Color accuracy on screen

Straight out of the box just about all LCD monitors are too bright and too blue for photo editing (gray tones are not neutral), so we need to change them to settings that are commonly recognized as ‘standard’ for professional photographers. This process is called ‘monitor calibration’. The next part of the process is to measure the color characteristics of your unique monitor so that Photoshop understands how color is displayed on your screen. The color characteristics are saved in a file called a ‘color profile’ that uses the file extension ‘.icc’. Photoshop can then read a monitor profile to ensure that images are displayed accurately on your screen. If the photographer only takes one action to improve their color management it would be to plant the cornerstone of color management - calibrate and profile the monitor you are working on. Photoshop will now display what your camera saw when you first captured the image. Any adjustments you now make to the color or tone of the image will be appropriate and not misguided due to a monitor that has not been calibrated and skews the colors so that they appear incorrect.

If you require a color critical workflow it is essential to create the optimum viewing conditions when working with digital images. Start by positioning your monitor so that it does not reflect windows or lights. Every commercial photographer must then calibrate and profile their monitor if color accuracy is important to their retouching workflow. The Industry standards are: Whitepoint - D65 Gamma 2.2 Luminance between 100 and 140 cd/m2

Note > A standard unit of measurement for luminance is often stated as candela per square metre or cd/m2 .

Budget devices are very affordable and easy to use (such as the Pantone Huey or Spyder2 Express). Professional quality but affordable units such as the X-Rite/Gretag Macbeth Eye-One Display 2 takes the guesswork out of monitor and room luminance levels.