Controlling your (physical) environment

The first step in Colour Management is to avoid dramatic lighting: keep it ambient in the room where you work. Don’t put your monitor in front of the window or other strong light sources and keep bright objects out of the field of view to avoid reflections on your screen. Choose a nice neutral background patterns for your computer desktop. Ideally use a monitor hood to improve shading of the screen.

The best, most accurate way of knowing if your screen is showing accurate colours is to invest in a spectrophotometer device such as an i1Display2 or similar. This inexpensive little gadget comes with full instructions and will perform tests on your screen to determine the output.

Visit Gretag Macbeth’s website here

To check your screen calibration you can compare a test print side-by-side with its on-screen image using a product such as the Gretag Macbeth / XRITE Colour Checker Chart for a final check of saturation, density and hue.

Read more about the ColourChecker here

Remember you can also Colour of your prints at Metroprint. This is a good way of checking your colour is correct before going to print.

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