Configuring Color Profiles for Your Camera, Monitor, and Printer
- Configuring Your Camera to Match Photoshops Color Space
- Configuring Photoshop for Adobe RGB (1998)
- Calibrating Your Monitor (The Lame Built-In Freebie Method)
- The Right Way to Calibrate Your Monitor (Hardware Calibration)
- The Other Secret to Getting Pro-Quality Prints That Match Your Screen
Configuring Your Camera to Match Photoshop’s Color Space
Although there are entire books written on the subject of color management in Photoshop, in this chapter we’re going to focus on just one thing—getting what comes out of your color inkjet printer to match what you see onscreen. That’s what it’s all about, and if you follow the steps in this chapter, you’ll get prints that match your screen. Now, I’m not going into the theory of color management, or CMYK soft proofing, or printing to multiple network printers, etc. It’s just you, your computer, and your color inkjet printer. That, my friends, we can do.
Step One:
If you want to get consistent color from your camera to Photoshop to your printer, you’ll want everybody speaking the same language, right? That’s why if you shoot in either JPEG, TIFF, or JPEG+RAW, I’m recommending that you change your camera’s color space from its default sRGB (which is a color space designed for images only shown on the Web) to Adobe RGB (1998), which is probably the most popular color space used by photographers whose final image will come from a color inkjet printer. Now, if you only shoot in RAW, you can skip this because you’ll assign the color space later in Photo-shop’s Camera Raw dialog, but otherwise, do it now. As an example, here’s how to set up a Nikon D300 to tag your photos with the Adobe RGB (1998) color profile. First, click the Menu button on the back of your camera.
Step Two:
When the menu appears, use the round multi selector on the back of your camera to go to the Shooting menu, and then in that menu, choose Color Space (as shown here) by pressing the Right Arrow on the multi selector.
Step Three:
This brings up the Color Space menu (shown here). Use the Down Arrow on the multi selector to choose Adobe RGB (as shown here), and then press the Right Arrow on the multi selector to lock in your change.
Step Four:
Now when you look in the Shooting menu, you should see the word “Adobe” to the right of Color Space, which lets you know that Adobe RGB (1998) is your camera’s color space. So now you’ve taken your first step towards color consistency.
Setting Up a Canon:
I just showed the simple color space set-up for a Nikon D300, however if you’ve got a Canon digital camera (like the popular Canon 50D), it’s pretty simple to configure, too: Just like with the Nikon, you go under the Shooting menu, and use the Quick Control dial to scroll down to Color Space. Press the center Set button to edit the color space, then choose Adobe RGB (as shown here) and press Set again to lock in your choice.