Practical Colour Management for Photographers and Digital Image Makers, part one: How to get accurate colour on screen

Practical Colour Management for Photographers and Digital Image Makers: How to get accurate colour on screen from Michael Walker and Neil Barstow, co-authors of Getting Colour Right. Well laid out and easy to follow, this new e-book is designed to help photographers, graphic designers and artists get the most out of their digital workflow.

Display colour management is, quite literally, the bedrock of digital colour control. Since the Display System provides your personal window on the world of colour, you must be confident that the screen is providing a correct visual preview of the 'colour numbers' contained in a digital file.

In this ground breaking e-book we thoroughly explain the whys and wherefores of the calibration target settings in software, the process of calibration and profiling including 'hardware calibration' screens, also the possible pitfalls and ways to avoid getting it wrong.
Packed with invaluable tips and hands-on practical advice, Practical Colour Management for Photographers and Digital Image Makers Part 1 explains exactly how to ensure accurate screen display for a range of popular professional-level applications including Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture and Capture One Pro, for both Mac and Windows. Guidance on choosing and calibrating displays, working with multiple displays and advice on choosing profiling tools completes this comprehensive, well laid-out and easy to follow working guide to achieving accurate digital colour on-screen.

click here to download a sample extract of the e-book
Do please note that the ebook contains features you'll only see using Adobe's Reader software (click here for free download) or Adobe Acrobat Professional. Please do let us have feedback on your impressions of the ebook extract.

How to get accurate colour on screen, contents

display calibration and profiling explained
working environment
calibration and profiling
hardware and software calibration
'visual' calibration tools
manual hardware calibration of luminance
calibration and profiling tools
calibration options
calibration and profiling tips
luminance
white point
gamma
verification
re-profiling
preparations for calibration and profiling
using display profiles
Mac OS X
profile locations
changing profiles
multiple monitors
Windows XP
profile locations
changing profiles
LUT loader conflicts
multiple monitors
laptop mirror mode
extended desktop mode
application support
Color Control Panel applet
how to be sure that display profiles are being used correctly on multiple displays
Windows Vista
Windows Color System
LUT bug and Service Pack 1
profile locations
Color Management Control Panel
changing profiles
multiple monitors
application support
choosing a display

Reader comments on the new e-book

Andy Crouch, photographer:
I want to recommend the new PDF chapter on Colour Management. Having read various books and articles on the subject it can become confusing with personal opinions and sometimes downright wrong information. I've known Neil for about 9 years and over those years he's helped me through the colour management hoop. With Michael Walker, they have produced a great PDF chapter which all photographers should download immediately and read. I look forward to the next chapters!

Kyriakos Kalarkoti, fine landscape photographer:
a very helpful text ... covers the ground in a very informative way

Unsolicited feedback for our earlier printed book, Getting Colour Right

Douglas Burns, Photographer: Just a quick email to say hello and to tell you that today I bought your book "Getting Colour Right", and am very impressed. As well as being well written and informative it is also nicely designed. I hope you've made a tidy sum in royalties!

Nick Wilcox–Brown, Imaging Consultant: Picked up a copy of Getting Colour Right last week – absolutely the best graphics book I have seen in ages - brilliant and much more than just colour - have already recommended it to several people - stop hiding your light under a bushel and tell a few more people about it.

Chris Ambrose, photographer: The site is a great resource for photographers and has been a help Shooting digital for about twelve years, I had attended one of Neil's seminars a few years ago and this was of tremendous help, as was the book Getting Colour Right.

Anthony Harrison: My bookshelf includes several books on digital capture and manipulation that are so–so – I consult them very occasionally but didn't learn a lot. One of only two or three such books I found genuinely informative & practically useful is this one: it clarified my knowledge of the fundamentals, and enabled me to refine my workflow, even after I'd been shooting digitally and manipulating in Photoshop for some time. Strongly recommended.

Chris Whitford: . . . So many books on Photoshop concentrate on all the wacky things which can be done, whereas this one deals strictly with issues of colour adjustment