some photos we have some colors that are different from what we see on screen. I've been told this is the fix.
Who has one? Has it worked well for you? What do you have? What do you suggest?

[ibenick]

I don't know about a Colorimeter but I do know that you can get printer profile files from many photo printing places and then install that on your computer so that you can better see how the printed product will work while you edit. I did this using Costco's printing service and the end result was much closer to what I saw on my computer screen.

[goofball]

i was told by a lab in SLC that such calibration is really unnecessary. they said it is the color space that determines your print. so as long as the print is in the color space of the image file its gonna be as you see it on screen, except for possibly the density, if your moitor is brighter or darker. i had numerous prints done and they always looked as they did on my monitor and i never calibrated my system to match them. all i did was edit and save and have them print.

[Ryebrye]

i was told by a lab in SLC that such calibration is really unnecessary. they said it is the color space that determines your print. so as long as the print is in the color space of the image file its gonna be as you see it on screen, except for possibly the density, if your moitor is brighter or darker. i had numerous prints done and they always looked as they did on my monitor and i never calibrated my system to match them. all i did was edit and save and have them print.

Well, that lab in SLC is full of shit and I would not trust them with any of my prints since it sounds like they have a very cavalier attitude towards color management.

Sure, you can pick a color space with a small gamut and the colors will look pretty similar. If you bought a decent monitor that already has a decent profile for it, it can even look pretty close. If you print to matte paper, the gamut of the print will likely be smaller than sRGB and you will run into problems. There are a number of different ways you will run into problems. The big image might look fine, but there can be an overall cast to it, or your shadows can have a cast...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/prophoto-rgb.shtml has some graphs showing the gamut of different color spaces.

I recently got a Colormunki Photo, and it works really well for both monitors and printer profiling. It's not set up to do remote profiling (the way it works is it prints a test sheet with 50 patches, then you scan that in and it prints another test sheet with 50 more patches based on the results of the first one... I'm pretty sure the workflow was set up this way to protect the market for X-Rite's more expensive calibration tools that do allow remote profiling)

A comparison for me was that I did some prints at Costco's photo lab using their printer profiles and my eyeball-calibrated monitor (using OS X's built in calibration thing) and the results were OK. Looked pretty close to what I saw on screen, with some minor differences in some shadow areas and a in some of the more saturated areas.

After I calibrated my screen and did some prints of a different image that I spent a while working over to really get the most out of the color space with the soft proofing tools in Photoshop - I not a print that looked exactly what I wanted it to and showed a very wide dynamic range - it also looked exactly like what I was looking at on my monitor when prepping it.

The Colormunki Photo isn't cheap. It works great and it's fast and it has some other cool features - but I like it because I bulk load generic inks in my epson printer with a CIS system and I've now been able to profile my printer. (I was surprised to see that the gamut of my generic inks is just as wide as Epson's genuine inks, but actually has a wider gamut in the green / cyan area). I can now print stuff and have the first print come out of the printer exactly as I wanted - whereas before I had to usually do two or three before I got it tweaked to how I wanted it.

A quick way to see how good your eyes / monitor are at rendering color is to go take the "Color IQ" test.

http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_toolframe.aspx?action=coloriq

xrite also has some other good resources on their website such as their "complete guide to color management"
http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_learning.aspx?action=guide
(Their viewer for that color management thing sucks, so I'd recommend downloading the PDF by clicking the link directly below the viewer)

[Redpb]

Thanks for the info Ryebrye