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Colour Management - recommended workflow

taffyboy1

pfm Member
With a number of good photographers showing their prints online here I wondered if some good advice could be sought showing their personal workflow procedure that they use to obtain accurate editing/printing?

I personally use Lightroom 5

thanks in advance
 
With a number of good photographers showing their prints online here I wondered if some good advice could be sought showing their personal workflow procedure that they use to obtain accurate editing/printing?

I personally use Lightroom 5

thanks in advance

This is a big topic, but thankfully the basics are fairly simple.

To get accurate colour from capture to print you need:
  1. A wide-gamut monitor with good coverage of the Adobe RGB (aRGB) colour space. (Most consumer level monitors have around 70% aRGB coverage which isn't really good enough. iMac monitors are much better though and will be fine once calibrated - see point 2). I use a BENQ SW2700PT which has 99% aRGB coverage.
  2. To calibrate your monitor to ensure it is displaying colours as accurately as possible.
  3. You need ICC profiles for your chosen printer / paper combination. You can often download generic ICC profiles from the paper manufacturer for the mainstream printers, but it's much better to have custom profiles made. (Fotospeed do these for free if you buy their paper form them) These map your printers colour output to the chosen paper to ensure colours are represented as accurately as possible (within the limitations imposed by your chosen paper type). They also allow you to soft proof the results prior to printing (see point 5)
  4. If Lr 5 works the same as the current version of Lr, then you will have the ability to soft proof. Opinions vary, but I find this to be a crucial step. You press 'S' when in the develop module and then select the ICC profile for your chosen paper type. Then tick the 'Simulate Paper & Ink' box and you will see a preview of the print on your chosen paper type. Hit 'Create Proof Copy' and then hit 'Y' to compare this soft proof copy to the original. You can then adjust the soft proof version so that it more closely matches the original (you don't want to adjust too much here. If the soft proof is wildly different, it's probably an indication you have chosen the wrong paper type for the image). Note: this is a simplified account and doesn't discuss rendering intent or gamut warnings.
  5. Once you are happy, hop over to the print module, lay the image out for print, ensure you have the correct paper type and ICC profile loaded and hit print.

Note: this is a simplified account, but it covers the basics and is enough to get you going and should be enough to get your print colours matching those you see on your screen (see example below) Happy to help over PM if you have any more questions :)

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Hope this helps :)

Lefty
 
I use a similar workflow to Lefty, the only difference is that I use Canon Print Studio Pro plug-in rather than Lightroom to actually print the image
 
An accurate monitor is important which means that you need a profiler such as those from Datacolor or X-Rite. Most people have their screens too bright.

I use Qimage for printing.
 
I second that a good calibrated monitor, printer etc all contribute to a good workflow with repeatable, accurate and predictable color, tonality and ink density etc.

The other aspect to consider to improve matters is a print viewing booth that has consistent viewing so unaffected by different colour temperature of different daylight parameters such as sunny/cloudy/winter/summer ambient lighting etc. Some models are more compact than others and can sometimes be found at reasonable cost used, I have the Just Normlicht and Graphiclite which I found extremely useful when I used to work with design studios and other photographers.
 
can anyone recommend a good book or weblink(s) to improve skills to achieve on getting accurate results as discussed above?
 
I will have a look if I have some books on colour management workflow , you can have one free as I am having a sort out. Best PM me.
 


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