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Winter Eye, London 2005

Season's greetings!
2005 has been a great year for myself and my family. Work has taken me to many fun, far away places where I've gotten to meet and work with some great photographers, designers and lab owners. The big highlight of our year was a month of hiking, camping, photography and writing in Nova Scotia. My daughter is a roudy and very fun 2 year old now and is expecting a baby brother or sister in May 2006! As 2005 comes to a close I'd like to review a few significant topics of the year:

Color Eyes Display - Calibration for Professionals
Many of you have seen me using the Color Eyes Display (CED) software this year. It is now my preferred display calibration software, and is what I recommend to professionals looking for the greatest flexibility in great callibration. I've been working closely with the CED developers this year, and really like the intelligence they've put into their software, and what they have planned for the future.
 
I hope to have a complete review of CED for you early next year. For the time being, here are a few highlights and reasons to consider CED:

1) CED's L* gamma option mimics the human eye's light response curve more accurately than any standard gamma formula (like Gamma 2.2 or 1.8) can. This translates into smoother gradations with less banding, and image contrast that is more like what you see on a printed image. 

2) CED offers total control over white-point color temperature setting. Users can type in a Kelvin value, specify X,Y chromaticity coordinates, measure their own lighting, or visually adjust the white point to match paper white. 

3) CED's adaptive calibration process will spend more time calibrating a difficult display, to yield a better calibration.

In short, you can achieve better gradations, contrast, delicate highlight and shadow detail, and be able to match paper white with proper use of CED. You can download the demo and try it out for a week with your existing device (they support every device but the Spyder) from www.integrated-color.com. If you decide to buy it, type in "onsight" as the coupon code and receive 10% off. If you are a geek about calibrating your display, I think it's a must-have.

CED is not for everyone.  I still recommend the GretagMacbeth's EyeOneDisplay for consumers who might be confused by CED's more elaborate approach. 
Still not happy with your print to screen match?
I see my clients' perception growing more and more fine-tuned for having worked on calibrated systems for a while. You must have high quality lighting for an excellent print to screen match, and incandescent (common screw-in bulb) lighting is the absolute worst lighting for viewing prints. I have a number of links to manufactures of high quality lighting options in the Lighting section of my Links page http://www.on-sight.com/links.html. Having owned all of these options myself, I'm a big fan of the Solux bulbs that I've installed this year at my studio. Whatever lighting you install, your display must be recalibrated to the characteristics of your lighting. Consider installing higher quality lighting for your New Year's resolution.
Onsight Evaluation v2
For those of you who haven't already, please download my most current evaluation image from http://www.on-sight.com/downloads.html It was redesigned with a large black-to-white gradation, a Granger rainbow, GMB ColorChecker patches, color gradations, black and white images, as well as color images for evaluating skin tone and extreme highlight and shadow detail. It also has a Print info text layer that you can use for labeling your evaluation prints in testing.

I think it's important to have a really good evaluation image that you can use periodically for testing your printing process and display calibration. If you have a printer that tends to drift over time (like color lasers and photo paper printers), you can print this evaluation image once a month (or as often as you need) to evaluate the printer's calibration and help determine when it might need to be profiled and recalibrated. This is a basic process control method that any high-end printing facility can easily implement.
Important updates for Photoshop CS2 - Camera RAW 3.2 and Bridge 1.0.3
The Adobe Updater application doesn't update the Camera Raw plug-in or Adobe Bridge to the latest version, though you'd think it would. If you use Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw, take a moment to download and install the latest versions.
Remote Profiling
My $50 per profile remote profiling service is a quick and easy way to get new profiles for printers. Epson inkjet printers are so stable that you hardly ever need to reprofile them. If you have a color laser or photo paper printer with a six month old profile, it's probably time to have a new one made through this service. Go to http://www.on-sight.com/downloads.html and scroll down to the remote profiling section for the details.
Moab Paper Company Dust Reduction Measures
Moab Entrada paper is a favorite among fine art print makers for it's excellent DMax, gamut, affordability and for being double sided. In the past users have complained about spots due to paper dust on the sheets (inappropriately called flaking). Wiping each sheet with a brush before using was a good solution and is a good idea to do with any paper. Six months ago Moab Paper company took measures to reduce dust within their production line which has eliminated this complaint. If you haven't ordered their paper since then you can expect dust free paper in the future.
GoogleSMS
OK, this is totally unrelated to me or my services but I think you should check out GoogleSMS for your cell phone. It's just insanely cool. Send an instant message to Google (US shortcode 46645) with the search entry in the as the message and get the result in a few seconds. Try"King Kong [your zip code]" for movie listings and times or "translate more beer in spanish" for mas cervesa. http://www.google.com/sms/demo.html
Feedback
As always, I love to hear from you. Please drop me a line and let me know how everything is going for you. Comments and suggestions for this newsletter are appreciated.

Thanks for a great year! Happy holidays and new year to you - I hope you are doing great!
© Scott Martin - www.on-sight.com  -  Digital Imaging Training and Consulting  -  210.224.1113

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