It has been unseasonably warm and sunny in the Pacific Northwest this last month and instead of detailing my cars, I’ve been on an extremely difficult nerd mission: Evaluate color management systems.

Because I print my own fine art images and do a little bit of freelance photography for the advertising world, I have never really needed to have an official color management system. I was calibrated to my large format printers and the local color separator by eye and have been very close. (Not to mention 25 years of color experience to fall back on.) Most of you have to interface with a lot more than that, so you really need to have a system in place. A well-oiled color management system will give you consistent, repeatable results. With deadlines ever shortening, less time spent on color correction is usually a good thing.

A successful color management system takes all three facets of production into account: capture, display and printing. Without all three of these areas calibrated (most importantly calibrated to each other) you are still working blind. Don’t forget that you will need to have individual calibrations for every combination of device and output situation you use in order to get the most out of the system. Now is a good time to reevaluate your workflow and eliminate any unnecessary steps to the process. Simplify as much as possible!

Where to start? For now, I will assume that you have no color management in place. I rustled up three popular systems from Pantone, Monaco and GretagMacbeth, all major players in the color management arena. I installed them on a combination of systems, both Mac and PC to see where the strengths and weaknesses were.

Here are a few tips to make this a bit easier and get the most accurate color possible. If you are using a CRT monitor, leave it on for 24 hours before profiling it. 90 percent of the color "drift" will occur in the first 30 minutes of operation, but to get that last bit of accuracy, I suggest waiting a full day. If possible, if you use CRT monitors, try to keep the one you use for final color decisions on at all times (where are those flying toasters when we need them?). For those of you on LCD monitors, this is not an issue.

When making your test prints, give them 24 hours to stabilize. There is a bit of initial outgassing when you make an inkjet print, so if you measure the minute it comes off the printer, you will get a color shift later. I know this is all really geeky, but if you want accurate color, it is the price that must be paid.

Try and keep your monitor display as simple as possible. Boring as it is, neutral gray is best. While you are out writing checks, consider a light booth from any one of several manufacturers. Among my favorites are GretagMacbeth, Graphic Technology Inc., Just Normlicht, ColorView and Qualitest.

If you are doing a lot of four-color work for print, this will pay for itself in no time. A big part of color accuracy is viewing under similar lighting conditions. If you are using an inkjet printer as a soft proof for lithography, this will allow you to calibrate your system that much closer to your printer.

Nothing is worse than making prints with great color only to take them elsewhere and they look terrible because of the lighting differences. If you are on a tight budget, install a few fluorescent fixtures with color corrected tubes that have a 5500K color temperature specification. Paint the immediae area the most neutral gray you can find. This will at least get you along the path to having a neutral area to evaluate color. Any bright colors in the area will add a cast to what you are looking at.

So let’s unwrap the boxes and get to work.

GretagMacbeth Eye One Photo
The basic Eye One Photo package will calibrate your monitor and RGB printer. To calibrate your scanner and digital camera you will have to step up to the Eye One Publish ($2,599) or the Eye One Pro bundle ($3,999). You will need one of the advanced versions if you are profiling CMYK devices or if you use a Roland Hifi Jet with the CMYKOG inkset. Printers that use CMYKlclm inksets are fine. GretagMacbeth also makes the Eye One Beamer to calibrate your projector. I used this with my Epson S-1 projector and if you spend a lot of time presenting, this is money well spent. One of my personal pet peeves is to see someone demonstrating Photoshop and their images look terrible on screen, so this will make you look great in front of an audience!

The Eye One was very easy to get out of the box and get to work. There is a basic tutorial in the quick start guide as well as a full manual in PDF format. I found the Power Point presentation on the installer disk the easiest to follow. Both of the Eye One devices plug into your USB port. I suggest only using one of them in the USB chain at a time. I had more crashes than normal when plugging both in at once.

Calibrating your monitor, whether LCD or CRT, is very straightforward and only takes a few minutes – the whole process is presentation-driven using the supplied monitor calibrator. Be very careful if you are doing this on an LCD not to press the calibrator too close, this isn’t a suction cup like some of the older monitor calibrators. While the calibrator is measuring your monitor, it will change colors for a few minutes. This is normal. There is a basic and advanced mode, depending how much you want to adjust. I found using the advanced mode was worth the extra time, providing much more accurate color right away.

Next, calibrate the printer using the other measuring tool. The software will prompt you to print a test target. Use the paper you would like to profile first. Remember, you will be doing this for each paper and ink combination you use! Once the target is printed, you will need to measure it. You can measure the spots on the target individually, or you can use the plastic ruler to measure a row at a time. The key here is to make a moderate, deliberate motion across the paper. On the Windows platform if I did not do this very slowly I would cause the system to crash, but it seemed a little more forgiving on the Mac.

If you use a flatbed scanner, you can follow the same steps to become calibrated. You will have to print a test target, scan it and then evaluate. If you have to calibrate a film scanner, an additional film target must be purchased, so you have a calibrated piece of film to scan. TIP: I tried saving a buck and copying the print target with slide film, a huge waste of time. Just buy the calibrated slide.

Once you have created your profiles, your workflow and end result will determine where you use the profiles. Whether you are just printing in-house to an inkjet printer, color laser or going to press, you should have color files that are very accurate. If you are having any trouble with this, there is a lot of useful tutorial information on the Eye One CD and the Eye One web site.

Monaco Systems
Monaco Systems probably makes the widest range of color management tools, from their popular EZ Color software all the way up to Monaco Profiler Platinum. They also offer several bundle solutions, all the way up to a complete advanced package with just about everything you could ever need. I went with the almost-top-of-the-line Monaco Profiler Gold, bundled with the XR sensor for your monitor and the X-Rite DTP 41 Scanning Spectrophotometer. This bundle is $5,000, and the module to support multi-color and hexachrome (again, necessary with a Hifi Jet and OG inks) is an extra $1,000. The X-Rite DTP 41 is also available separately for about $2,500 and will allow you to make more accurate color measurements with the Macbeth and the Pantone software. This is also a very handy device to perform regular linearizations on your inkjet printer.

The Monaco Optix XR plugs into your USB port and the X-rite DTP 41 can attach via USB or your serial port. The same caveats apply here. Let the DTP 41 stabilize for a while before you use it to get the most accurate results.

Of the three systems tested here, the Monaco Profiler Gold has the most adjustable parameters. Which means: a. you can get in the most trouble with this one, or b. you have almost infinite adjustablility. Assuming you aren’t scared of option a, dig your heels in and go for it.

Initial monitor calibration is pretty similar to the other two systems. With that out of the way, use the DTP 41 to linearize your printer(s) and get started. Once you have printed the required test targets, you can use the spectrophotometer to get readings and create your profiles. One of the nicest features of Profiler Gold is that you can do the ultimate in fine tuning to your profiles. A few years ago I wrote a column about Photoshop Anonymous. Just when you thought you conquered compulsive behavior, the danger of excessive profiling is right around the corner. Remember, it’s about pleasing color. If you get too crazy with this, you will never see daylight again. (But you will have great color…don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

Scanner profiling is very straightforward and you can even use the color target with your digital camera to create an input profile for that. I was not totally convinced of the validity of this part of the process, so look for a more in-depth investigation of this part of the process in another issue. In my studio, I use a Minolta Color Meter III to perfect exposure and color temperature right at capture, so I wasn’t able to get any better color with the profile and many times it was worse.

Pantone Spyder Pro
If you only want basic color management and just want to calibrate your monitor, consider the Pantone Spyder Pro. For $349, you can have a calibrated monitor in a matter of minutes.

I tried this on a number of different systems and did not have good luck with it on a laptop. The Spyder Pro did just fine on CRT and LCD systems. I was even able to get pretty nice color on my old first generation iMac! (Once you start, you just can’t stop adjusting!)

Another handy tool from Pantone that no designer should be without is their Color Cue portable colorimeter. This thing is about the size of a big pickle and will give you a direct color readout on any flat surface you place it on! And it will do it in Pantone colors or CMYK breakdown.