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Photoshop 5.Colour Management!
 

19 February 1999.www.publish.com'sFebruary features has a comprehensive look at colour management under Photoshop 5.0.  The feature has many handy tips and explaination of the different colour spaces (and their relative merits/demerits), ICC profiles and other issues relevant to colour management. Definitely worth a look.

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Publish.Com's February Feature
Avoid Shocking Colour

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CoolType.ComTips Galore!

Found the tips at CoolType easy to follow and very useful for web-design, card-making and generally for creating professional looking effects. Learn how to create:-

• tv-scan lines (if you love banding, here's how to induce it);
• shattered glass effect for text;
• You've seen X-Files, haven't you? Learn how to produce their logo effect


The tips at Cooltype cover quite a few applications (eg Pagemaker, Illustrator). Have fun using them.

Try this program by Venna Jayaram for arranging your pictures onto one sheet of paper. It allows you to save paper as you can print multiple images on one sheet without the need to purchase expensive page layout software such as PageMaker. Here are some of its features:-
 
• multiple size prints 
• automatically lays out all the prints to use the LEAST amount of 
• photo paper so you waste less paper  
• TWAIN support for scanners and digital cameras.  
Go download it (its' shareware) at Venna's Photo Paper Saver Site .

The program automatically lays out the photo images to take up the least amount of space on the paper. Definetely worth a try! 

 

Here are some links which I will update and expand on from time to time for tips on using Adobe Photoshop for digital photography purposes. For instance, tips on how to digitally repair photographs can certainly come in handy for photo-restoration of old photographs.Here are the links:-
 
• Adobe.com's list of tips and techniques
This is a definite . It is a list of tips and techniques, not only on those relevant to digital photography. I have highlighted some (just a few, the Adobe page has lots of links) of those more relevant to digital photography as follows:-
 
• Repairing Digital Photographs Russell Brown shows how to repair your digital images with Photoshop. 
Digital Stain Remover Russell Brown shows you how to remove those pesky stains from your fine images using Photoshop. This is very interesting!
• Nicer Looking Fade Effect Etsuro Endo's Tips for creating a smoother fade effect.  White to Transparent Magic Find out about a plug-in that will turn white areas into transparency. 
• Photo.Net's Stepwise sepia toning with Photoshop. A how-to on using Photoshop to digitally sepia tone a b&w image. 
Have fun with the tips.  Email me if you have links to contribute to this list.
 

Professional colour labs and scanning bureaus services offer greater accuracy of scans and colour matching as they use calibrated systems: ie equipment which are tuned and calibrated so that the image can be scanned in and  output as accurately as possible in terms of colour reproduction and colour matching. For instance, Kodak produces a widely available calibrated Ektachrome transparency ("the Kodak Q60 Slide"), each one of which is an original (and not a duplicate), specifically for testing and calibration purposes. The Kodak Q60 Slide can be purchased by home users as well (don't know a source at the moment, but try camera shops) and can be used to test how accurately scanners are able to scan. See Tony Sleep's website (Tony Sleep Photography Site) for more on scanners and how the Kodak Q60 Slide was used to test scanner accuracy.

Let me state at the onset that calibration is not an easy topic. It's a science! It is very complex and involves the consideration of many factors. That being said, some attempts at calibrating your digital darkroom should still yield some positive results. Just forget about achieving a perfectly calibrated digital darkroom (at least not at the consumer level)!

The Epson Photo EX did not ship with calibration software or tips (in the user manual) other than some basic tips. The following are the components of any digital darkroom which can and should be calibrated for optimal results:-

1The Monitor - What you see is not what you get most of the time unless you have calibrate your monitor to match the output of your printer. For instance, if you think a certain shade of blue looks too deep on-screen, and it actually prints out lighter, then your monitor could be calibrated to match your printout. It is not advisable to adjust the 'contrast' or 'brightness' knobs on your monitor. Rather, you should adjust the gamma settings of your video card. A good video card should allow you to do that. Once you have found optimal settings for your environment, save the gamma settings. As and when you find you need to tweak your settings, work off your saved gamma settings so that you don't waste time redoing whatever calibration which you may have performed in the past.  In short, make sure you are not blaming all your colour mismatch woes on a fuzzy old monitor which should be replaced! 

Have a look at the following for more tips on diplay management:-

• Timothy Autiokari's detailed studies (no less) on calibration at his website at:- Accurate Image Manipulation for Desktops

• Michael Shaffer's display management page at:- http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mshaf/shafhome/gamma.htm

Clearly my comments here are just scratching the surface of this topic and I would advise those of you interested to find out more to visit Timothy's site. I received Timothy's email on this topic which goes as follows:- "Now I say it up front: What I say on my www (it is all linear calibration) is not the easiest to go with using consumer grade devices. But even with consumer grade, it will provide better results.". 

2The Printer - One area of interest for Epsonites is calibrating the Photo 700/EX for use with different paper types. If you use Epson paper/filmand choose the correct settings, that should do the trick for the most part but even then some of you may find that the settings (in the driver) still need to be tweaked. Use of third-party paper also does not guarantee that colours will be accurately reproduced. Hence, calibration comes into play. For instance, I find the Epson photo-quality inkjet card excellent as it gives a fine-art, non-glossy look which is quite unique. However, most images tend to come out rather dull. TIP: If you use Epson's photo-quality inkjet card, you may want to push the saturation and contrast sliders up a notch or two so that images print out with more vibrancy

Subjective Calibration?
Whilst the term "calibration" is mostly used in relation to the achievement of "accurate" colour reproduction, you can also calibrate for your personal preference, eg calibrate you printer to what you like to see, not what the printer should print out as a matter of strict rules relating to colour matching and etc. An example of this would be use of the colour sliders in the driver settings of the Photo EX where you can set the amount of colour 'imbalance' or cast which you would like to have.

3The Image manipulation software  -  Photoshop for instance, allows many settings to be adjusted to for purposes of calibration. As I am totally unqualified to comment on this topic, look for ideas and help from the following sites:-
 
• Again, look at Timothy Autiokari's website at Accurate Image Manipulation for Desktops for his detailed comments and tips on colour calibration in Photoshop 4.0 and 5.0. 
• I received some tips from Michael Shaffer on this topic where he suggested the following sites:-
• Adobe Photoshop 5 for Photographers

This is the website of Martin Evening entitled "a professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Mac and PC". It contains in-depth discussions on Adobe Photoshop 5.0's new colour management system. 
• Adobe Photoshop's Technical Guide

This page waa created by Adobe Technical Support in response to questions from users about certain features or technical aspects of Adobe Photoshop. Covers the following topics:-
• Halftones and Scanning 

An overview of traditional and digital halftoning and tips for getting the best results when scanning an image.
• Color Management Systems

An overview of color management systems.
• Color Management in Adobe Photoshop 5.0 

An overview of the new color management features in Adobe Photoshop 5.0.
• Color Management Workflows in Photoshop 5.0

A number of specific steps for accomplishing certain color management tasks in Photoshop 5.0. Has guides on the various types of calibration which you can perform under Photoshop 5.0. Check it out.
• www.pixelboyz.com's site

You can find an Adobe PDF file which documents how Photoshop 5 handles color.
4The Scanner - The drivers supplied with the HP Photosmart are too basic. For instance, you can't save your preferred settings. So each scan is pretty much a fresh one and you would have to eyeball the scanned image and then adjust the sliders for best results. The fact that the sliders cannot be adjusted by keying in a value is also disadvantagous as you don't really know how much you are changing values other than looking at the slider. In short, its difficult to be accurate with the HP supplied drivers. As an alternative, try Ed Hammricks' driver (Vuesmart). Email me if you have some comments or tips to add. The closest thing to calibration for slide/negative scanning on the Photosmart is Steve Hoffman's recommendation that a few preparatory scans be made to warm up the scanner first. Try his tip to get the best results.

........................................................... HP Web PrintSmart.Webprinting made easy HP's latest Freeware called HP WEB PRINTSMART is a brilliant little piece of free software for web printing.  Ever wonder how to print webpages with white text on a dark background? Wonder no more. HP's gem of a freeware makes web printing ever so easy.  Here's HP's press release on this software:- HP Web PrintSmart 1.0 Software Turns Internet into Personal Publishing Tool New Software Automatically Prints Customized Newspapers, Reports and Other Information from the Web "Palo Alto, California. June 1, 1998 Hewlett-Packard Company today introduced new software that allows people with Internet access to print customized newspapers, reports and other information found on the Web. HP Web PrintSmart 1.0 software can scan Web sites, search for keywords, and automatically format and print the results. All documents can be printed complete with table of contents, page numbering and customized font styling. Web PrintSmart software also offers an automated print-scheduling option, which allows users to generate and print reports while they are away from their computers. For example, customized newspapers, complete with the latest headline news, market reports, industrynews and sports scores, can be created overnight so that they are available at the start of each day.  The software also offers keyword searches that work like a clippingservice. For instance, a businessperson wanting the latest news on a particular company could set Web PrintSmart software to visit Internet news sites periodically and print desired information. Web PrintSmart also can be set to search online classified ads for specific items of interest, and a preview feature allows the user to decide which pages to print.  "Web PrintSmart will dramatically increase productivity and save time by providing a much needed link between the Internet and the printer," said Jim Lyons, HP product marketing manager for the Internet Solutions, Personal LaserJet Division. "While there is a tremendousamount of information on the Internet, people struggle to convert that information into a usable form. Products such as Web PrintSmart are part of HP's initiative to help people harness the vast resources of the Web."  Go download it from HP's website. It works great with my Epson Photo EX and the HP laserjets I use at work although you will find at the HP website that it is "for HP printers only". In fact, I find this piece of software very useful for doing net-based research. For instance, say I am looking for the latest reviews on the Epson Photo EX, I would use the search engines that I normally use to find websites with reviews. Once I have found a useful site, I can index it by "retrieving it" from Web PrintSmart. Once I have collected some sites, I can then save my collection of sites as a HP Web PrintSmart file (.hps)which I can open (or print) later to get the most recent and updated pages of the sites that I have collected in the course of my surfing. Thus, you can create many hpsfiles on any topic under the sun which you can either open later and presto...all the sites on that topic are downloaded by the program. Great work HP!

HP's  Web PrintSmart  download site.  Web PrintSmart is FREE!