Step 7
Depending upon your computer type choose either the Windows Default
or Mac Default gamma. In reality, this choice is not as important
as it once was and you can choose either in the knowledge that Photoshop
will make the appropriate corrections when necessary. Personally, and
even though most of my work is now done on the Mac platform I choose
gamma 2.2
Step 8
Choosing the White Point for your monitor is pretty much a
formality these days. Even the die-hards are in agreement that 6500oK
is probably the best option on most systems.
You should have already set the Hardware white point via the
dials/buttons on the monitor. Most monitors have a native white of
9300oK; so do check what it has been manually set to.
Choosing 6500oK provides the cleanest and brightest
white point and closely matches daylight. If you feel really confident
you could select the Measure option. You can choose 5000oK,
but this usually produces a slightly dimmer and more yellow white point.
Step 9
Generally, it's better to leave the Adjusted White Point
setting at the default - Same as Hardware. Nevertheless, this
option is used to choose a working white point for monitor if it
differs from the hardware white point set in the last step.
By way of example; if your hardware white point can only be set to
6500oK, but you want to set it at 5000oK
because that most closely represents the environment in which it will
normally be viewed, you can set your Adjusted White Point to
5000oK, and Adobe Gamma will change the monitor display
accordingly: However, choosing this approach will all cause the graphics
card colour LUT to be adjusted quite severely, and depending upon the
graphics card the screen can look quite ugly on some systems. As
indicated above I recommend that you choose Same as Hardware and
thus avoid this problem.
Step 10
That's it, if all has gone well you will have adjusted the brightness,
contrast and colour settings of your monitor to the optimum values.
Make a quick check using the Before and After radio
button. If you're happy that the screen display now looks more neutral
than before press the Finish button and Save the profile.
Once saved the profile will be available for use by the OS and Photoshop.
22 May 04
(Optional Steps)
Finally you might wish to check that the newly created monitor profile
has been enabled and set as the system default. To do so you should
reopen the Windows Control Panel from My Computer and
double click the icon labelled Display. A dialog called Display
Properties, which will be similar to the following should appear.
Once the Display Properties dialog box appears navigate your
way to the Settings tab and click the Advanced button. The
next dialog box to appear will be labelled to match with the
display/graphics card vendor names and will be similar to that shown
below. The final step is to click the tab labelled Color Management.
All being well you should find that your newly created monitor profile is
listed and set as the default.
Photoshop CS is only compatible with
Windows 2000 and XP on the PC platform and OSX 10.2.x or higher on the
Mac platform. An upside of this change is that the ICC and ColorSync
profiles are more easily found.
Profile locations:-
Windows 2000 and XP - sub-folder named system32/spool/drivers/color
Mac OSX - ColorSync profiles are located in the
Library/ColorSync/Profiles folder
The only advantage of Adobe Gamma (Windows systems) or the
Apple Display Calibrator Assistant (Mac OSX systems) is that they're
both free, whereas the third party products can cost nearly as much if
not more than Photoshop. However, since many third party alternatives use
hardware and not the eyeball for measurement you are generally assured of
much greater accuracy.
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