Color Management Kit Instructions

Transcription

1 Color Management Kit Instructions Overview This Color Management Kit is designed to help you achieve predictable color results with your printed materials produced by CustomFlix. By carefully following the instructions here, you should be able to soft proof your DVD cover on your computer system so that you have a good idea of what the final physical proof will look like when it arrives from CustomFlix. This saves you the time and expense of a non-calibrated guess and see approach. Color management is a deep topic, and the purpose of this kit is not to explain the details of this process but rather give you high level instructions on how to calibrate your system and produce consistent results. If you are unfamiliar with color management, we have provided a brief section below explaining the basis to place the Color Management Kit instructions in context. For more information on color management, we recommend the book Understanding Color Management by Abhay Sharma, The Wikipedia entry on color management is also a useful starting point at wiki/color_management. What You Need To Use This Kit Required Adobe Photoshop software, version 7 or later (CS and CS2 are later than version 7) Computer running Mac OS X 10.4 or later or Windows XP with a color monitor capable of millions of colors CustomFlix member account Recommended Monitor color calibration device, such as the Spyder obidos/tg/detail/-/b0006jmilo. Color-controlled viewing box such as the PANTONE Color Viewing Light Model PVL Basics of Color Management Color management is the process by which users control the conversion of color images between the reproduction characteristics of various devices. The primary goal of color management is to obtain a good match across various color devices. For example, by using color management techniques, you can control how an image looks on a monitor so that it is consistent with how the same image looks when printed from a specific printer.

2 Color management is needed because various color devices, such as scanners, monitors, and printers, all have different abilities to reproduce various colors. There is no perfect printer or monitor - all systems have better abilities to reproduce some colors and worse abilities to reproduce other colors. This is due to real-world limitations in the inks or toners used by printers, as well as the different reproduction characteristics of monitor phosphors and LCDs. Systems also age over time, and a picture will look different on a monitor in a few years than it looks on the same monitor today. Monitors must be calibrated to account for their specific characteristics. Color management helps users systematically account for these differences to produce consistent results. The range of all the colors that a device can reproduce is called the device s gamut. This can be visualized as a three dimensional graph of the various colors as illustrated here. The larger the volume of the gamut, the more colors a device can reproduce. When comparing two devices, you ll often find that each device can t reproduce all the same colors of the other device. If you overlay the two gamuts, you can see intersections and areas that are outside of one or the other of the gamuts which show colors than one or the other device can t reproduce. Print system gamut srgb gamut compared to print system gamut A very common example of this is that your computer monitor can reproduce much more saturated colors than most printers are able to reproduce. If you try to print a very bright color with a printer, the paper version won t be as bright as that color looked on your monitor. By using this kit, you can make your monitor mimic the CustomFlix print system, so that what you see on your monitor will be pretty close to what our print system will actually create. To accomplish this neat trick, color management experts created a programmatic way to describe the color gamut of a device, called a profile. You ll find an ICC profile of the CustomFlix DVD cover printing system on the DVD in this Color Management Kit. You can load this profile into your computer to allow you to visualize how your covers will look when actually printed on our system. Using your montior to previsualize final output quality is called soft proofing and can save you a lot of time by not requiring you to print a copy, compare it to the screen, make adjustments, then print another copy and repeat until you are happy with the results. To help you confirm that your system is actually showing you what the CustomFlix system will produce, we ve included a printed sample (the cover of the Color Management Kit) and the

3 digital file from which this sample was printed. Once you have set up your system, you can view the digital file on your monitor and look at the printed sample to confirm that they do indeed look very similar. If they do not, you are not calibrated with our system. In order to color manage your system, you must go through the steps described below. These instructions assume you are using Adobe Photoshop version 7 or later. You can use other programs which support color management, but you ll need to refer to the manuals of your software for more details. Step 1 - Setting up your system 1. Calibrate your monitor Calibrating your monitor allows your computer to compensate for its specific characteristics to display an image with known colors accurately. For the best results, we recommend you use a hardware calibration device, such as the Sypder, /B0006JMILO. If you use a hardware device, follow its instructions and if you are given a choice on color spaces, choose srgb and a color temperature of 6500K. If you don t have a hardware device to calibrate your monitor, you can use your computer system s calibration software. If you are given a choice on color spaces, choose srgb and a color temperature of 6500K. On Mac OS X, use System Prefs > Display > Color > Calibrate... then follow the directions. On Windows, use the Adobe Gamma application that comes with Photoshop, and follow its directions. 2. Make sure your custom monitor profile is being used You need to make sure that the monitor profile you created in step 1 above is actually being used on your computer. On Mac OS X, select System Prefs > Displays > Color and make sure your new monitor profile is selected. On Windows, right-click on your desktop, chose Properties > Settings tab > Advanced button > Color Management tab and make sure your new monitor profile is selected. 3. Load CustomFlixJan2006 profile We ve created a profile that accurately describes how our print systems reproduce colors. You need to load this into your computer so that you will be able to preview what the final results will look like from our system. On Mac OS X, select Library > ColorSync > Profiles and select the CustomFlixJan2006 profile from the DVD included in this Color Management Kit. On Windows, right-click on the CustomFlixJan2006 profile on the DVD, and choose "Install profile."

4 Step 2 - Compare the sample to your monitor This step shows you the difference between how your calibrated monitor will display the sample image versus the actual output from our print system of the same sample image. This is a double check so you can be sure your system is calibrated. The light in your viewing room can dramatically affect the way a print looks. For example, if you have windows in your room and the sun is shining brightly, the print will look different than if you look at the same print at night when you only have florescent lights in the room. For most accurate viewing, you should have a color-controlled viewing box set to 6500 degrees, such as the PANTONE Color Viewing Light Model PVL Color-Viewing-Light-3-light-P252C75.aspx. If you don t have a viewing box, we recommend you close all curtains/blinds to your room and view the print under a mix of florescent and incandescent light. Be sure to always view prints under the same conditions. To see the difference that using a profile makes, first open the sample image from the DVD in Photoshop and without selecting any proofing options, compare it to the printed sample. Note how the saturated colors are much more intense on your monitor than in the printed sample. Now do the following to preview the output and soft proof your result. 1. In Photoshop, choose View > Proof Setup In the dialog, choose the following settings: Setup= Custom Profile = CustomFlixJan2006 Intent = Perceptual Use black point compensation Simulate paper white 2. Compare printed sample to monitor Choose View > Proof Colors. If you have done everything correctly, the image on your screen should closely match the actual printed sample. You can toggle the proofing on and off by pressing Command Y (on Mac) or Control Y (on Windows). If the sample and monitor don t match, go back through the directions above and make sure all settings are correct. Left - The sample file as displayed on a monitor without proofing turned on, Right - The same file with the View > Proof Colors option selected.

5 Step 3 - Creating your own DVD cover Now that you ve calibrated your monitor to our print system, you re ready to create the DVD cover image for the DVD you are publishing with CustomFlix. 1. Download the DVD cover template You can get the latest version online at: SellTitleIndex.jsp#templates. 2. Set your color management settings When you open a new file, such as this template, you may be prompted to select some color management settings. You can also manually open this dialog by choosing Photoshop > Color Settings Working Spaces, RGB = Adobe RGB Color management policies, RGB = Preserve Embedded Profiles 3. Create your image... Design your cover as you like and periodically use the View > Proof Colors command to switch between the unmanaged & soft proofing mode. It s often easier to work with the soft proofing mode turned off, but any color adjustments should be made with the Proof Colors feature turned on so that you can see how the changes will affect the final output. It is important to note that choosing the Proof Colors command does not actually change the colors contained in your file - it merely shows you how these colors will be reproduced by the printer. If you don t like the way a color is represented with the Proof Colors feature, you will need to change that color using various tools and commands, such as Adjust Brightness, Hue, Contrast, etc. And remember - no print system can reproduce the brightness and saturation of your monitor, as illustrated in Step 2 above. Note: Due to hardware limitations, the CustomFlix DVD face printing process is not as accurately color managed as the DVD cover printing system. We match the face printer to the cover printer as closely as reasonably possible, but there is inherently more drift and a different gamut than the cover print system. Using these same techniques on the DVD cover image is useful, but you should expect some variation. Step 4 - Prepare your image for upload to CustomFlix Once you ve created your DVD cover image in Photoshop, you should save the original layered version for future use. You will then create a JPEG version from this original version and upload the JPEG to your CustomFlix member account. In the future, if you want to make changes to your cover, you should re-open your original working file, make the desired changes, then go through these steps again. Do not make changes to your JPEG version, which is lower quality than your original layered file. 1. Save your original layered version Use the Save command. We also recommend you make a backup of this file in case you accidentally save over it during the conversion process.

6 2. Convert your file This step changes the original layered version image to use the correct profile for our system. Choose Image > Mode > Convert to Profile and use the following settings: Conversion engine = Adobe ACE Destination = srgb Conversion intent = Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual (whichever looks best to you; we generally recommend Perceptual if there's a wide range of colors in the image) Use Black Point Compensation; use Dither 3. Save file as JPEG, Choose File > Save As and select JPEG as the format. Choose quality = 11 or 12 (total size must be no more than 6 MB) Choose the Embed color profile option 4. Close the original file When you close the original file, if you are prompted to save changes to it, do not do so - you ve already saved the original file in Step Upload the JPEG file to CustomFlix Log into your member account at and upload the JPEG to your title. See the online directions for details on using your member account.