Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
- Subject: Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 10:20:29 EST
In a message dated 3/8/02 6:17:59 PM, email@hidden writes:
>
I am a physicist trying to help my wife, an artist, pick out an
>
"acceptable" color management system. My wife uses a 21" Apple Studio
>
Monitor with Colorsync, Photoshop 7 (actually V5.5 today), Painter 7, an
>
Epson 7000 with Generations 4 and 5 ink, printing on matte smooth
>
acid-free bright white 24" wide paper (she could use some advice on
>
papers also). She would only use a few papers, possibly even one.
>
>
What I have been able to learn is that Colorvision has a bundle for $499
>
that includes a 7 filter monitor calibration system and a printer
>
calibration, but does not have any privisions for calibrating the
>
scanner which seems to me to be a fundamental flaw. On the other hand,
>
for $499, Monaco has a 3 filter monitor calibration system and a
>
calibrated target for calibrating the scanner which would seem, in
>
principle, to be all that is necessary to establish a closed loop
>
calibration. Which of these systems would be preferable, and would it
>
be necessary to go to a hand held scanner based system for about $2500
>
to get a reliable system? Or asked another way, would a few tweaks on
>
either the Colorvision or the Monaco system be good enough?
You could certainly start with one or the other, with the intention of
upgrading later if your needs prove sufficiently demanding. The Gen 4 inks
are fairly reasonable to profile, and a scanner-based printer profile for
them would be likely to be fairly effective (I'd recommend working with them
at this point in time). The Gen 5 inks are still an open question, the
additives that make them capable of sticking to slick surfaces may effect
their color constancy under different lighting, and in the process the
ability to profile them easily.
The Monaco intro level package does offer a more complete solution on paper.
In reality the question is more complex. Scanner profiles are not very useful
for scanning natural media artwork, since they are based on the response of
the scanner to photographic film or photo prints. Simply using a monitor
profile in your scanning preview, and bringing highbit files into Photoshop
for correction on your calibrated monitor may be most practical, which
effects the value balance of the two bundles.
On the monitor front the ColorVision bundle definately holds the edge, with
the advanced meter, and advanced profiling features. These advanced features
will not be of much use on your particular monitor, since it lacks individual
gun controls. This line of monitors has a distrubing tendancy to die at an
early age, however; and if your next monitor is an LCD then the ColorVision
meter offers a significant advantage there, as it can calibrate LCDs.
On the printer profiling front, scanner based printer profiles are a
compromise under either package. Monaco's EZ Color probably gets you a bit
closer on the first try than the current ColorVision product, but both
require tweaking, and in the end the ColorVision ProfilerPLUS result is
likely to be as accurate or a bit more accurate... hard to say since so much
depends on the scanner. ColorVision is definately way ahead on CMYK features
for PostScript printers and RIPs, so if you are considering a RIP for your
7000, the added black generation, ink limit and other features in
ProfilerPLUs are a real bonus.
In terms of updates, ColorVision offers a lower cost step to
spectrophotometer based profiling, and again offers more CMYK features at
this level; while Monaco's midprice offering doesn't compete as well on
paper. However Monaco offers more features at the top end, but for thousands
more than the mid-priced solutions.
C. David Tobie
Design Cooperative
email@hidden
_______________________________________________
colorsync-users mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/colorsync-users
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.