Ground Zero: Color Calibration
Color Calibration with the Photocal colorimeter.
BY STEPHEN ROMANIELLO
Y ou’re headed to the beach and
bring along your laptop with the
intention of doing some work color-
correcting images for output to your
large format printer. You figure — hey,
it’s a beautiful, warm, sunny day, why
not catch some rays while I’m
working?
You arrive at the beach and pull your
Armani sunglasses out of your Gucci
bag, pop ’em on your head and shuffle
toward the dunes. You set up your
beach chair and umbrella, smear on
the sunscreen, pour out a cool piña
colada from your thermos, launch
Figure 1 Adobe Photoshop® and start hitting
Select monitor from the Photocal folder to begin the Calibration the keys.
process. What’s wrong with this scene?
Aside from the possibility of getting
sand in your piña colada and sunscreen
on your keyboard, there are some
serious consequences with trying to do
color adjustments in the beach work-
space environment.
First, intense sunshine provides way
too much ambient light for good color
correction. It reduces the brightness
and contrast of what you see on-screen.
You’ll barely be able to see the image.
Furthermore, sunglasses filter the
colors that your monitor displays. No,
everyone knows that the beach is not
the ideal location to perform color cor-
Figure 2 rections.
Photocal’s Gamma selection window. However, it’s almost as bad as per-
forming color corrections on an un-
calibrated monitor!
STABLE AND OPTIMIZED
Calibration is the ground zero of
color management. A monitor that has
been stabilized and optimized will dis-
play a screen image that can be
adjusted with confidence. Adobe
44 ■ DIGITAL GRAPHICS ■ JULY 2000
Photoshop comes with software that
lets you analyze the hardware charac-
teristics of your monitor. This software,
Adobe Gamma, which is accessed
though the Color Management assis-
tant in the Help menu in Photoshop,
will set the characteristics of your mon-
itor with only limited accuracy because
the adjustment is based on your ability
to see color variations. The human eye
is an excellent optical device; however,
the possibility of different interpreta-
tions can effect the accuracy of the
measurement.
If you are interested in a more accu-
rate system you might consider using a
colorimeter, such as the PhotoCal mc7
made by Color Vision, priced at
around $300. A colorimeter, is an
instrument intended to measure
radiant energy emitted, transmitted,
absorbed, or reflected under controlled
conditions.
I found the system to be compact,
accurate and user friendly. It is available
for both Windows and Macintosh
environments. It comes with a hard-
ware device that attaches to your screen
that measures the temperatures of its
phosphors.
The software component, called
Photocal, presents an interface that
walks you step by step through the cal-
ibration process and uses the hardware
measurements to write a custom RGB
profile for optimum display.
A WALK-THROUGH
The first step is to turn your monitor
on at least one half-hour prior to cali-
bration to allow the colors of the mon-
itor to stabilize.
After you’ve installed the Photocal
software, you can access the interface
 by choosing the Monitors file in the
Photocal folder (see Figure 1). That
will launch the Calibration Assistant
you will use to create a custom mon-
itor profile.
The windows guide you through the
process of selecting parameters for
brightness and contrast (black and
white point brightness), the gamma
(midtone lightness) and the color tem-
perature (the warmth and coolness of
Figure 3 white). There are clear, succinct expla-
Photocal’s color temperature selection window nations for each step presented as you
proceed.
The calibration process begins by
optimizing the brightness and contrast
controls on your monitor. For contrast
you simply set the control at its
highest setting.
For brightness you are presented
with a box with four swatches of dark
gray to black. You are instructed to
adjust the brightness control on your
monitor so that you can see the slight
variation of shade between the
swatches.
Other windows direct you to choose
Figure 4 between two color temperatures —
The sensor measuring the monitor’s phosphors 5000K for print or 6500K for multi-
media, web or video applications (see
Figure 3), and Gamma, 1.8 for Mac
or 2.2 for PC (see Figure 2). The one
window that is confusing asks you to
identify display controls. You’ll need to
consult your monitor’s documentation
to determine if it has separate RGB
color controls.
Once the parameters are set, you
attach the hardware sensor to the
screen (see Figure 4) and the rest of
the process is virtually automatic.
The sensor is a 2.5" square object
that attaches to your screen with suc-
Figure 5 tion cups. The sensor feeds into the
The sensor analyzes the temperatures of the red, green and blue computer via either the SCSI or USB
components of your monitor. port, depending on the model you
purchase.
The sensor analyzes the temperatures
of the red, green and blue components
of your monitor (see Figure 5) and
feeds the information back to the soft-
ware where your custom profile is
written. In the last step of the process
you are directed to save your profiles
to your Colorsync folder on the Mac
or the Monitor Profiles folder in
Windows.
EVALUATION
I found the PhotoCal mc7 col-
orimeter to be an easy-to-use, fairly
inexpensive instrument. It’s equal or
better than other instruments costing
a lot more. It assures accurate, stable
color on your monitor from session to
session.
It is superior to software calibrators
because it measures and profiles
the monitor’s actual characteristics.
Because the color on monitors shifts
over time, the manufacturer recom-
mends that you perform this proce-
dure every two weeks.
Color Vision has a website you can
access to learn more about the system
at www.colorcal.com.
Stephen Romaniello is
department chair of the
Visual Communications
Department of the
Communications
Graphics Program at
Pima Community
College in Tucson, Ariz., and a certified
instructor/authorized trainer of many of
today’s computer design software packages.
He is the co-author of Mastering Adobe
GoLive (sybex) and the author of Mastering
Adobe Photoshop (sybex) to be released in
November 2000 DG
JULY 2000 ■ DIGITAL GRAPHICS ■ 45