I am having a tough time color correcting the Postershop output. How does one make sure that the monitor is showing the true color rendition of a scanned picture ?.. I use a NovaJet III plotter and an X-rite densitometer. Everything seems fine until the plot takes place. Then one sees the colors do not look real ?.. any solutions ?..

-- Anonymous, September 06, 1998

Answers

Ideally, you would have an ICC profile for the scanner and one for the monitor, as well as one for the printer. Given that you are working with a densitometer, you will not be able to create your own. (creating these requires a colorimiter or photospectrometer)

If you are using PosterShop 4.0 or later, if you can locate default profiles for your scanner and monitor, you can use them. This should compensate for any gross aberrations in colour, but will compensate for any drifting by either device. These default profiles can often be found on the device manufacturer's www page.

I can suggest that you use a small print with colours you can easily match and adjust the colour correction and reprint until the *output* is the way you want it. Then adjust your monitor so that it matches the output. This may cause the display of colours in other programs to look off, but there is not a cure for this, as every program uses a different set of colour algorithms to determine what is displayed on your screen. There is also a monitor-neutalizing program available from Kodak that will at least ensure the the problem is not that your monitor is way out of calibration.

-- Anonymous, September 08, 1998