Monitor Calibrations...

[chet webley]

Not sure if this really counts as a quick tip or a "how-to". It's more "useful".

I just read a post about skin retouching, and the poster was concerned about his laptop screen. displaying colours incorrectly. Obviously, having the colours working right in photoshop is important, and if you're doing work for print, essential.

Some of us (myself included) will be lucky enough to have decent LCD monitors to work with (I only changed over to an LCD just over a year ago) - I replaced a rather old CRT flatscreen with a sexy 21" Apple Cinema Display at work, and at home I have a new 21.5" iMac - Both are really good LCD displays (especially compared to the cheaper flatscreens the other guys in my office use), and the one at home is lightyears ahead of the screen on my wife's Toshiba laptop.

No matter the quality, your monitor should be calibrated. The Mac calibration tool is good, but I've also stumbled across a really cool web based tool for calibrating your LCD monitors:-

LCD monitor test images

just follow the instructions.

[Steve]

It's very important to calibrate your monitor if you expect consistent and expected results from screen to print.
Good post Chet.