Profiles.  They can be good or bad, your left side or right side, or what you write about yourself on Facebook.  But in digital printing,   profiles are part of the the glue that connects the colors your digital camera captures to the colors in your digital print.

A printer profile is a bit of software, called an ICC file,  that describes  how a particular combination of printer, inkset, and printing paper reproduce colors at a specific printing  resolution. For example,  the ICC profile SP7898 PLPP260 PK 2880.icc describes how an Epson 7800 printer using the K3 inkset with Photo Black ink printing on Epson Premium Lustre 260 paper at a printing resolution of 2880 dpi reproduces color.

Profiles are useful because they let Adobe Photoshop  accurately  preview what your image will look like when it’s printed, and  to control your digital printer’s output so it matches that preview. (or, at least, as close as ink on paper can look to pixels on a monitor).

Once the appropriate profiles are installed, Photoshop  uses them in the View>Proof Setup command on the top menu to preview images,  and in the Print dialogue to control your printer. Voila, an accurate print.

Or maybe not.

Along with ICC profiles, colorspace helps to determine what colors your camera records, that Photoshop displays and  your print or digital file reproduce. A device colorspace defines the range of colors, or gamut, that a device, such as a camera or printer, can reproduce. An editing colorspace is device-independent, but determines the color range you can work in with, for, example, Adobe Photoshop software.

The main colorspaces photographers work in are Adobe RGB (1998), the traditional editing space for, naturally, Adobe Photoshop;  sRGB,  which is primarily used for  images posted on the web; and, more recently ProPhoto.

sRGB  has a smaller gamut than Adobe 1998, which has a smaller gamut than ProPhoto. Why is this important?  Because to know how the beautiful colors in your digital image will look in a print, your devices need to be using the same colorspace, your monitor needs to be calibrated accurately to the same colorspace, and your editing software needs to display the same color space.

See what I meant by insanity?  BTW, for you people working with Adobe Lightroom, it uses the ProPhoto color space.

I once posted this image I took to a forum only to have it rendered a ghastly greenish color on the screen.  One of the fellow forum goers gave me a few tips about color management and I’ve made sure since then that my colors are synched up across my workflow.  Here’s a little diagram I made to keep it straight in my head:

It’s actually not as confusing as it looks.  Color management basically works like this:

• Each input and output device has its own ICC profile for color management
• The arrows are labelled with the ICC profile which is in use by the device or software
• You just have to make sure that the correct or preferred profile is chosen
• Ambient light affects the way colors are perceived on your screen
• So it is advisable to keep your monitor calibrated for the ambient light in your room

When you’re ready you should definitely purchase a monitor calibration device to keep things sorted. Here’s the Spyder 3 Elite on Amazon

It’ll only take you about 5 minutes to map this out for yourself.  For more details check this website out which has an awesome tutorial on color management: Computer Darkroom

Part 2 – Selecting the Right Color Profile for Epson Scanners

It renders web pages at lightning speed. It works on the iPhone, iPod touch, Mac and PC. It shows you your favorite sites at a glance. And it’s so smart, it even checks your spelling and grammar. Meet Safari 4, the world’s most innovative internet browser by Apple.

Before Safari, browsers were an afterthought. Something you put up with if you wanted to surf the internet. One browser looked and felt just like another, so you chose the one that worked the best and crashed the least. They were ugly, cluttered affairs, whose interfaces competed for your attention and made browsing – the very purpose for which they were created – more difficult. Safari changes all that.

Safari is designed to emphasize the browsing, not the browser. The browser frame is a single pixel wide. You see a scroll bar only when needed. By default, there’s no status bar. Instead, a progress gear turns as your page loads. And if you so choose, you can hide almost the entire interface, removing virtually every distraction from the browser window. A great browser should get out of your way and let you simply enjoy the web. Safari does just that. And it does it regardless of platform.

Some of the top features of Safari 4:
- Full-Page Zoom
- VoiceOver Screen Reader
- ICC Color Profile Support
- Acid 2 and 3 Tests Full Compliance
- Support Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)
- Next-Generation Standards Support: HTML 5 media tags, CSS animation, and CSS effects
- Support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) version 1.1
- Nitro JavaScript Engine for faster JavaScript rendering
- Top Sites, Cover Flow, Top Sites, Spell and Grammar Checking, RSS Reader and way more…

- Download Safari 4 (530.17) Internet Browser
- Download Safari 4 (530.17) Internet Browser (mirror 1)
- Download Safari 4 (530.17) Internet Browser (mirror 2)
- Download Safari 4 (530.17) Internet Browser (mirror 3)
- Download Safari 4 (530.17) Internet Browser (mirror 4)

XnView is a free software to view and convert graphic files with support for more than 400 graphics formats (for viewing) and is able to export into about 50 graphic file formats. XnView is highly customizable and multi-lingual, supporting 44 languages in the Windows version. It can read more than 400 image file formats, some audio and video file formats, and write 50 image file formats along with support for ICC profiles in JPEG, PNG and TIFF files. XnView can show IPTC, Exif and XMP meta data, and write IPTC meta data it can also find files that have the same file name or data, and can search for similar graphics as well. There are also some basic image editing tools included, for instance color and size manipulation, several filters and effects that you can quickly and easily apply.

- Download XnView 1.96.1 Image Viewer
- Download XnView 1.96.1 Image Viewer (mirror 1)
- Download XnView 1.96.1 Image Viewer (mirror 2)
- Download XnView 1.96.1 Image Viewer (mirror 3)
- Download XnView 1.96.1 Image Viewer (mirror 4)

I’m an old photographer. I still dig the smell of film. I like blistering my hands in fixer. I can see 10x better under safelight.

I’m an old dog trying to learn new tricks – namely, mucking about in this digital era and trying to make a living at it.

Don’t get me wrong…the basics of photography are still the same. Light, science…magic…all of that. But once the shutter flies by on it’s way to never-never land, I’m left with this file thing on a computer thing that I have to use a program thing in order to get a damn thing out of it.

So. Learning curve: Vertical.

I’ve done pretty good…I’ve had the advantage of a graphics education enough to know what things like photoshop are for. Granted, when I met Jeff, my skills were barely beyond rudimentary. I’ve had one hell of an education in the 6 months we’ve been sharing studio space and I’m damn grateful for every little thing. I’ve been absorbing stuff like a sponge, but there’s one part of my education that kind of fell short…Jeff doesn’t do a lot of printing with outside labs. See…he’s a commercial photographer…and this means that he gets to send his stuff off to clients in a file.

I am not so lucky.

So, over the last several weeks, I’ve been going through the rigamorale of trying to get files edited and ready to send off to a lab, because, you know…studios like mine make MONEY selling prints. So the prints are kind of essential.

I’ll admit. I’ve been dragging my feet somewhat because the last thing I want to do is take my humble little CD into a lab and have them look at how I’ve botched everything up and charge me extra money to fix it…or worse…be laughing their asses off. (Yes…I know. My wittle bitty ego is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.)

One big thing that’s been niggling my stomach is the fact that while my monitor is close in terms of calibration, it’s not been officially calibrated. It’s pretty important stuff. But, with the mad scramble to make my studio rent every month, the princely sum of $425 bux for a Color Munki calibrator hasn’t materialized out of thin air. So…I’ve made every adjustment that I can without one and have hoped for the best.

So…time to take stuff to a lab. I debated using White House Custom Color (which is the lab that J’s friend Wendy uses) but was dragging my feet about using a lab that’s out of town. I’m kind of looking for more personal interaction…and hopefully good feedback…as I figure this stuff out. So I decided I’d take my stuff to Denver Pro Photo.

Pro Photo has always been good folks in terms of business dealings back in the film days. I bought most of my supplies for teaching through them and they gave me GREAT deals. So despite having a list of places to try, I thought I’d start there first.

Obligingly, they ran a test print for me – it looked okay…but, off. So I took it back to the studio for another check. Yes. My monitor shows a nice, healthy skin tone and a blue shirt. The print has a gray-ish skin town and a purple shirt. This isn’t going to jive…I’m selling these prints to someone who’s VERY particular. Not to mention…my own quality standard say this is gonna drive me nuts.

So I start assuming it’s because my monitor is off. But another thing isn’t quite working…when I pull the image up in Photoshop, it looks as I edited it…nice warm tones. Jeff said to send it to him, so I drag and drop the file into my email program (Mozilla Thunderbird) and lo! and behold! Thunderbird presents the preview JUST LIKE THE PRINT.

This has me mystified. Why would my monitor be displaying two different versions of the same image? So I call Pro Photo. The guy in the lab tells me my monitor isn’t calibrated. Now, since I don’t have all the correct techno-geek language at the ready, I finally just tell him not to print my order and that I’ve got to figure this out.

…And of course, credit goes to Jeff for figuring this one out. My monitor IS pretty close. The difference shows up as part of the ICC color space.

The ICC what?!?

Okay – so I knew a little about this when I started preparing these prints…WHCC gives pretty specific instructions as to how to prepare the files for printing. I had them saved as level 10 jpegs, 300 dpi, sized correctly and with the imbedded sRGB colorspace. Or so I thought.

My work flow goes as follows:

Import RAW files into Adobe’s Lightroom. Make global adjustments to exposure, color, minor dodge/burn, saturation levels and whatnot. I make my first round picks, upload online via Lightroom’s gallery function. After the customer makes their choices, I do any last minute global editing, then I export the chosen files as TIFF’s and pull them into Photoshop one at a time. There I do adjustment layers for increased dodge/burn control, etc. Then I do local edits – wrinkles, bad teeth, background issues, blemishes and whatnot. I save the files as layered PSD files, then do my final crop and save as the final to-be-printed file.

In Photoshop, my default color space is set to sRGB in my preferences. SO, it follows that my files would be sRGB in the final output. Right? Not so. Since I exported the files out of Lightroom, it applies Lightroom’s color space…and I didn’t have any alerts set in Photoshop to tell me that it was different.

So why the difference between the two programs on my monitor? Well, Photoshop is going to read the “prophoto” color space out of Lightroom just fine…the two programs are compatible. The telling clue was when Thunderbird (my email program) couldn’t read the unusual information…so it displayed the file as best it could…utilizing a monitor color display space which is very similiar to sRGB. Hence…the vast differences in display.

Sometimes it’s information like this that is so completely mind-boggling it almost makes me feel like I’m too much of an old-timer and I should go back to school or hang it up. Thankfully, J is around to help me figure it out and I can get back on track with getting these print orders filled….to my own and to my customer’s satisfactions.

Profiles:
Profiles are vital to producing prints that match your display. This however must coincide with a calibrated display. Although it will never be 100%, this combination will produce the best results. The finer bits will be “filled in” by the brain – like everything, it takes a bit of training. Our ICC profiles are available on this page – Studio22 profiles

Display calibration:
We recommend hiring a professional to calibrate your screen (we have a company we can recommend). Alternatively, if you are technically inclined, purchase a screen calibration kit and you can ‘fiddle’ and tune the various components yourself. 

ColorMunki Photo:
Of the various calibration tools we have used, ColorMunki Photo is the most recent and accurate. This device also allows the operator to create profiles for their own printer. Approximately R5500 in 2008 - available on order from Studio22.

Manual display calibration:
It is possible to manually calibrate a screen and in conjunction with an ICC profile to produce consistent and accurate results. It is not ideal but it can be done. For clients who can not afford to buy a calibration device or to hire someone to calibrate their screen, we print and supply a calibration chart. Along with this, we supply the file that matches that printed chart – this chart is printed without any correction from the printer. The client can then manually adjust the screen until the image on the screen matches the print in hand. It is however important to be aware of the ambient lighting conditions as this will have a massive impact on the screen image. It is suggest a daylight light source be used to illuminate the test print. We then recommend a number of tests be done and the screen be adjusted slightly after each test until it is as close as the operator can match it.

Post production:
Post production of digital images involves the basic processing of images to a ‘print ready’ state. This includes sharpening, contrast and density adjustment as well as colour correction. Accurate Post production is only possible on a calibrated display. If a display is not calibrated, images may still look great on the display but they will print according to the file that has been saved. If the display has a yellow cast, the operator may correct the image to look good on that display but the file will then have the equivalent correction to product a blueish cast on the final print. The same applies for density and contrast, a screen that is too light will ‘produce’ a print that is too dark if the operator corrects the image for a non-calibrated screen.

Understanding colour and correction:
Many of the images we see that are not printing correctly are mostly due to operators making corrections they are not sure of. Even on a calibrated screen, if an operator does not understand colour and what a good print should look like, the final print will unlikely produce a quality result. We encourage clients to experiment and learn but dissuade using clients jobs as test subjects. Rather pay the price and have the pro’s do the post production for the clients work.  We recommend doing tests at home to see if you can match or even beat the work done by the lab.

This very popular paper with its archival characteristics in conjunction with the Fuji range of chemicals is used for all our photographic printing for images up to 12×18 inches (300×450mm).  For larger images, * see below.

This is the very same paper we use to print all our Storybook albums and Photo-books -for assurance of the highest quality print and archival qualities.

Fuji Crystal Archive paper combined with the Fuji Frontier printer produce remarkable results with extreme consistency. Images that have been corrected or processed in photoshop or other conversion software will match identically time after time.

On-board post-production – Frontier printer:
The frontier offers image correction software that produces remarkable results. With the right operator, many additional features can be incorporated for fast processing with great correction.

The two alternatives:
The Frontier allows two image adjustment options, Manual and Auto. In both cases the images are presented on the screen for the operator to work on. The Auto feature adds sharpness, contrast, it does a density correction and a colour correction. The image then remains on the screen for the operator to make further adjustments as they feel are required. The level of auto features can not be controled, it is on or off. Manual correction entails the opperator being able to view the images and make small corrections. No Sharpening or contract option is availble, the operator can only control Red, Green and Blue (where Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are the opposites). Density correction is also possible.

We recommend the manual option to clients who are starting to do their own post production on their own PC.  This is especially important to people who are working on screens that have not been professionally calibrated or thoroughly tested. Along with colour correction, they are adding sharpness and contract, this leaves it up to our operator to only fine-tune the colour and a slight density change where needed. This way the photographer can slowly have more and more control over the final product.

ICC profiles:
The ICC profile for printing on our Crystal Archive paper is available for downloading off our website using the following link,  http://www.studio22.co.za/digitalprintingworkflow.htm. We also have more info regarding workflow and digital printing at Studio22.

From the Fujicolor website:

Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper

The base support and silver halide crystal control technology work together to produce improved whiteness, highlight and shadow depth qualities, making this an all purpose colour print paper for the photofinisher. So in effect, all your customers can have prints which both look better and last longer: creating a sales proposition that no professional photographer can afford to ignore.

Product benefits:

• Unrivalled image permanence.
• Brilliant colour reproduction with accurate colour rendition and smooth tones.
• Brilliant highlights and outstanding whites.
• Enhanced sharpness with excellent definition.
• Processing stability.

* Larger images are printed on our Epson Large format printer using Ilford Gallerie paper (other alternatives are available) and Epson Chrome Inks for a combination that produces a lifetime of colour (and black & white) stability. We also produce a selection of complimentary products. Canvas stretchers, Urban canvas, Metro Blocks and more.

When having your print film developed and printed by a lab it’s important to be able to look as objectively as possible at the quality of the prints produced, albeit by a machine with little or no human intervention. Little Johnny’s smiling face will actually look better when properly printed and processed.

The colour of the light, under which the original camera exposure was made, has a significant effect on the way colours are recorded. In theory images made between 2 hours after sunrise and 2 hours before sunset produce relatively neutral color rendition. But this assumes your subject is illuminated directly by the sun or, even better, by sun diffused by a large white cloud.

If, on the other hand, the subject is photographed in the shade, the light source cannot be the sun. Under such conditions illumination is provided by the sky. On a clear day the color of the sky is in the blue/cyan range.

This cool colored skylight is cast (like a fisherman’s net) over your subject and mixes with colors inherent to the subject (skin tone and clothing) to form new colors. The effect seems to be particularly noticeable in neutral and warm colors. Photographic blue (actually quite close to what we would call violet) mixed, in equal proportions, with red produces the color magenta. So, for example, blue light from the sky mixed with a red dress will record the dress with more of a magenta/red hue (color) than would have been the case if it had been lit with neutral color light. 

Another common example is a near white wedding dress, photographed in the shade, under a clear blue sky. The resulting image will exhibit a slightly bluish color cast. Under the same conditions yellow and pink bridesmaid dresses will appear less vivid in color due to the cool skylight mixing in, and diluting, the color purity of the dresses as they are reflected back towards the camera. To further complicate matters the subject may be illuminated by light reflected off a nearby surface. In the case of grass, the light reflected could be a blue-green colour when shaded or a more yellow-green when the grass is sunlit. 

The good news is that, in most cases, people don’t see this commonly occurring bluish color cast. The reason for that is because most folks believe that ‘light is actually white’. It is not, as the above examples demonstrate. We know that sunrise and sunset produce warm lighting, but do we know that a range of different artificial light sources produce a variety of colors that, when photographing under, can’t be seen by the uneducated eye. Actually our eye can see the color, but our brain doesn’t believe it (because we believe that light is white), so the reality we perceive is not actually accurate. And, as a consequence, the resulting image can be disappointing. Not necessarily because the customer can see the bluish cast in the wedding dress, but because the image is emotionally cooler than they’d expected. This is probably the way the brain deals with the bluish light. Not by accepting that it’s blue, but by This is a large and fundamental topic that I’II cover in more detail at a later stage.

Digital cameras include a series of White Balance options. You either set the white balance yourself, usually to neutralise any color cast coming from the light source, or allow the camera to work it out by setting it to Auto White Balance. You can also make changes to your white balance on the desktop, ideally in a RAW converter. The Develop module of Adobe Lightroom is where you’d make such a change. Alternatively Adobe Photoshop (current version CS4) comes with Adobe Camera RAW, an almost identical product to Lightroom, albeit with a very different interface.

With 1-hour photo lab prints, either from print film or digital files, the printer (machine) and/or the person operating it (when its not on full autopilot) tends to reduce the cast so as to produce a more neutral, though not necessarily accurate, result.

In the case of print film most people mistakenly refer to the first print made from a negative as the original. When used to describe a print, this is quite a misleading term. It is a reproduction or interpretation of the original film image. But, due to the orange/red mask built into color negative films, you can’t accurately see the colors in the negative. So, even when shooting under a neutral light source, you can’t use the original film image, unless it is a transparency (slide), as a means to visually check the color balance of the print. Your judgement is now based upon the relative accuracy of your own eyesight, the color of the light you view the print under and, of course, the vagaries of memory.

Light from both ends of the day produces warmer, more pictorial colour rendition. Depending on the position of the subject, in relation to the sun (eg. side light), a normally neutral coloured subject (eg. bride dressed in white) can display a warm colour caste on one side of her face and body and a cool colour caste on the other. In this case one side of the subject is lit by sunlight, while the other side is lit by skylight. If you wanted to neutralise this result you could consider taking the following action:

•       Use a gold or combined silver/gold reflector to reduce the bluish cast on the shadow side of the dress. Now that the difference between the warm and cool side of your subject is reduced you might accept the overall warm color balance as appropriate to the desired mood or time of day. Alternatively, you could change the White Balance, either in camera or on the desktop, to produce the desired result.

•       An alternative to a reflector, and having an assistant to handle it, would be to use an off camera flash, possibly with an amber color gel placed over the flash head, to both lighten the shadows (reducing the contrast in the dress) and adjusting the color balance closer to that on the sunlit side of the dress. 

Inclement weather covers the sun with dark clouds that effectively place a bluish filter between the sun and the subject, thereby producing a bluish and, under particularly inclement weather, monochromatic colour caste. Most people would consider clouds to be either white or grey. But what we see as grey is actually a blue/grey. The darker the cloud, the blue the color of light filtered through that cloud.

The adverse effects of Reciprocity Law Failure can cause a color shift, particularly during long exposures, with film. The longer the exposure the greater the colour shift and, in theory, the greater the amount of filtration, via the use of one or more Colour Compensating Filters, to achieve neutral colour rendition.

However, this colour shift can also be a powerful ally as the unnatural colour caste can provide an interesting, if somewhat surreal, mood to the scene. This type of colour shift is most noticeable with transparency films, as they are original photographic images. Of course the colour shift exists on color negative films, but is largely hidden by the orange/red (contrast reducing) color mask built into the film. The fact that negative films reverse the actual colour of the scene or subject pictured makes it even harder to see the actual effect the colour temperature has had on the scene/subject rendition. 

Film images shot under very long exposure times need to be carefully printed. The job of the printer (machine) is to correct for any extremes in colour and exposure, inherent in the negative, by producing as neutral a print as possible. But if you like the color change that occurs during such long exposures it’s important to instruct the lab to override any filtration changes that would otherwise be made at either the scanning or printing stages, other than those normally applied to adjust for the usual density and colour associated with the particular film type in question. On modern printers this information is encoded into the film’s rebate, between the sprocket holes, together with ISO speed and frame numbers. The printer should have the preferences, referred to as slopes, of a range of different negative films saved into its memory and identified by the DX coding on the film. 

For anyone still interested in making conventional prints in a darkroom you can produce accurate results, that tell the story of the color of light and it’s effect on your image, when making contact prints/proof sheets from the same roll of film. To do this it’s important to initially produce the best possible proof sheet you can (density and colour) from a roll of film of the same film type and speed as the one in question. The images should be of relatively normal scenes that include neutrals (black, white and grey) and a range of skin tones, taken under relatively low contrast conditions, at colour temperatures as close as possible to 5500 Degrees Kelvin. For those not using studio flash (strobe) lighting, try making these images under a white cloudy sky. You now have a whole range of colours, including skin tones and neutrals from which a quite accurate proof sheet can be produced. Move your enlarger head up and away from the baseboard and then, with the focus light on, turn the fine focus control so that the light source projected onto the baseboard produces a large, soft light. Make a note of the height of your enlarger (either above the easel or above the baseboard), exposure time and lens aperture for future reference.

In future, when making proof sheets from the same film type, simply re-apply these settings to produce a calibrated result. If exposure remains correct and color balance consistent from frame to frame, your photography skills are to be applauded. If not, the proof sheet will indicate variations in exposure and color balance from neg to neg. Hopefully you can see that a properly produced proof sheet can be a very objective tool, telling you a lot about your camera handling skills that is likely hidden from you by the heavy orange/red mask of the film and the automatically adjusted, and often, face-saving prints produced for you by your lab. In future, when shooting with the same film type, it’s easy to produce proof sheets that accurately display the color of light you shot under. Simply re-set your enlarger height, exposure time and lens aperture, to the same settings employed to produce your original proof sheet, and you’ll produce a new proof sheet that accurately displays the colour temperature of the light source under which you shot, even if the light source varied from frame to frame. Of course this assumes your enlarger globe hasn’t been changed (they get warmer as they age), you haven’t changed brands of paper and your processing chemistry is stable and used in line with manufactures specifications. For optimum print uniformity it’s important to refrigerate your paper, particularly if you’re an infrequent printer. However, when its time to print, ensure your paper is at room temperature. Two to three hours is recommended to bring paper up to room temperature, after it has been removed from a refrigerator. If the paper is taken out of a freezer it should be first stored in the fridge, with it’s somewhat warmer temperature, for several days prior to the usual two to three hours outside the fridge to bring it up to room temperature.

For the most accurate colour reproduction it’s important to take care with the choice of film for the application at hand. Films that display extremely high levels of colour saturation are less likely to be able to reproduce delicate pastel tones, skin tones and neutrals accurately. In such circumstances a portrait featuring Caucasian skin tone may result in the subject’s cheeks appearing a rosier red than is desirable. Professional films, specifically those manufactured with accurate colour reproduction in mind, are a good start for such photography. It’s then important that the film is stored (refrigerated), exposed and processed according to the manufacturers instructions.

Images made with digital cameras introduce a new variant. Many such cameras include a variety of ways of rendering the scene. Canon’s version is called Picture Styles and includes options such as Portrait and Landscape. These settings vary the way the scene is rendered by altering the contrast, sharpness and color saturation of the original RAW data, captured during exposure, in the resulting camera-processed JPEG file. This is either good or bad, depending on your point of view. My point is simply that any such setting, other than the one that doesn’t alter the original data (‘Faithful’ in the case of the Canon system), will produce a different rendering of the scene than would otherwise have been the case.

The next problem relates to folks who want to take control of their images by processing them on the desktop, possibly prior to printing them out as either inkjet or traditional chemical prints. Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are two wonderful programs well suited to this purpose. But, regardless of your image manipulation skills, the preparation of a quality file for printing is dependant on a range of issues including the following:

• The quality of your monitor: Eizo monitors are regarded as industry standard for Professional photographers and graphic designers.

• Whether your monitor is accurately and regularly calibrated. Devices such as the Spyder 3 Elite from Datacolor are excellent products for these purposes.

• The application of what is referred to as an ICC (International Color Commission) Color Print Profiles. These profiles provide the information needed to ensure that the colors you see on a quality, accurately calibrated monitor match the color on your inkjet or traditional print. They take into account the paper, printer/chemistry or printer/ink in question and calibrate you monitor to that output.

Monitor quality, calibration and ICC color print profiles are all huge topics, critical to digital photographers. I will address these topics, over time, with one or more articles beginning in the near future.

© Copyright All Rights Reserved

Glenn Guy, Blue Sky Photography

This post to the Canon EF 28-135 IS group on Flickr is incredibly helpful:

noeltykay says:

1. Type about:config in Firefox 3’s address bar and press Return. The configuration settings will appear.
2. In the Filter field, type gfx. The list of settings will shorten to show just those related to graphics, ie gfx.
3. If the Value for gfx.color_management.enabled is False, double-click anywhere on that line to toggle the setting to True.
4. Quit and relaunch Firefox 3 and you’re in business. You can confirm that colour management is working by viewing the photos on this page. If all four quadrants of the first photo are a seamless match, then colour management in your copy of Firefox is up and running.

(thread here: Color Management PSA: Firefox 3 is now Color Managed.)

Update: In case you missed it, here’s the color profile test page:
http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

I am finding that there is frequently confusion regarding ICC profiles and how they apply to one’s image. The procedure relates to Adobe Photoshop’s  Assigning profiles vs Converting profiles. 

When you assign an ICC profile to your image to do color corrections and other adjustments, you will be able produce WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), whereas by using the quick and dirty method: converting to a profile, you will not achieve WYSIWYG as well as actually picking up unwanted colors and then finally missing colors when you make a hard copy print. 

Tip: Do not confuse Color Space profiles such as  sRGB IEC61966-2.1, Adobe RGB (1998), ColorMatch RGB as a working ICC profile, they are actually for monitor viewing for specific applications (web design, RGB printing, CMYK prepress, etc…….).   ICC profiles will actually display the   correct colors at the final print stage for specific products and paper surfaces.  

George P.L. Jang (digital manager: The Lab-Professional Digital Image Works)