The 25 Inch Cocktail Bar

Or you might be rich enough to afford a bigger one - after all, the makers of professional monitor screens go all the way up to 27 or 31 inches. And the bigger ones make fancier colours... No, they don't. They make the same colours, but they make them bigger...and sometimes they make the long process of getting to those colours a little simpler. There are scientific shortcuts built into some of the more sophisticated EIZO monitors that make getting to the end result a lot easier. The proper study of colour management and calibration is far too complex to cover in this simple column. Particularly since I do not understand most of it and am reduced to letting the automatic mechanisms in the various machines I use come to their own agreements. I have decided to accept their judgement about the appearance of things...and like it. If you are made of sterner stuff and want to be corcect as well as comfortable, I suggest you look into the EIZO. You'll be wise to look into a course on colour management as well, but brace yourself - there is a learning curve that the instructors can start you on, but cannot push you up. You have to think for yourselves. Shoot Photography Workshops hold these sorts of courses from time to time, and if you are prepared to do a little on-line enquiry and reading before you rock up, you may be able to take home a good grasp of the situaton. Once you have straightened out the connections* between computer, screen and printer, you may find that you need do very little more in the future - your hours of banging the sliders back and forth on Lightroom or Photoshop may be reduced to a few genteel nudges. For the workers amongst the readership, this is money in the bank. More time shooting and less time peering at the computer is more profit. For the artists, it is a chance to become the master or mistress of the palette before you actually start. DO go over to the Shoot Photography website or ring the shop and see when the next colour management course is due. It may seem a headache to start with but there are painkillers available and you need not feel bad every time you start to edit. * And we don't mean just the plugs and wires... Note: As to the cocktail bar connection...ever look at the stuff on offer at a cocktail bar? It's going to be colourful and mixed and cleverly-named and frequently quite undrinkable. Same with images on a computer screen that has not been properly calibrated. In a good cocktail bar you can tell them what you want and get it - in the rest you just take what you are given. The first one is better...