A large part of BIG Images value to our customers is our predictable and repeatable processes. However, our process is only as good as the files that we recieve from our customers. And that’s where you come in. Responsibility for great color begins the moment an image is captured. That places quite a burden on our customers to maintain their own workflow for predictable color results. So I offer you these thoughts to help start you off towards a more consistent digital workflow.

First and foremost you have to count the costs. Great color comes after investing in great equipment and after establishing a habitual workflow that you are willing to maintain. While the current state of technology does not give us great color for free there are a few products that can really help.

This month I am going to look at some of the equipment that we use at BIG Images within our color workflow and why we use it. Next month I will go into our workflow and how we leverage all these pieces of technology to achieve better color management.

Monitors

Great color requires great computer dispays. It is, after all, the one piece of equipment that your eyes rely on to make on-the-spot color judgements. One of the best computer monitors money can buy is made by Eizo, which displays the full Adobe RGB color space. BIG Images uses Apple Cinema Displays which offer exceptional quality for a more affordable price. While they cannot display the full Adobe RGB color space, they are SWOP certified for soft proofing. That means you can proof your images on screen and they can approximate the brightness and feel of paper. In BIG Images fast-paced world of tradeshows and overnight shipments we often do not have time to offer our customers printed proofs, so we rely on our monitors to show us any color anomalies before they are printed.

Computers

BIG Images uses Apple computers because of their exceptional color management, partly due to ColorSync. According to Apple “Mac OS X is the only operating system that fully supports the ICC version 4 standard for managing color.” This ColorSync technology allows for all your devices, from your cameras to your scanners, monitors, and printers to speak the same color language. As we will see next month, part of your workflow requires calibration of your monitors, input devices (such as scanners), and output devices (such as printers). OS X seamlessly pulls all these profiles together and makes using and managing them extremely easy.

Calibration Hardware

BIG Images uses X-Right’s i1 colorimeter to calibrate its monitors. This device ensures that our displays are showing us the best possible color. Grey is really grey, white is a true white, and spot colors are rendered as close as possible to their true color. It is imperative that you invest in a colorimeter to profile your monitor. Humans’ perception of color is affected by everything from the time of day (the color temperature of the sunlight), the color of the surrounding environment, to the food consumed this morning, so unless you have an unbiased device like the i1 calibrating your monitor you cannot rely on its color accuracy.

Software

Great software is the glue that holds the whole thing together. Without fully integrated color management your images are in danger. High quality software such as the Adobe CS3 suite syncs the color settings of every application within it. As long as your images and designs do not leave your workflow, you can rest assured that they remain in a tightly color-managed environment.

And this leads me to next month’s article which will cover the actual workflow that pulls together all these pieces of technology into a cohesive, repeatable process.

Tags: color, solutions, workflow, jon beebe