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- MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT HOW TO
- MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT PRO
- MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT FREE
- MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT MAC
- MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT WINDOWS
X-Rite’s Monaco OptixXR Pro system was a close second for out-of-the-box color accuracy, and it offered a wide range of adjustments to the finished profiles. The Spyder2Pro is the easiest to use and the best choice for advanced hobbyists. If you have more than one Mac, using the calibrator will help you keep color consistent across machines. From start to finish, it will take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes to calibrate your monitor with any of the tools I tested. How much you can fine-tune your monitor’s color will determine the ultimate accuracy of your ICC profiles, but even if you have a PowerBook with only a brightness adjustment, proper use of a calibrator will give you more-accurate screen colors than you have now.
MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT FREE
I looked for neutral flesh tones (neither overly red and warm nor blue and cold), clean highlights, shadows free of color tint, and gray-scale images that were neutral gray, without colors. I performed my tests at a 6,500-Kelvin white point. It also lets you adjust the fine details in shadows and highlights to be as neutral as possible, but this requires advanced color-adjustment skills.
MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT HOW TO
If you have the manual settings on your monitor, for example, the software tells you how to set them so that you have an accurate white point from which to start. The advanced mode lets you choose the gamma (contrast ratio), white point, and brightness settings you want your monitor to display, so you can adjust your monitor for flesh tones and gray-scale images. This is fine for most advanced hobbyists. Typically, this color will be on the warm side, with a bit more contrast and saturation than you’ll see in a perfectly color-corrected image. When you run the calibration software in basic mode, the profile you achieve won’t offer the ultimate in color accuracy, but it will be what the industry refers to asĬolor. I tested again in advanced mode and got very different results. I ran all the calibrators in basic mode first, and while all the results were somewhat off, the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display 2 unit came closest to the reference print. The basic method doesn’t take into account room lighting or other monitor adjustments. The basic mode requires no technical knowledge, and you don’t need to adjust your monitor-just click on the Calibrate button, and you get a profile in five minutes. I used the monitor calibrators with their respective software in both basic and advanced modes to see which one produced the closest on-screen match to the reference print. I created a reference print with an Epson Stylus 4000 printer on matte paper.
MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT WINDOWS
I even tried them on the no-name LCD panel connected to my Windows workstation for a worst-case scenario.
MAC COLOR CALIBRATION SOFTWARE FOR PRINT MAC
The test machines included a 667MHz PowerBook G4, a 1.8GHz 20-inch iMac G5, and a 1.6GHz Power Mac G5 with an 18-inch Sony XDM-82 LCD and a 19-inch LaCie Electron Blue CRT all were running OS X 10.3.7. Do not press the calibrator tightly against an LCD panel, because this will change its color and may damage the monitor. These measuring devices plug into your Mac’s USB port and either rest on your LCD screen or attach to your CRT with little suction cups. Using several different computers, I tested three popular color-calibration systems: ColorVision’s $299 Spyder2Pro Studio hardware-software package GretagMacbeth’s $249 Eye-One Display 2 with Eye-One Match software and X-Rite’s $379 Monaco OptixXR Pro hardware-software package. Color-management systems then use that profile to display color accurately on your screen. Such a calibration package precisely measures the way a monitor’s color behaves, optimizes that behavior by tweaking the lookup tables (LUTs) in the video card to produce smooth gradations and neutral grays, and then writes a profile that describes the optimized behavior. While there are some software-only calibration packages, this review includes only hardware-software combinations. A monitor-calibration system-composed of a hardware colorimeter and its accompanying software-takes you beyond the accuracy readings of the built-in Apple ColorSync Utility, which provides strictly eyeball measurements. Calibrating your monitor is the first step in achieving accurate color on your Mac, so the colors you see on your screen are as close as possible to those captured by your scanner or digital camera.
