I am sort of new with color calibration and now I can say I have a trustable color flow, but thats just me. I use MacOs X and my calibrated apps are the Adobe CS2 pack and Macromedia FreeHand. Most of the time we all send images or PDF to our clients in a PC world, asking for general design aproval.
I can surely calibrate my client’s monitor with GretagMacbeth devices, but what about his PC apps? Most of my clients doesn’t have Adobe Photoshop. They look at my JPG at their Outlook. Some of them make such strange things like importing an image into powerpoint to look at it. For PDF, they have Adobe Acrobat Reader. So, how do I can make sure his monitor and his PC apps are calibrated to see my work? Is just the monitor adjustment enough???
Thanks
Alex
Hi Alex,
This is a difficult question, and there are not any easy answers. (Which might be why no one has dared to answer it yet!)
First off:
You should be able to calibrate your client’s PC-based monitors. Gretag Macbeth calibration software will work on Windows systems also. You would just need to download i1Match for Windows onto their computers. That should get their screens to be pretty close to what you see on yours. Some video cards on PCs do not support changing video LUTS, and so you might not be able to do this with some video cards, but that is more and more unlikely these days.
It is true that their non-color managed viewing applications might not give as accurate a view of your images as Photoshop. I think it all depends on how discriminating is the client you are dealing with.
Keep in mind that our eyes get used to the white point of the monitor. After a few minutes, even a monitor that is very blue can look normal once our eyes adjust to it. So unless the customer is comparing their monitor image to an actual print sitting on the desktop next to them, their monitor color might not be too critical.
On the other hand, if they want their screens to look right, encourage them to invest in a colorimeter. That’s really what’s needed in order to trust what they see on the screen.
Like we like to say in this business: “It all depends…”
Thanks for your answer. I imagine that but I wasn’t for sure. For that work I would use the Eye One Display as far as the PC aloud me.
