Apple Cinema display for color sensitive work ?another view (and a request for guidance).
Apple Cinema display for color sensitive work ?another view (and a request for guidance).
- Subject: Apple Cinema display for color sensitive work ?another view (and a request for guidance).
- From: Bruce King <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 23:58:43 -0800
Greetings to Stefan & others from an Apple 22" Cinema Display user in New
Zealand.
As a tourism brochure designer, I get better than acceptable results in the
final printed piece when using my display for colour correcting scans from
trannies and negatives scanned with my Nikon 4000ED.
Respectfully, I can imagine that the more technically erudite subscribers to
this list might raise their eyebrows in disbelief when I confess to having
not yet having comprehended ICC profiling etc as being a little too tricky
for my "visual artist's brain" of 18 years (since 1984 and the very first
Mac, complete with a whole 128K of RAM!). I also confess to taking a risk by
"coming out" of the colour-calibration closet hoping that it might elicit a
response from a kindly non-judgemental expert out there who may be moved to
steer a neophyte away from the blissful ignorance of simply trusting what
the eye sees. (A recent post did give the affirmative nod to the eyeball,
after all). I would be grateful for a CONCISE and SIMPLE step-by-step
approach to colour management on the Mac (I operate a G4/PhotoShop/FreeHand
platform) which would be more productive for me and for other list
subscribers who may have, like me, felt a little unsure about it.
So for my response to your question on the Cinema 22, here's one antipodean
designer's "nuts, bolts & ignorance" approach to colour on the Mac:
Without concerning myself with colour profiles much at all (except in
FreeHand where I simply set the colour management preference panel to "Apple
Colorsync"), I keep my monitors control panel set to a name suggested by one
colour adviser: "Warm & Dull." For me, I have chosen a Target Gamma of 2.6
and a target white point of 5000 K. I keep my brightness control set to the
mid-point on the Cinema 22 (status bar set to be directly below the letter
"t" in the word "brightness" simply because this setting is easily
repeatable).
For colour correcting RGB pics, I turn to my favourite tool the good
old-fashioned "Knoll Gamma" application (remember it?) that shipped with an
earlier version of PhotoShop. I LOVE this little application and wonder why
it is no longer available, but it still works great, even with the Cinema
22. Mine is Version 2 from pre history 1990! For say, a brochure job, I
simply adjust Black Point/White Point/Balance (mostly) & Gamma settings
using Knoll Gamma until my monitor in PhotoShop is a close visual match to a
previous edition of the brochure printed on the press I will next be using,
or to a chromalin or matchprint proof. I save the setting and re-use it
every time I print under the same press conditions. I have a number of
settings saved for when I work in PhotoShop & FreeHand. But mostly I use
Knoll Gamma for PhotoShop to simulate press output. When I drop that pic
into FreeHand and want to see the whole brochure looking close to the final
printed piece, I load the appropriate Knoll Gamma setting for that purpose
only, having previously made the critical colour changes in PhotoShop. For
colour in FreeHand, I simply compare colour values with swatch books as
needed. I find the above approach simple and effective. Is there anything
inherently wrong with it?
Yes, the display does take about 1/2 an hour to "warm up" and yes, it is a
little "patchy" as the backlighting unevenly shines through a matrix of
digitally modulated pixels. But I love it and it works well for me. Provided
the image is in the centre of the screen, the colour distribution is
relatively even (my screen shows a "bloom" in the lower left corner, so I
stay away from that area in PhotoShop).
Thanks, Stefan, for your evocative post which resulted in mine. First time
I've responded.
Bruce