Re: Calibration software for an iMAC

Wolfgang Weisselberg <ozcvgtt02@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris Malcolm <cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If eyes are as bad at colour matching as you say then why bother using
hardware to remove errors so small we couldn't possibly see them?

Our eyes are quite good when comparing side by side. Just
hold up a print next to your monitor and see if you cannot
see differences.

Contrariwise, if eyes are good enough to see the benefits of using
good colour matching hardware, then it should also be possible to
develop methods of using eyes to achieve the same accuracy.

No problem. You will need a stable, consistent source of light
for every colouring and shade to compare against --- a whole
bunch of visual tuning forks, so to say.

I don't understand why I would need more than one stable consistent
light source.

My guess is you will find it a couple thousand times more expensive
than current calibration hardware, not to mention very much slower
and quite eye straining for the same quality.

Once I'd established a good comparative lighting set up so I could
view prints and screen side by side with good print colour viewing it
took me an hour, possibly two, using my eyes and test prints to
arrange that my printer and screen were close enough that I can use my
screen as a colour printing preview. I used a carefully snooted
tungsten halogen lamp to light the print without disturbing the
lighting of the screen. I had already established that my printer was
close enough to good commercial lab prints in colour. The small
differences that still exist are smaller than those introduced by
changes of time of day so I don't care about them.

My old male eyes are certainly not as good at colour matching as those
of some young women I know, and what I see is a combination of the
slightly redder cast of my left eye and the slightly bluer of my
right, so if I'm being very fussy about a certain colour I'll close
the eye with the poorest discrimination at that colour. In the few
times I've paid for an expensive lab-produced image for an exhibition
colour hasn't been a problem as far as I could see, and nobody with
better colour vision complained.

I also notice that the differences in colour cast of a print
introduced by the lighting in different galleries is far larger than
the differences I can easily see, so there doesn't seem any point in
fussing over smaller differences unless I was aiming to produce a
print specifically for the lighting conditions in a specific
gallery. I regard coloured gallery lighting as a problem the gallery
needs to fix.

--
Chris Malcolm



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