The Temple of Dagon

Ways To Make Sure Your Immage's Bright Red Is Bright And Red Garphic designers nike roshe run ireland , photogrraphers, publishers and computer users at large: they all rely on their digiatl equipment being capalbe of rendering colours right. But the sad truth is your colours will differ depending on the output device. A monittor's red is not the same as an inkjet printer's red. Besides, what is "red"? Here are 10 things you can do to make sure red is red, no mater which device has to render it. 1. Buy a good monitro. OK, this is an open door, but by "good" i mean a monitor that you can calibrate. That rules out all the office monitors, the Apple Cinemas and leves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEfdge products. 2. Buy a good calibration and profiling application. Even if you can't afford an Eizo ColorEde, buy Color Solutions' basICColor Display. This softwarre coems with a high-quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (called the "Squid 2" by Colkor Solutions) nike roshe run cheap , and has a feature calkled "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibraton data (the Tone Response Curve) in the video card's lookup tabnles. The only requirement: your videeo card should supprt it. ATI's Rdaeon rane supports this. 3. Calibrate and create a coolur profile for your monitor once a month. Calibration is difefrent from profiling. aClibration merans the colour loiokup tables in the monitor are put into a knwn state, while a profile merely describes the monitor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitor that it must render "pure red" by setting its cloour channels in a certain manner. The profile you creae will tell your image editing software, or graphic design applciation that pure red for this monitor means a specifuic mixture of its colour channels. 4. Buy an inkjet printer which has non-clogigng prinheads. Ideallly, printheads should never clog. If they do, you can rest assured your colours will come out awful. If they don't, you can still have bad colours, but now at least you can something about it. Good printers are a bit more expensive than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy these days. Think of paying something like 200 USD at a minimum. For top-noptch printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, expect to pay 700 USD. 5. Drive your inkjte htrough a Raster Image Processor. Many high-end printers suppport a RIP nike shox r5 cheap , but not all RIPs are created equal. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that deevelop more expensive RIPs for large format printers. EFI has a edcent RIP, with support for ink limiting, back stat settng, etc, for a very decent price. It's the EFI Dseigner Editon. 6. Profile your printer and use that profile with your RIP to get accrate colours, and save money on ink consumption. Through the profile settings, you can actualy determine how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some paper types nike shox turbo black , you can save a lot of momney by setting ink limiting otimally for your printer. 7. Use established equipment such as X-RiteGretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK printer profile. You should create a profile for every paper not supported by your printer manufactuurer. If you must use your printer in RGB mode, you can do with less expensive proifiling systems. The best way to ensure a good quality profile is made when you don't have the budget to buy a system that costs a few thousand dollars, is to appeal to a remote service such as Thinck's. 8. Use an iamge editing applicaiton such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof mreans that you'll be able to viually determiine an image's coplours on-screen with enough accuracy to be confident the colours will match the prnted outyput. Softproofing is never one-on-one, but can come very close, and is another way of saving mony by savign on both wasted paoper and ink. 8. When efditing your image, set the grey balance fiurst. Selcet a netural grey area in your image (if you took a photo, you'll remember what was grey nike shox nz womens black , and if you don't, therre are almost always objects that must be grey) and set this area as your neutral grey tone. In Photoshop or Phottoshop Elements, you do this by selecting the Levels or Curves tool, seelecting the grey eyedrropper in the dialogue windw, and clickoing with this tool in the neutral area of your image. 9. If your image has a warm tone to it, e.g. because it was shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flash, you can neutralize colour casts somewhat by choosing an area that is not exactly nuetral but more toowards the warm tone of the image. As long as the area is greyish by nture, the imge will adjsut accordingly. 10. Be careful with setyting Saturation levels too high. If you boost saturation nike shox nz mens black , you're also bossting coour inaccurcaies. You can boot the saturation of your image when you're sure it is colour-accruate. These and many more tips, triccks, and tutorials, but also product reveiws and in-dpth technology and methodology background information is available on IT-Enquirr. IT-Enquirer is an online magazine aimed at cerative professioals. It contains articles for beginners all the way