In the world of home ink jet color printing, there is some confusion concerning CMYK color and RGB color. Many photo enthusiasts don't realize what kind of color space their digital cameras output and are confused when it comes to printing images off of their home ink jet printers. They hit print and wonder why the printed image looks different from what they see on their monitor.
CMYK is the color description representing printed material, short for the colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Mixing these 4 colors together in different amounts give you the millions of colors that reproduce the colors in printed material. These are actual inks used in printing the images you see in color magazines and books. RGB is the color description for images viewed on your computer monitors, short for Red, Green, and Blue. RGB color is actually light, and mixing different levels of these light colors
creates the millions of colors that come from your computer monitor. All websites and nearly everything you see on your computer monitor is RGB unless the images have been converted to the CMYK color space.
When you print your images on your ink jet printer from your computer, your printer prints the image using CMYK inks. Viewing your image in RGB and then printing it out in CMYK may not yield the results you want. Programs such as Adobe Photoshop will convert your image from RGB to CMYK or vice versa. Some printers require the image to be CMYK before you can print the image correctly. Some printers don't print the image correctly if the image being printed is in RGB space.
A good reason for printing with a CMYK image is to see your image in CMYK color before printing. When an image is converted to CMYK from RGB, there may be some color changes that are noticeable in the image. The reason for this is because many colors in RGB cannot be reproduced using CMYK inks. That is why it is always a good idea to convert your image to a CMYK color space before printing. You could notice significant color changes to your image, especially in the very intense color areas of your image. Some of these intense color areas may appear less intense or very dull once converted. With photo editing software, you can go in and fix these trouble color areas to your liking.
Many ink jet printers on the market today actually print directly from an RGB color image. And converting the image to CMYK may cause it to print incorrectly. You will need to determine what color space your ink jet printer supports. The packaged software usually will give you a hint regarding color spaces. If there is no option to convert the color space from RGB to CMYK, most likely, the printer will print directly from an RGB color source. Usually, the higher end ink jet printers deal with the CMYK color space as consumer level enthusiasts don't even know these color spaces exist. New higher end ink jet printers, however, are now printing directly from the RGB color space as there is a wider spectrum of color that can be reproduced in RGB compared to CMYK color.
If you visit the website, Instantimagers.com, the 'Framers' and 'DVD Cover & Disc Art' designs are provided in both RGB and CMYK color spaces. Comparing the RGB and CMYK images side by side, you'll notice there are color differences. This is due to some RGB colors not being available as a CMYK converted color. Both versions are provided because not all printers are alike. Some tend to print better with one color space. Many of CMYK printed designs have been manipulated further after conversion to match more closely the colors from the RGB color space as many of the colors in some designs did not covert seamlessly.
If all this seems confusing, not to worry. The key thing to remember is to print using RGB color if your printer and software support it. Let the software and the printer worry about getting the colors right. If you are more experienced with photo color correction and want more control over the color of the image, print in CMYK. You'll actually be manipulating and printing the image in the color space your ink jet printer's inks are using. You will be able to see the limits of the CMYK printing color spectrum right on your monitor. Getting color right with RGB and CMYK is totally different from calibrating your printer to match the colors on your monitor. That is actually the second step in getting the best color out of your prints. Understanding the difference between RGB and CMYK is the first step in getting the best print outs on your home ink jet printer.
Showing posts with label printing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label printing. Show all posts
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
All About Calling Cards
All sorts of businesses, profession or hobbies can benefit from calling cards. Whether you use them as a businessman, real state agent, doctor or any other means you can always be one step ahead of your colleagues or competitors when you have calling cards. Having a calling card is like packing all your business identity, contact information and logo into a wallet sized billboard.
Calling cards can be for corporate or personal use. When they are used for work purposes they are commonly referred to as business cards. Business cards are used for contact information and keeping in touch with your customers. Adding a business card to your marketing strategy is one way of assuring that you maintain communication with your customers. Whenever or wherever they need to contact you, reaching you won’t be too difficult because they know which number to call.
For personal use, traveler’s calling cards can come in handy when you are on the road and need to book hotels, call home or call your office. Having traveler’s calling cards can allow you to make that important call no matter where you are. Home phone cards can also be useful when you are traveling through a countryside where cell phones don’t work. Say for instance your car broke down and you need to call a mechanic, you can’t be always sure to make that call when you do not even know who to call. Your personal card can be very helpful in this occasion. Hence, having a calling card is like an added insurance to you so the next time you hit the road make sure that you never go without your phone card.
You can always design and customize your own calling card. Your choice of design can come in different forms. Among the most common design are raised ink and full color. But you can also choose among foil stamping, embossing and die cut, whichever you think suits your business. Die cut calling cards are always effective in captivating attention because of their unique shapes but they can also be expensive. Nonetheless, they can really make a difference in projecting your overall company image and making a memorable impression.
Full color printing, particularly CMKY color printing, is also a good choice in designing your calling cards because it gives you the option of using full color images and photos in your design. You need not worry anymore about color printing being expensive because with the technology that are available today, color printing can now be offered at affordable prices. Hence, they are a cost effective way to display your information.
The bottom line is: your choice of calling card design should be based on how you would like to project your business image, your advertising scheme and budget. Remember also that a simple design can always be as effective as a costly design.
Calling cards can be for corporate or personal use. When they are used for work purposes they are commonly referred to as business cards. Business cards are used for contact information and keeping in touch with your customers. Adding a business card to your marketing strategy is one way of assuring that you maintain communication with your customers. Whenever or wherever they need to contact you, reaching you won’t be too difficult because they know which number to call.
For personal use, traveler’s calling cards can come in handy when you are on the road and need to book hotels, call home or call your office. Having traveler’s calling cards can allow you to make that important call no matter where you are. Home phone cards can also be useful when you are traveling through a countryside where cell phones don’t work. Say for instance your car broke down and you need to call a mechanic, you can’t be always sure to make that call when you do not even know who to call. Your personal card can be very helpful in this occasion. Hence, having a calling card is like an added insurance to you so the next time you hit the road make sure that you never go without your phone card.
You can always design and customize your own calling card. Your choice of design can come in different forms. Among the most common design are raised ink and full color. But you can also choose among foil stamping, embossing and die cut, whichever you think suits your business. Die cut calling cards are always effective in captivating attention because of their unique shapes but they can also be expensive. Nonetheless, they can really make a difference in projecting your overall company image and making a memorable impression.
Full color printing, particularly CMKY color printing, is also a good choice in designing your calling cards because it gives you the option of using full color images and photos in your design. You need not worry anymore about color printing being expensive because with the technology that are available today, color printing can now be offered at affordable prices. Hence, they are a cost effective way to display your information.
The bottom line is: your choice of calling card design should be based on how you would like to project your business image, your advertising scheme and budget. Remember also that a simple design can always be as effective as a costly design.
All About Calling Cards
All sorts of businesses, profession or hobbies can benefit from calling cards. Whether you use them as a businessman, real state agent, doctor or any other means you can always be one step ahead of your colleagues or competitors when you have calling cards. Having a calling card is like packing all your business identity, contact information and logo into a wallet sized billboard.
Calling cards can be for corporate or personal use. When they are used for work purposes they are commonly referred to as business cards. Business cards are used for contact information and keeping in touch with your customers. Adding a business card to your marketing strategy is one way of assuring that you maintain communication with your customers. Whenever or wherever they need to contact you, reaching you won’t be too difficult because they know which number to call.
For personal use, traveler’s calling cards can come in handy when you are on the road and need to book hotels, call home or call your office. Having traveler’s calling cards can allow you to make that important call no matter where you are. Home phone cards can also be useful when you are traveling through a countryside where cell phones don’t work. Say for instance your car broke down and you need to call a mechanic, you can’t be always sure to make that call when you do not even know who to call. Your personal card can be very helpful in this occasion. Hence, having a calling card is like an added insurance to you so the next time you hit the road make sure that you never go without your phone card.
You can always design and customize your own calling card. Your choice of design can come in different forms. Among the most common design are raised ink and full color. But you can also choose among foil stamping, embossing and die cut, whichever you think suits your business. Die cut calling cards are always effective in captivating attention because of their unique shapes but they can also be expensive. Nonetheless, they can really make a difference in projecting your overall company image and making a memorable impression.
Full color printing, particularly CMKY color printing, is also a good choice in designing your calling cards because it gives you the option of using full color images and photos in your design. You need not worry anymore about color printing being expensive because with the technology that are available today, color printing can now be offered at affordable prices. Hence, they are a cost effective way to display your information.
The bottom line is: your choice of calling card design should be based on how you would like to project your business image, your advertising scheme and budget. Remember also that a simple design can always be as effective as a costly design.
Calling cards can be for corporate or personal use. When they are used for work purposes they are commonly referred to as business cards. Business cards are used for contact information and keeping in touch with your customers. Adding a business card to your marketing strategy is one way of assuring that you maintain communication with your customers. Whenever or wherever they need to contact you, reaching you won’t be too difficult because they know which number to call.
For personal use, traveler’s calling cards can come in handy when you are on the road and need to book hotels, call home or call your office. Having traveler’s calling cards can allow you to make that important call no matter where you are. Home phone cards can also be useful when you are traveling through a countryside where cell phones don’t work. Say for instance your car broke down and you need to call a mechanic, you can’t be always sure to make that call when you do not even know who to call. Your personal card can be very helpful in this occasion. Hence, having a calling card is like an added insurance to you so the next time you hit the road make sure that you never go without your phone card.
You can always design and customize your own calling card. Your choice of design can come in different forms. Among the most common design are raised ink and full color. But you can also choose among foil stamping, embossing and die cut, whichever you think suits your business. Die cut calling cards are always effective in captivating attention because of their unique shapes but they can also be expensive. Nonetheless, they can really make a difference in projecting your overall company image and making a memorable impression.
Full color printing, particularly CMKY color printing, is also a good choice in designing your calling cards because it gives you the option of using full color images and photos in your design. You need not worry anymore about color printing being expensive because with the technology that are available today, color printing can now be offered at affordable prices. Hence, they are a cost effective way to display your information.
The bottom line is: your choice of calling card design should be based on how you would like to project your business image, your advertising scheme and budget. Remember also that a simple design can always be as effective as a costly design.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
10 Ways To Make Sure Your Image's Bright Red Is Bright And Red
Article Body:
Graphic designers, photographers, publishers and computer users at large: they all rely on their digital equipment being capable of rendering colours right. But the sad truth is your colours will differ depending on the output device. A monitor's red is not the same as an inkjet printer's red. Besides, what is "red"?
Here are 10 things you can do to make sure red is red, no matter which device has to render it.
1. Buy a good monitor. OK, this is an open door, but by "good" i mean a monitor that you can calibrate. That rules out all the office monitors, the Apple Cinemas and leaves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEdge products.
2. Buy a good calibration and profiling application. Even if you can't afford an Eizo ColorEdge, buy Color Solutions' basICColor Display. This software comes with a high-quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (called the "Squid 2" by Color Solutions), and has a feature called "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibration data (the Tone Response Curve) in the video card's lookup tables. The only requirement: your video card should support it. ATI's Radeon range supports this.
3. Calibrate and create a colour profile for your monitor once a month. Calibration is different from profiling. Calibration means the colour lookup tables in the monitor are put into a known state, while a profile merely describes the monitor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitor that it must render "pure red" by setting its colour channels in a certain manner. The profile you create will tell your image editing software, or graphic design application that pure red for this monitor means a specific mixture of its colour channels.
4. Buy an inkjet printer which has non-clogging printheads. Ideally, printheads should never clog. If they do, you can rest assured your colours will come out awful. If they don't, you can still have bad colours, but now at least you can something about it. Good printers are a bit more expensive than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy these days. Think of paying something like 200 USD at a minimum. For top-notch printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, expect to pay 700 USD.
5. Drive your inkjet through a Raster Image Processor. Many high-end printers support a RIP, but not all RIPs are created equal. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that develop more expensive RIPs for large format printers. EFI has a decent RIP, with support for ink limiting, black start setting, etc, for a very decent price. It's the EFI Designer Edition.
6. Profile your printer and use that profile with your RIP to get accurate colours, and save money on ink consumption. Through the profile settings, you can actually determine how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some paper types, you can save a lot of money by setting ink limiting optimally for your printer.
7. Use established equipment such as X-Rite/GretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK printer profile. You should create a profile for every paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you must use your printer in RGB mode, you can do with less expensive profiling systems. The best way to ensure a good quality profile is made when you don't have the budget to buy a system that costs a few thousand dollars, is to appeal to a remote service such as Thinck.com's.
8. Use an image editing application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof means that you'll be able to visually determine an image's colours on-screen with enough accuracy to be confident the colours will match the printed output. Softproofing is never one-on-one, but can come very close, and is another way of saving money by saving on both wasted paper and ink.
8. When editing your image, set the grey balance first. Select a neutral grey area in your image (if you took a photo, you'll remember what was grey, and if you don't, there are almost always objects that must be grey) and set this area as your neutral grey tone. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by selecting the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the grey eyedropper in the dialogue window, and clicking with this tool in the neutral area of your image.
9. If your image has a warm tone to it, e.g. because it was shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flash, you can neutralize colour casts somewhat by choosing an area that is not exactly neutral but more towards the warm tone of the image. As long as the area is greyish by nature, the image will adjust accordingly.
10. Be careful with setting Saturation levels too high. If you boost saturation, you're also bossting colour inaccuracies. You can boost the saturation of your image when you're sure it is colour-accurate.
These and many more tips, tricks, and tutorials, but also product reviews and in-depth technology and methodology background information is available on IT-Enquirer.com. IT-Enquirer is an online magazine aimed at creative professionals. It contains articles for beginners all the way up to experts in the field.
Graphic designers, photographers, publishers and computer users at large: they all rely on their digital equipment being capable of rendering colours right. But the sad truth is your colours will differ depending on the output device. A monitor's red is not the same as an inkjet printer's red. Besides, what is "red"?
Here are 10 things you can do to make sure red is red, no matter which device has to render it.
1. Buy a good monitor. OK, this is an open door, but by "good" i mean a monitor that you can calibrate. That rules out all the office monitors, the Apple Cinemas and leaves you with LaCie 300 range and Eizo ColorEdge products.
2. Buy a good calibration and profiling application. Even if you can't afford an Eizo ColorEdge, buy Color Solutions' basICColor Display. This software comes with a high-quality GretagMacbeth Display 2 colorimeter (called the "Squid 2" by Color Solutions), and has a feature called "software calibration". The latter calibrates any monitor by storing the calibration data (the Tone Response Curve) in the video card's lookup tables. The only requirement: your video card should support it. ATI's Radeon range supports this.
3. Calibrate and create a colour profile for your monitor once a month. Calibration is different from profiling. Calibration means the colour lookup tables in the monitor are put into a known state, while a profile merely describes the monitor's perception of colours. With calibration you tell the monitor that it must render "pure red" by setting its colour channels in a certain manner. The profile you create will tell your image editing software, or graphic design application that pure red for this monitor means a specific mixture of its colour channels.
4. Buy an inkjet printer which has non-clogging printheads. Ideally, printheads should never clog. If they do, you can rest assured your colours will come out awful. If they don't, you can still have bad colours, but now at least you can something about it. Good printers are a bit more expensive than the bottom-price inkjet printers you can buy these days. Think of paying something like 200 USD at a minimum. For top-notch printers like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180, expect to pay 700 USD.
5. Drive your inkjet through a Raster Image Processor. Many high-end printers support a RIP, but not all RIPs are created equal. EFI makes good RIPs, as do the vendors that develop more expensive RIPs for large format printers. EFI has a decent RIP, with support for ink limiting, black start setting, etc, for a very decent price. It's the EFI Designer Edition.
6. Profile your printer and use that profile with your RIP to get accurate colours, and save money on ink consumption. Through the profile settings, you can actually determine how much ink gets sprayed onto the page. For some paper types, you can save a lot of money by setting ink limiting optimally for your printer.
7. Use established equipment such as X-Rite/GretagMacbeth or Barbieri to generate your CMYK printer profile. You should create a profile for every paper not supported by your printer manufacturer. If you must use your printer in RGB mode, you can do with less expensive profiling systems. The best way to ensure a good quality profile is made when you don't have the budget to buy a system that costs a few thousand dollars, is to appeal to a remote service such as Thinck.com's.
8. Use an image editing application such as Photoshop, which has a "softproof" feature. To softproof means that you'll be able to visually determine an image's colours on-screen with enough accuracy to be confident the colours will match the printed output. Softproofing is never one-on-one, but can come very close, and is another way of saving money by saving on both wasted paper and ink.
8. When editing your image, set the grey balance first. Select a neutral grey area in your image (if you took a photo, you'll remember what was grey, and if you don't, there are almost always objects that must be grey) and set this area as your neutral grey tone. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you do this by selecting the Levels or Curves tool, selecting the grey eyedropper in the dialogue window, and clicking with this tool in the neutral area of your image.
9. If your image has a warm tone to it, e.g. because it was shot at dusk or with tungsten light and no flash, you can neutralize colour casts somewhat by choosing an area that is not exactly neutral but more towards the warm tone of the image. As long as the area is greyish by nature, the image will adjust accordingly.
10. Be careful with setting Saturation levels too high. If you boost saturation, you're also bossting colour inaccuracies. You can boost the saturation of your image when you're sure it is colour-accurate.
These and many more tips, tricks, and tutorials, but also product reviews and in-depth technology and methodology background information is available on IT-Enquirer.com. IT-Enquirer is an online magazine aimed at creative professionals. It contains articles for beginners all the way up to experts in the field.
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