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Adjustments made to the monitor
If you have high quality monitor capable of finely controlling the
amount of light allocated to each component of the RGB mix of
colours, it is possible to adjust the colours appearing on the screen in
such a way as to approximate the printed result. However, normal
monitors allow only rough control of brightness and contrast, control
which is applied indiscriminately to the entire screen and is not very
effective for anything more than rough adjustment of the appearance of
whole screen images. We recommend selection of a highly reliable
monitor which suffers from as little deviation in the reproduction of
colours as possible.
Some software applications allow you to adjust the Gamma value, a
value which adjusts the contrast of a colour. One rule of thumb holds
that a monitor Gamma value of about 1.4 brings the colours displayed
on a monitor into close agreement with the colours displayed on the
printed page.
Adjustment of colour from within software applications
When the software application allows adjustment of colour, the
appearance of colours on the monitor screen can be adjusted after
comparison with printed results.
Normally, colours are adjusted according to the procedure outlined
below. For further information about how to adjust colours, see the
documentation accompanying your software application.
• First, print out a colour sample using the CMYK method, and adjust
the colours appearing on the monitor screen as you compare them to
the printed result. This process is called colour calibration. By
performing this calibration, it is possible to bring the colours
displayed on the monitor screen and on the printed page into closer
match.
• If your software application uses a colour palette to set colour levels,
it is possible to finely tune the appearance of a particular colour by
adjusting the colour palette.
• If your software application permits you to adjust the colours over the
entire screen through use of a colour balance, you can make
adjustments like washing out red colours or strengthening yellows
over the entire screen at a single stroke.
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Chapter 5 Colour Printing and Black-and-White Printing