Topic awaiting preservation: color correcting

I am editor of our campus magazine and we ALWAYS have trouble color correcting photos. Many times they turn out to have a green tinge to them. I was just wondering if anyone had any tips or suggestions on color correcting photos for a magazine.

My guess is that, if your files are always on the green side then your monitor is problably not callibrated. I use Adobe Gamma (comes with photoshop) Have a picture on the monitor and a printed sample next to the monitor for reference while you make the adjustments. After that, here is an article on color correcting in photoshop you may find usefull http://www.creativepro.com:80/story/feature/13486-1.html

Me Again?

Hey adaline, I was just poking around your web site and read your comments on the color red (wallpapers section) It reminded me of a book, that as a design student, you might want to pick up. It's called "Color Bytes" by Jean Boutges (there's also a video, but I'm not sure where to get it) It's a color theroy book centered around CMYK color from computers.
Just a suggestion.

Me Again?

This is also an outstanding tut.



Everybody has the right to no taste

For prepress training, I perfer the books by, Dan Margulis his latest is "Professional Photoshop 6: The Classic Guide to Color Correction".

I just bought "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching" I enjoyed it, good examples and geared towards a novice to mid level users. I have used photoshop from it's first release and I found a few ideas I haven't tried yet.

I would also check the the prepress section of www.creativepro.com

Generally speaking, If you were to create a perfect RGB gray ramp and convert it to CYMK with out profiles or cast correction. It would appear cyan or greenish casted. This is the nature of the impurities of offset inks. This is why there are profiles, or before we had ICC profiles, we established what we called grayblance across the workflow this would build in compensation for such things as dot gain, ink impurities etc...

The best thing you can do is to never fully trust you monitor and Start checking you colors by the numbers. It sometime help to also refer to a process color guide, similar to a pantone book, only it lists mixes of CYMK. You can get one from pantone or trumatch. After a while you get to know your common color by memory.

Here are a few things to check for every image.

1. Check D-MIN, density minimum it is the smallest hold able dot on press. your printer will establish a minimum dot size that they can hold on press. For most offset work it is ruffly 5%. Anything less may become strait paper. I use 5 Cyan, 3 Magenta, 2 Yellow, 0 Black. But this depends on your target press and the printer gray balance. This is info you need from you printer.

2. D-MAX, This is the max density allowable for you press type, it will range anywhere from 240-340 depending on the press type. To much causes problems and too little causes images to appear washed out. This is info you need from you printer.

3. Check you whites, whitest white where you want to hold detail will be the same as your D-MIN

4. Check your Blacks, your darkest black area should match you D-MAX or less.

3. Check your neutrals for casts.

4. Check your Additive primarys. Red, Green, Blue

5. Check your Subtractive primarys, Cyan, Yellow, Magneta

6. Check your flesh tones, In most cases for me it 2-4% higher Yellow as compaired to Magenta, This seems to work with all racial types as cyan basicly is the varaiable for normal health skin types.

7. Check you memory colors, or psyological referance colors. Grass, Sky, Coke Red etc........

jstuartj

What more can I say?

Great advice from top people.

This seemingly simple question introduces a *huge* topic. With no easy answers. Experience backed by the technique outlined here will get you going in the right direction. Do you always have the work printed by the same place? On the same paper? Is the color cast generally consistent? If those variables stay constant you can start to key in on fixing the problem. If those variables change ... it's a little harder. Let us know what progress you make!

Oh - are you proofing the images before sending them to the printer? If so, how does the monitor display compare with the proof and with the final printing? Your proofing may be misleading you if it's not matching press conditions accurately.