colour profile question! need help tonight!

[bridgettecole.com]

hi everyone, i need some help with colour management tonight if possible, i have to take my prints to lab tomorrow morning for printing.
so the lab, bond imaging in Melbourne has given me a copy of their monitor calibration software the instructions are as follows...
1. Using the physical controls of your monitor set your white point temp to 6500 degrees kelvin.
2. open the "colour settings.pdf" (which is on the disk in the calibration kit)
3. Match your PS colour settings to those as specified in the colour settings.pdf
4. Open "calibration.jpg" in PS
5. Open "adobe gamma" from your control panels folder and follow the "wizard"
6. Once the wizard has finished, unselect "use single gamma" and adjust the seperate RGB control,s until the hard copies of the prints match the corresponding images on the screen
7. SAve the calibration as "BondCal followed by the date
8. Double check that the hard copies of the prints match those on the screen and repeat steps 6 through 9 if necessary

What i am not sure about and is probably really easy question, is when i open the "callibration.jpg" which i am supposed to match up later to the hard copy of the image they have in the kid, do i
a use the imbedded profile (instead of the working space)
b converts the documnets colours to the working space
c discard the embedded profile (dont colour manager)
which one do i do?

thankyou !

[tim]

Set photoshop to sRgb, and use sRgb when you take JPGs on the camera or convert from RAW. That way you'll have virtually no color profile issues. I had a look at their website, as long as you use RGB and embed your profile you'll be fine either way. Just make sure sRgb, Adobe RGB, or ProFoto RGB is embedded in your file. Remember, never assign a profile, always convert. If you have a custom monitor profile make sure the only place it's set up is in the windows control panel - if you use mac I have no idea.

To answer your question you need to do (a), use the embedded profile. No matter what color space the file is in, since it has an embedded profile photoshop will display it correctly.

The other issue is monitor calibration - get/rent the hardware to do it properly, or hire someone to do it for you.

Color management info here (http://www.bondimaging.com.au/Gallery/archive/JohnBowden.html). Also I think you should get this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fexec%2Fobid os%2Ftg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F0321267222%3Ftag2%3Dheadphonerevi-20&tag=headphonerevi-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325), that way you'll know what's going on :)

Hope that helps :)

[René Damkot]

What i am not sure about and is probably really easy question, is when i open the "callibration.jpg" which i am supposed to match up later to the hard copy of the image they have in the kid, do i
a use the imbedded profile (instead of the working space)
b converts the documnets colours to the working space
c discard the embedded profile (dont colour manager)
which one do i do?


a.
I second the recommendation for a calibration device however.
Your eyes are pretty adaptive, and therefore aren't too well suited as calibration devices ;)

[tzalman]

By doing it their way - making your monitor match their output - you will be o.k. as long as you only print there but you will have no idea what your images will look like on somebody else's monitor if you post them to the web or e-mail them.