This week in school, we are learning to color correct based on profiles. We used one photo converted into three different color profiles. At first I was very discouraged being that color in photography is much more complicated than I had originally anticipated.
As aspiring photographers we don't often think of color management as a structural tool in our "digital toolbox" like we would say Photoshop as a whole, light room, and bridge. We still think of it as a film photographers game. Sure working with film is a longer process, but color correction in both the digital and film realm is huge. When we send a photo to the printer that has not been color corrected we are not accurately communicating to the printer what we want to see when our print comes off the finish line.
Using color profiles with a calibrated monitor not only helps translate what you are seeing to print, its a kind of quality control. Our eyes can see more colors than printers have the ability to re-produce. So having a color space of a ProPhoto when your lab uses SRGB can be detrimental to your work, making your print muddy and flat because your lab does not have that option of color space for their hardware.
As aspiring photographers we don't often think of color management as a structural tool in our "digital toolbox" like we would say Photoshop as a whole, light room, and bridge. We still think of it as a film photographers game. Sure working with film is a longer process, but color correction in both the digital and film realm is huge. When we send a photo to the printer that has not been color corrected we are not accurately communicating to the printer what we want to see when our print comes off the finish line.
Using color profiles with a calibrated monitor not only helps translate what you are seeing to print, its a kind of quality control. Our eyes can see more colors than printers have the ability to re-produce. So having a color space of a ProPhoto when your lab uses SRGB can be detrimental to your work, making your print muddy and flat because your lab does not have that option of color space for their hardware.
The whole of this chart is the visible spectrum of color. With in the spectrum there is our color profiles, when printing using an online lab there should be information some where on the site either to download to your computer as a working profile, or an advised profile.
First I bought a ColorMunki Smile and calibrated my monitor,
We were asked to take one photo in RAW format and open it in camera raw work it till satisfaction change the profile for this photo three different times. One for Prophoto, one for Adobe1998 and finally one for SRGB which is the profile which most color labs today print from.
You can change the photo's profile in the raw dialog box by clicking on the workflow options below the photo.
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After clicking you can change your desired color space in the workflow dialog box.
again if you are using an online lab to print your photos you can often load a profile in which that lab prints from.
You can also change your color profile when making a new document, this is helpful when making any new graphics.
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Another way is to change your profiles is to
Edit ---> Color Settings
Edit ---> Color Settings
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Color is an important control in a photographers "Tool Box". It is a creative control in which we can use to create mood, emotion, color contrast and a photo that is leads with quality.
Remember to Calibrate every two weeks and keep your profiles up to date!
PhotoMoto Girl!
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