Over the past week I've been setting up my home 'studio' for want of a better word, for printing and proofing. As you may have seen in an earlier post last week, I took delivery of a viewing booth, which allows me to evaluate photographic images under controlled lighting. It is, as Neil Barstow - who I bought the viewing booth from, ideal for verifying that what you are seeing on screen is correct.
I bought a profiled print from Neil, along with a copy of the original file and a 'proof profile' for viewing the image under Photoshop's Proofing facility (something which, I'm at a loss to understand why Adobe didn't give this feature in Lightroom).
Anyway, the process is pretty straight forward. You calibrate your monitor, then profile it - I used BasicColour, which I have to say, has given the most accurate profile I've seen to date, and I didn't have to use a spectrophotometer for my wide gamut display. Just my simple X-rite Eye one display colourmeter. It worked really well and when I threw up the verification file and set the proof to the correct profile for the print, I was able to see that the file matched exactly what I see on my viewing booth.
The next stage now is printing. I know it's going to be a learning curve. I'll let you know how things go as I progress, but suffice to say that I'm intending to have a fully profiled, colour accurate printing process at home : something I've wanted to do for a long time as it will give me full control of the final output.
Will keep you posted about the colour management efforts and how things progress.