Being that I work in and support a graphic arts department, color calibration and color management are issues constantly on my mind. There are very good tools on the market to address these issues however, and as another industry buddy just asked for a rundown on my experiences, I figured I’d do one here.

There are many tools on the market, starting at under $1000 for a package of both screen and CMYK printer profiling tools. Here are the ones I have experience with:

ColorVision Spyder2PRO
A best-seller in this class is the ColorVision Spyder2PRO Suite. This was the first road I went down on my way to a working solution. The Spyder2PRO USB monitor profiling setup was adequate, but not great, at matching screen colors to Epson color proofs. The ColorSavvy ColorMouse CM2C, the printer profiling setup, was almost completely useless. It is a setup that uses an RS-232 to USB adapter, and if you have ever tried to use one, you know how poorly they perform. I was only once able to actually get the device to interface with my computer and read a printout. Also, the ColorMouse only comes with very poorly executed software. I recommend against the ColorMouse. The Spyder2PRO is a fairly good entry-level monitor profiling setup , and can be purchased separately from the aforementioned package at a price of around $250.

Gretag MacBeth Eye-One
Gretag MacBeth makes the good stuff. The price of entry is higher, but as I have found, there is no substitute. The second you fire up the software, you know you are working with a competent hardware/software package.

I received an Eye-One Display 2 as a free gift for attending a seminar called Color Without Limits. This was an incredibly eye-opening class, and I would recommend it to anyone thinking of implementing a color-management solution, whether you are a photographer, designer, or printer. The Eye-one showed amazing results right off the bat. The colors the screens in my shop produced after Eye-One calibration were quite different than before, when the only color setup was done by our eyes and Adobe Gamma. At first it seemed strange that there was so much difference, until we sent our first few pieces out for color proofs. Amazingly, the printed pieces looked like what we expected from the color work we did on our respective machines. All the designers were stoked on the accuracy we were seeing.

At this time, we were going with accurate color on the monitors, and just dealing with the outputs our Canon Color imageRunner C2050 was giving us, since there was no RIP (Raster Image Processor) attached to that machine. A couple of months ago, we upgraded to the Canon Color imageRunner C3220 with the ImagePASS C1 RIP. Included in this package was an EFI- (Electronics For Imaging, the makers of the Fiery RIP) branded color-profiler package, including a device that is called the EFI ES-1000. The EFI ES-1000 is closely modeled after(and almost identical to) the Gretag MacBeth Eye-One UV Cut, a device for calibrating monitors, printers, scanners, cameras, projectors, etc.

Finally, all parts were falling into place. The ES-1000 provided monitor calibration right in line with the Eye-One Display2 I had been using to calibrate the monitors (since they’re made by the same company, they damn well should be similar). It also is able to read the printer output patches (you print a file with a ton of little squares of color, then hold the ES-1000 over it and it measures the ink densities of the squares), where it interprets how the printer puts ink to paper, and builds an ICC color profile to compensate for how the printer produces color. After building a profile, you can load it into Adobe Photoshop, or any ICC-compliant software, so that the files are separated based on the printer’s ability to reproduce color, basically translating color standards into data that the printer can use to output those standardized colors. Yeah, real basic. All that garbage I just said about printer profiles boils down to this - this product, used correctly, makes color look the same on your screen as it does coming out of your CMYK printer.

I know, there’s a bunch of confusing language and terms in this color-management stuff, but really, it’s far simpler than it seems. If you are looking to implement a color-management scheme in your shop, look to Gretag MacBeth for the hardware and software to get the job done right. And attend their seminar I mentioned above. The course materials and lecture will do wonders for your understanding of the processes involved.

Yesterday I played my last nine holes at Orion Greens. I played with my Grandma and Grandpa, and we had a lot of fun. It was pretty cold for a game of golf, but not terrible. My grandma and I used to play quite a bit there when we were both learning to golf, starting when I was about 10 years old. Monday is their last day of business - the land was sold to develop 40-some houses.

It’s really a sad thing - OG is the only course that is really affordable enough for townies to play. It is a small, Par 31 course with only a couple of opportunities for me to bust out the driver. I played pretty well yesterday, hitting the ball well of the tee and hitting most of the par 3 greens. They haven’t been watering a ton, so the greens were hard and fast and incredibly hard to stop the ball on.

Not that I have a ton of time to play golf, but now I will almost never get to play in town. Most of the courses are far too expensive to have fun playing, and OG was lax and family style, where you could wear jeans and a t-shirt rather than traditional golf attire. And after Monday, it will close forever, giving way to more houses to expensive for me to even consider.

Anyway, farewell Orion Greens, my “home course” of you will. I’ve had a lot of fun over the past 16 or so years tearing through the course. You will be missed.

Okay, so it’s officially called Hop Trip. But in my circle, I’m certain it will be called Trip Hop.

I’ve sampled three of the tasty bombers so far, and I am into it.

Here’s the story from the bottle:

Fresh Hop Pale Ale is all about celebrating the hop harvest in the fall. Fresh picked hops have to be added to the brew immediately, so one brewer starts the brew in Bend, while another rushes the hops three hours back from the Willamette Valley. The result? Let’s just say it was worth the drive.

It’s the goods. Hoppy, though not overly so, with a crisp flavor overall. There’s really a lot of hop flavor for as clean as it goes down. It’s like right between an IPA and a Pale. I wish I had a Bridgeport IPA on hand, because I think it’s a similar flavor. Bridgeport is a weak-ass IPA, quite a tasty beer, IMO, but not an authentic IPA. An IPA for the non-core if you will. But I digress…

I fully recommend trying the Deschutes Trip Hop, especially if you like hoppy beers. I’ll report on the draft flavor after I get the chance to have one down at the Brewery.

Sometimes, time flies right by and I don’t write anything. Then it seems so much time has passed that I’m not sure which events of the last few days I should write about. So here’s a rundown.

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Fiona Apple’s new release really has a hold of me. Great songs, great voice, and production that sounds great even to my incredibly picky ears.

Work
Podcasting, new iPods, two new machines still in boxes to implement, 10 hour days at least, large production projects, need IT help, crazy crazy crazy…

Home
My daughter is growing up way too fast. She has a new trick almost every day, she’s going from knowing words to being conversational, and all those cute little baby clothes are too small. Toddler came on very quickly, it seems.

We’re not really loving our house, and we talk about moving all of our stuff almost daily. There’s too much traffic and noise and neighbors and on and on. And really, for the money we’re paying, there are much nicer houses on the market. We were very anxious to get back on our own, perhaps too anxious. Oh well, live and learn. I wish I could just buy a place so that we could really settle. That’s dreaming though, I know.

Music
Trying to get back into jamming with Maudesty and our old three-piece is going to play again tonight. Now that my bass player set up his spare bedroom with some Roland V-Drums, we can play into the headphones without hardly making a sound. That will be fun, it’s only the second time I have gotten to play those V-Drums in a full band setting. Man, I love those things. I think all the time about parting out the Pearls and hooking up on some Rolands. Although, I would hate to get rid of the Pearls, since I doubt I would ever be able to talk myself into hooking up on such drumset/cymbal goodness.

I started a blog page for Maudesty, which is my more experimental project, consisting of guitars, drum machines, laptops, and sometimes even the turntables. I’m going to get that up and running and released probably next week. Then, I’ll get perhaps a weekly podcast of some highlights from our session out there to get an initial response.

Tech
Boy do i ever want a Treo or a Blackberry or some such device with which to have a keyboard for text messaging. I find that I really enjoy that form of communication, but I have to have to think my way through the damn phone keypad when I have something to say. Especially after a few beers - the damn phone is just too small and inconvenient.

Video-capable iPod. Gotta have it. I think around xmas time. Hopefully be then, Apple will have released their video-capable Airport Express.

In closing…
Okay, there’s some fodder. Nothing great, nor controversial, so I probably won;t even get any comments. I need to work on that. But anyway, there you have it, kids. ~peace~

That’s right. You can now get your hands on a G5 with two dual-core 2.5GHz processors. That is, if you can part with $3300 before RAM (okay, Apple includes 512MB, but what can you do with that), which you’d need at least 4GB of. 4GB (DDR2-533) will run you $435.60 at The Chip Merchant. Max it out at 16GB (8 x 2GB) if you like for only S5,759.60 - yes, that’s just the price of the RAM there.

16GB. Wow.

Apple also unveiled the “new” PowerBook G4. Still a G4, still 1.67GHz, still only one processor, boring boring boring. They’re not even shipping a 16x SuperDrive in them.