2 Replies Latest reply: May 13, 2010 6:56 AM by cgrscott RSS

    Snow Leopard's Default Gamma & Color Correcting for Pre Press in Photoshop CS4

    cgrscott Community Member

      After searching the forums I thought I would start my own thread on this subject.

       

      I have Photoshop CS4 and InDesign CS4 and I have continued to color correct, for pre press, in OS 10.4.11 Tiger with the 1.8 Default Gamma and 6500 color tempurature, using Apple's display calibration tools in the OS's System Preferances.

       

      I want to switch to Snow Leaopard but with it's Defualt Gamma of 2.2, I'm not able to make my minitor manually adjust to the needed range for brightness and contrast that is needed to begin the calibration process.  Is there a way to color correct photos, for pre pre press, in Photoshop with a 2.2 Gamma setting in my display preferances?

        • 1. Re: Snow Leopard's Default Gamma & Color Correcting for Pre Press in Photoshop CS4
          Community Member

          Tweaking gamma does not really matter if you are working with color managed images for prepress.

           

          If you're not working with color managed images, you should probably not be in the prepress business.

           

          BTW, gamma settings are configurable in any operating system. You have the power to override defaults if you really think that's a good idea.

           

          You may want a color calibration tool instead of Apple's software and eyeballin' it.

          • 2. Re: Snow Leopard's Default Gamma & Color Correcting for Pre Press in Photoshop CS4
            cgrscott Community Member

            I have had success just with Apple's System Preferences for color calibration.  I do design and pre press for a number of customers of the various printers I work with.  Most of the photos I work with are from digital cameras and are provided by the customer.  The only point in the whole process, where the photos get adjusted to have eye pleasing color, when coming off the printing press, is when I work with them.

             

            The printers I work with continue to send their customers to me, for design and pre press, because they like my color work on the photos.  I send the pre press files as Press Optimized PDFs to the printer's FTP server and the printer does all the direct to plate separations in-house.  I want to continue to be reliable in that area and so the brighter default Gamma built into Snow Leopard seems to complicate things if I ever want to move up from Tiger to Snow Leopard.

             

            I have two 17" Apple CRT displays that cannot adjust into calibration range when I'm booted in Snow Leopard. These CRT displays can only manually adjust in range for calibration under Tiger or Leopard. It sounds like if I purchase an IPS based LCD monitor, made by Apple, Dell, or other brands, I will probably be able to manually adjust the display for Gamma 1.8, under Snow Leopard.

             

            I was posing this question about using Gamma 2.2 because if I could color correct for pre press with the 2.2 setting, I could continue to use my old Apple 17" CRT displays and also any web content I create will preview closer in color, on PCs as they will on my Mac.  Maybe my review PDFs will view with similar color on my customers PCs if I work with a 2.2 Gamma setting and instead of 1.8.  For now I know I will keep my printers happy if I continue to work with a monitor that has a 1.8 Gamma setting and a 6500 color temperature setting.  If that must continue to be the standard for pre press, then I will need to get an IPS based LCD monitor that will allow me to adjust in the 1.8 Gamma range while booted in Snow Leopard.