Calibrating Your Display

One of the most important aspects of managing your photos is achieving predictable color. Mac OS X uses a built-in color-management technology called ColorSync, which uses industry-standard ICC profiles to manage your color across multiple devices. Displays and printers often ship with ICC profiles that can be installed along with their drivers. These generic profiles are a good starting point, but in order to implement an advanced color-management workflow, all of the devices in your production loop should be calibrated with instruments such as colorimeters and spectrophotometers. Colorimeters are used to measure color values on LCD or CRT displays; spectrophotometers measure the wavelength of light across the visible spectrum of colors and can be used to profile both displays and printers.

Colorimeter

Spectrophotometer

Unfortunately, it's beyond the scope of this book to walk through the process of color-calibrating your display, input devices, and output devices. But you should know that it's an important part of setting up any digital darkroom. For more information on color calibration, see the Apple Pro Training Series book Color Management in Mac OS X: A Practical Approach, by Joshua Weisberg.