Colour Management

Once you have entered the world of digital imaging it won’t be long before you come across the phrase ‘colour management’. In order to fully achieve the results you expect from your digital images you will need to learn how the digital files progress through all stages of the process and how your systems can affect the image – this is colour management.

Colour management is a very complex area within the industry and companies, such as Transpacolor, have invested heavily in calibrating their systems so that there is absolute consistency from the initial scan, viewing on screen to the final print. Furthermore there is no substitute for experience, and only with experience will you learn the subtleties of colour management and how digital images appear differently from the screen to the final print..

Nevertheless for the majority of people some simple adjustments can go a long way to improving the results we get from our digital files.

Monitor Calibration

The first, and probably most important stage, in setting up a digital system is to calibrate the computer monitor. The monitor is where you will view your images for selection, manipulation and adjustment prior to printing. Therefore you need to be confident that what you see on screen is a good representation of how the image will appear on a print, for example.

There are limitations to this process caused in the main by the fact that you are viewing an image in two entirely different forms. Viewing on a monitor is viewing the image with transmitted light (ie. light transmitted from your monitor) whilst a print is viewed with reflected light (ie. light reflected off the print).

Where to start

Many tools are available for monitor calibration, and some more expensive hardware and software packages measure colour directly off the screen. If you are looking to order prints from Transpacolor we would recommend that, as a starting point, you set up your monitor using the following step by step guide.

Step one: basic monitor calibration.

Step two: order a monitor calibration print from Transpacolor.

Step three: calibrate your monitor specifically to our print service.