Wikitography

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Main topic:	Photography

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Wikitography is the one-stop photography resource that anyone can edit. Our mission is to collect and share the world's knowledge on photography. Whether you're looking for technical, biographical, manufacturer, or any other kind of information, this is the place to start.See also WWW.Wikitography.com and WWW.Wikitography.org

HOW IMPORTANT IS ACCURATE COLOR?

The ability to see a file on your screen with accurate color and tone is essential for professional photography regardless if your image was created in a JPEG or RAW workflow. Photographers are "visual" artists , and they need to see the color, exposure and detail on the monitor as it will appear on the printed paper. So in order to keep your LCD monitor (or even old CRT monitors) "honest" in their ability to present a neutral and unbiased color and tone on-screen, we need to correct for the color shift inside each monitor that changes with time, heat, vibration and just plain daily use , by what’s called "profiling". By using a monitor profiling kit , that consists of a color measuring device referred to as a puck (aka colorimeter * see end of article) that connects to your computer's USB port and links up with it's accompanying software application to measure how far "off" your monitor or printers' color shift is, then it builds a profile that acts kind of like a digital filter to correct for this shift; so no matter how far off it is (within reason)... the profiling kit has corrected it back to neutral. This may not mean it's perfectly accurate when matching a professional print held next to your screen, but if you follow the software guidelines it's pretty close. Profiling kits don't do a thing to your actual photo files, they only help to neutralize the color of them as they are displayed on screen or on the printed sheet of paper.

Confidence Builders

ONE: Exposure Control. You need to try your best to SHOOT (not fix in Photoshop) your exposures between: -1/3 of a stop OVER the ideal exposure (less for wedding dresses), and+1/3 stop UNDER the ideal exposure.

TWO: White Balance Control.Smart decision on white balance are easy once you learn what your camera can do. You should be fluent in using custom white balance as often as possible, switching between 2 or 3 different custom white balance settings that you make right before the shooting session, and using the various "fixed" white balance settings that you like on your camera like sunny day, shade and maybe adjustable color temperature (the little "K") if you are the adventurous type.

THREE: Stick with sRGB in your camera and in Photoshop.For portrait / wedding / seniors and anything else that will be printed at our lab, set your camera to sRGB. All lab printers are set to sRGB limitations and most monitors out there in are limited to the sRGB color values too. FOUR: Create a Color-Capable Workstation.You need a computer workstation that is capable of presenting correct color, tonality, contrast and exposure so you can pull up an image and "see" it as the lab will print it.

This means you will need: 1, A monitor that has the ability to present correct color values for a professional photographer. This means no laptop screens. : There are no laptops that have a screen accurate enough for a pro shooter to judge correct color. You can however, connect up a color-capable monitor to your laptop and use that for color? 2, A monitor profiling system that will allow you to "filter out" and color bias your monitor . 3, A working environment with even color lighting. A blend of lots of windowlight combined with a bright halogen desklamp will fool our eyes into seeing incorrect color. Place your workstation in an area with light that is all the same color and your eyes / brain will let you see color pretty well.