Monitor calibration and screen soft proofing

The display is a window for people to talk to the computer. However, the contrast, brightness and color rendering of the monitor will be attenuated after a period of time, resulting in inaccurate display color. The display color is not allowed to bring great inconvenience to people's work, especially in industries where the requirements for color accuracy are high (such as printing, advertising, design, etc.). If the color seen on the display is very different from the printable color, the color work will not find the direction. Therefore, it is necessary to calibrate the monitor after a period of time.

In general, the better the display, the better the color rendering, the slower the attenuation, the better the display calibration effect; the worse the display, the poorer the color rendering, the faster the attenuation, and the calibration of the display will not reach a good level. effect. Quality determines the ability.

2. Monitor calibration

1) Required hardware

Spectrolino or Eye-One and other products.

2) The required software

ProfileMaker, Eye-One Match, etc.

3) Calibration of the display (taking the combination of Spectrolino and ProfileMaker as an example)

(1) Install ProfileMaker software and connect the hardware Spectrolino.

(2) Open the ProfileMaker1/Select Monitor item, where you can calibrate the monitor and create the ICC of the monitor. In the Reference, select the type of monitor you want to calibrate: CRT (Cathode Ray Tube); LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). Sample select SpectroLino. Then, follow the on-screen instructions and proceed step by step.

(3) Follow the on-screen instructions

A. The software prompts you to calibrate the SpectroLino on the white point.

B. Ask if you need to correct the display, and select “Yes” if it has not been corrected beforehand.

C. Expected corrected color temperature then appears: 6500K; Gamma: 2.2 (PC), 1.8 (MAC); Brightness: 100%.

D. The next step is to first adjust the display contrast to the maximum and absorb the food on the display. Press Start and the software will automatically adjust until the two small triangles are aligned.

E. Next Step: To minimize the brightness of the monitor, press Start and then manually adjust it to increase the brightness little by little until the two small triangles are aligned.

F. Next step: If the monitor can adjust the RGB tristimulus value, or color temperature value, then press Start, the food will measure the current RGB value and color temperature value, and then adjust the monitor RGB value, let the color temperature value to 6500K, and RGB three-color The small triangles are all centered, and there is one more critical point, which is to make the brightness value 100 (the ideal range is 80~120). If you exceed this range, it may lead to undesirable effects.

G. After the calibration is completed, it will prompt whether to recalibrate or not. Select “No”.

H. Then start the ICC measurement of the screen and save it after finishing.

I. ICC can be generated by making the necessary settings. Default setting: Default (Alternatively select Large, larger data size, the effect will be better), Measured white Point.

If it is a new monitor, you can select either D65 or D50, but if RGB cannot be adjusted, or if the color temperature cannot be high, Measured White Point must be selected.

J. Click Start to generate the monitor's ICC.

K. The software asks whether to set this ICC to the system default ICC, and selects "Yes". The Monitor.icc of the monitor is automatically copied to the following address: Winnt/System32/spool/drivers/color (PC) for system calls.

3. Screen soft proofing

Screen soft proofing should be based on the screen calibration.

When performing soft proofing on the screen, the configuration of parameters is very important. The completeness and accuracy of the parameters determine the effect of soft proofing on the screen. Therefore, it is recommended to generate the characteristic file ICC of the input devices (such as digital cameras, scanners) and output devices (such as printers) that are related to your own production before the soft proofing of the screen.

1) Color mode conversion and screen soft proofing in Photoshop

(1) Basic settings

Open Photoshop software and make the following settings. This setting shows the true color of the image as much as possible.

Open a picture under this setting, the displayed color is close to the actual object.

(2) Color mode conversion

RGB to CMYK.

A. Open an RGB image and specify the color source parameters for an input device (such as a scanner, digital camera, etc.) for this RGB image. If you do not have your own device parameters, select Adobe RGB (1998).

B. If you have your own output device, please select the output device parameters (such as printers, printers, etc.). If not, select US.sheetfed Coated v2. or US.Sheetfed Unoated v2.

Select "Mode"/"CMYK" to get an ideal RGB to CMYK plot.

(3) Screen soft proofing in Photoshop

A. Copy the monitor-calibrated Monitor.icc and the output device's reference.icc to the following address: Winnt/System32/spool/drivers/color (PC) for soft proofing of the screen.

B. Open a picture and make the following settings: Coated and Uncoated. In the Profile field, select reference.icc. If you do not have your own icc, select US.sheetfed Coated or US.sheetfed Uncoated. The screen can be soft proofed.

2) Screen soft proofing in BestColor

A Configure monitor parameters for BestColor's screen soft proofing.

In BestColor, Settings/Common/Monitor Overview/Use another monitor profile (select the monitor's calibration file).

B Outputs the parameter group to the configuration file.

Select the file to be soft-proofed on the screen (right-click select directly)

In the dialog box that pops up, configure the BestColor digital proofing parameters, including basic linear printer, paper profile, and printing parameters. Click OK after configuration, the color of the picture displayed on the screen and the corresponding print will be very similar, that is, the screen soft proofing.

Source: China Design Printing Network