Contrary to popular myth, white balance should bet set using a white card instead of a gray card. It is, after all, a *white* balance that is being set, not exposure for middle gray. Software developers including Thomas Knoll have confirmed this with me. While the distinction between using a gray or white card may not be huge, I have found it to be somewhat significant in some situations. While using a gray card is better than nothing, I encourage photographers to replace their grey cards with white reference cards like the ColorChecker White Balance, ColorChecker Gray Scale, orginal ColorChecker, QPCard or WhiBal. Non-reference quality white objects, such as a white piece of paper should be avoided because optical brighteners can negatively effect the white balance process.

One hidden benefit to using a white card is that you can also use it to find the optimal exposure. While there are details and exceptions worth discussing, I’ll simplify here by encouraging users to use the lightest exposure that doesn’t blow out the white card as indicated either by a camera’s RGB histogram or it’s flashing, blown out highlight indicator.

Determining optimal exposure and white balance in-camera is a common training topic for my business, espicially for high volume JPEG shooters that seek optimal print results with zero color correction. Naturally, the same concepts apply for RAW format shooting as well. So switching to a white card and not only helps improve white balance accuracy but also helps photographers fine tune their exposures so as to minimize post processing.

G7 is a proof-to-print process developed by the IDEAlliance that uses spectrophotometry to calibrate presses by the numbers to specifications like SWOP, GRACoL or FOGRA. Previous press calibration methods relied upon basic densitometry, dot gain and visual analysis and could take days of press runs and tweaking (more…)

I have searched high and low for an excellent inkjet paper for offset press proofing. Most inkjet papers are designed for maximum gamut and black Dmax rendering. In comparison to what we typically see on press these papers have a much brighter white, a much larger color gamut and a higher, richer, darker DMax. What’s worse is that these papers don’t feel like offset stock and are typically too glossy or too matte. (more…)

A few months ago I added the “Onsight Media Selection Image” to the downloads page. This 5×7 color image is intended to be used by advanced users to determine a media’s optimal media selection prior to the profiling process. If you have a 3rd party paper and you aren’t quite sure which media selection to use in the printer driver, simply print this image without a profile several times with different media selections. When the prints come out (more…)

I am happy to announce the new personal work section that has 5 galleries of some of my recent fine art photographic work. I feel strongly about photographers being enabled to put their work online quickly and easily and this section was built in such a way that serves as an example of what can be done in very little time with little geekery. For those that are interested in knowing how this section was made, please read on. (more…)