How to Manage Colors
for Beautiful Prints

Have you ever faced this problem? Let's say you took a bunch of great photos during your last vacation. You get home, upload the snaps to your PC, then print them using your trusty color printer, hoping to get the dazzling printouts you desire. And guess what? The prints aren't quite as breathtaking as you'd like. One big challenge with printing digital photos at home is color management.

You need to understand that your computer monitor and print paper are completely different media. Hence, your print isn’t going to be an exact match of what you see on your screen.

Here are some tips on color management to ensure that you get great quality photo prints.
 

Get a Good Book

One of the best ways to understand color management is to invest in a good book on the subject. I've personally like Color Confidence: The Digital Photographer's Guide to Color Management by Tim Grey. This book presents the most essential concepts you need to produce accurate and desirable color in your prints every time.

Color Confidence: The Digital Photographer's
Guide to Color Management
 

Monitor Calibration

Here's another tip - it's important to calibrate the colors displayed by your computer monitor. Most good computer monitors come with some sort of color management software. If you're looking for some products, some that I'd recommend are ColorVision Spyder2 and Color Profile Mechanic .
 

Understanding Color Space

When choosing a color space for image editing, there are two major types. One is the Adobe RGB (1998) and the other is sRGB. My advice is to be consistent with the color space you choose. If you took the picture with sRGB in your digital camera, then follow through with sRGB when working with them in your image-processing program. Many professionals prefer the Adobe RGB format though, as it gives them a wider range of colors. Experiment and see which color space works for you.
 

Printer Driver

You need to ensure that your printer driver is up-to-date. Also, when printing your photo, choose your printer properties and ensure that the correct photo quality and paper size have been selected.
 

Paper Quality

One of the most critical requirements for a quality printout is the quality of paper you use. Make sure you specify to your printer what type of paper you’re using - it needs this information in order for it to properly apply ink.
 

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand a bit more about color management. Use these tips when you next print your photos and you should get much better results.

Share Your Pictures at SmugMug

If you've tons of digital photos to share and but are not sure which photo sharing site to choose, then do take a look at SmugMug. I've been a happy user of their photo sharing service for two years now and I've been most impressed by it. The service allows you to upload, arrange and share your photos, as well as buy prints or burn picture CDs.

Related Articles

You may also wish to read the following related articles:

A review of the Epson PictureMate photo printer
A review of the Canon Pixma iP4000 photo printer
A list of tips for printing digital photos
How to scan your old photo collection
Tips for taking great digital photos