Greetings

[Matthew Range]

hello.

I've perused these boards off and on for a while now. A little about me for background.

32 years old

Went to college and studied cinematography, never really had anything to do with photography.


Worked on commercials in dallas but never really moved up the ladder so to speak...took pictures as a hobby.

In 2005 got a job as an in house photographer/designer for a famous apparel company. They liked my pictures.

so I've slowly been building my studio and now I come to color management.

The Majority of my pictures are either going into catalogs that I design which are 4 color offset or they are going into magazines as ads which are also 4 color web press.

I am more or less powerless to get good color out of the magazines. I've had color cast on some of my ads because the sheet next to it was heavy on the greens or some other color... Nothing I can do accept complain and get a cut rate on the ad, but for the catalogs I have the ability to get very very close as it's only my job running.

In my studio for shooting product I have:

black walls
elinchrom freelights uv coated strobes
gretag Macbeth color chart
canon 5d
24-70 2.8

I shoot at iso 100 shutter 125 f/11

At the momnet I'm using a 21" dell CRT that I'm not to thrilled with. I use a Monaco OPTIX XR to calibrate it, but I feel that maybe I can get better color reproduction from a pro monitor.

Just calibrating my monitor though isn't enough because offset printers vary. What I really need to do is calibrate my monitor to the press (and the pressman!!) where I will be printing my catalogs.

so 2 questions:

what is a pro monitor that gives or can be made to give accurate color and detail?

How can I best calibrate my monitor to their press?

Before they go to press they give me a high rez Matchprint off of their Kodak Polychrome 5042 inkjet which I sign off on.

Printers will tell you that they always match to the proof etc... but all the ones I have dealt with at press check hem and haw when the press doesn;t match the proof that if I need it to be exact we need to go back and change the color on the files and then replate.

I have two options:

1. calibrate my monitor to their Kodak matchprint and then demand that match it.

2. calibrate my monitor to the press that is going to do the job.


In your estimation what is the best solution?

I imagine their is a product that I can purchase which allows them to print a target that I can then feed into my monitor which will then calibrate it to their press...

can anyone recommend?

Any help is greatly appreciated.