Page 81 - Enhancing CAD Drawings with Photoshop

4386.book Page 64 Monday, November 15, 2004 3:27 PM

64 CHAPTER 2 WORKING WITH COLOR

Calibrating Monitors
Here are some recommendations for achieving the best results when calibrating your monitor:
◆ Make sure a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor has been on for at least 30 minutes prior to creating a pro-
file. CRTs need warm-up time to produce stable color.
◆ Set your graphics card’s color depth to 32-bit True Color.
◆ Set your desktop background to a neutral 50% gray.
◆ Match the lighting in your studio to the lighting where your output will be viewed.
◆ Calibrate your monitor every month, because performance declines over time.
◆ Use calibration hardware to create more accurate profiles. (See the “Professional Color” section later
in this chapter.)

If possible, you should disable color management in your printer driver. Let Photoshop do this
work. It is a mistake for both Photoshop and a printer driver to try and take over this important job,
because conflicts will arise. You must decide which software will manage color and stick with this
decision throughout your workflow.
If you have other peripheral devices, such as digital cameras, scanners, and printers, disable
color correction in their drivers also. In this book, Photoshop will be entirely responsible for color
management.

Consistent Color Printing
Now that you have accurately profiled your monitor and output devices, your infrastructure is set up
to maintain consistent color. Earlier in this chapter you set up your working space and set color man-
agement policies, so you are also ready to work consistently with color in Photoshop.
Using a printing press can be an expensive proposition. Before you make color separations and
produce the CMYK plates, print a hard proof, or color-accurate hard copy, on an inexpensive printer
(an inkjet, for example). That way, you can spot potential problems before they become expensive
mistakes.
To save even more, you can make a soft proof on the screen without actually printing anything.
However, soft proofs are only accurate if your system is already color-accurate throughout. Soft
proofs can show you on screen how your image will look on a specific printing press, desktop printer,
or operating system before you print.
You’ll make a soft proof and then print the image.
1. Open the file StreetTagged.psd from the CD.
2. Choose View Proof Setup Working CMYK if this is not already selected. The colors may
shift slightly as the image displays with U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 color space.
3. Choose View Proof Setup Custom to open the Proof Setup dialog box, as shown in
Figure 2.10.