Home  /   Print Tips  /   More On Calibrating Your Monitors

More On Calibrating Your Monitors

By Margie Dana

A 2010 PBI Print & Media Conference attendee emailed me some queries about monitor calibration. I reached out to two experts for their thoughts, and I heard back from James Lockman of Adobe and Daniel Dejan of Sappi Fine Paper. Last week, I shared James’ answers. Today, we hear from Daniel.

Daniel Dejan is an industry star that everyone knows by one name only. Say “Daniel” (use the French pronunciation, s’il vous plait, accent on the “el”) and savvy people know you mean the North American ETC Print & Creative Manager for Sappi Fine Papers.

Here’s what a print customer wrote to me:

We have decided to take the bull by the horns and see if we can get a better handle on color within our design and production groups.

Recently we had 2 incidents where our designers’ monitor did not match ours or the vendor’s proof. This was discovered at the proofing stage of our printing process. The proof obviously did not meet the expectation of our designer, since it did not match their monitor. With that said, I have been assigned the task of finding out more about calibrating our monitors so we are all looking at the same thing.

Can you answer the questions below or point us in the right direction of finding a source that can help us?

  • Should we have our Mac monitors color calibrated?
  • If so, how often?
  • Is there a preferred method across the industry?

We do have technical support for our Macs. Should we let them do it, or is this something we can do ourselves?

Here’s what Daniel Dejan had to say:

Q: Should we have our Mac monitors color calibrated?
Daniel Dejan

DD: Absolutely. When you purchase your monitor it is calibrated to manufacturers’ standards, but it is by no means optimized. The first task is to get your monitor to work at its very best – which is not out-of-the-box. I would recommend using a Pantone Color Munki Display or an XRite eye one (i1) display 2: these are transmission or emissive colorimeters made specifically to calibrate monitors. They are very easy to use and will assist in getting white point/color balance, gamma/contrast, as well as set the proper brightness of your monitor based on the ambient light you are working in.

The 4 C’s of Calibration

  1. Calibration – Measuring a device and returning it to a linear standard or optimizing its performance
  2. Characterization – Fingerprinting the unique color attributes of a device and creating a profile of the monitor
  3. Conversion – Assigning the unique color attributes of one device to another device
  4. Consistency

Keep in mind while this is very important to optimize your color management workflow, having a calibrated monitor will help greatly but will be severely hampered if your desktop printer/proofer is not calibrated as well.

Q: If so, how often?
DD: This depends if you are doing content creation or photo-manipulation. If your primary job is to do design, layout, production, compilation, etc. (please read: non color critical), then calibrate once a week either at the end of the week so it is ready for the following work week or first thing the beginning of the work week. This may sound like a lot, but the first calibration will take about 15 – 20 minutes, and you will save/archive the calibration settings. From then on, it takes only a few minutes as the computer will go to the original settings and see what deviation if any has occurred over the week.

On the other hand, if you are doing color critical work, photo-manipulation, etc., then honestly? I recommend you calibrate every day as you are getting your coffee, setting up your desk, etc. It will only take a few minutes and make all the difference in the world. Again, this is predicated on the concept that you have a fully calibrated workflow: scanners, CPU/Monitors, printers/proofers.

Q: Is there a preferred method across the industry?
DD: There are several books that describe wonderfully what calibration is, how to do it, creating a profile with very accessible language, and an explanation of the hardware and software necessary to do it yourself. Color Management Handbook: A Practical Guide by Dr. Abhay Sharma, Dr. Richard M Adams II and Joseph Suffoletto and CMYK 2.0 by Rick McCleary. Both are excellent works on the topic of color management, optimizing your workflow and how to indeed ensure that “what you see is what you get.”

Thanks to Daniel Dejan for answering these important questions (which I’m sure are issues every print production pro has) for me, and to James Lockman for his responses last week.

© 2011 Margie Dana and Daniel Dejan. All rights reserved. Your comments are encouraged. You’re free to forward this email to friends and colleagues. However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.