Graphic Arts Workstation - Part 3 : DreamColor Calibration

Just as short note on the calibration I've done so far. Firstly, as mentioned in prior posts my idea of calibration and the whole color correction topic is being approached from an amateur (albeit advanced) point of view. I just want reasonable control over my two monitors, and for the prints to be reasonably close to hue/tone I see on the monitor. Paper/print will always look 'worse' than a monitor that's a given, chromatically correct light booths, special scopes, all the rest really isn't my concern. I just don't want a huge surprises when I go to print.

That said, the DreamColor Calibration Kit is doing what I want thus far. I have an Asus ProArt and the DreamColor Display. I expect them both to be calibrated to the same standard. In the past I used Adobe98. I'm thinking, since I'm mainly concerned with photography that I should change that to the ProColor standard. I haven't done that yet however. What I have done was to use the calibration unit on the DreamColor to dummy it down to the Adobe standard, and that along with setting the Luminance level down to 120 definitely did bring the DreamColor down to the Asus level of performance... a bit.

The native DreamColor display is eye-numbing beautiful. Incredibly crisp, and the colors were the most intense I've ever seen, while at the same time not be over saturated or off balance in any detectable way. But as we all know, print is another story, and I'll have to do some serious adjusting to get the DreamColor down to a point where it is reasonably close to print. I'm thinking I'll print to Canson's Arches Aquarelle which has given me fantastic results in the past. It has a really nice watercolor feel, and that is what my final image needs. Something that looks/feels liquid when it was put to paper.

I used the default Adobe98 color space, set luminance to 120 and left gamma alone at 2.2. The DreamColor is still much brighter than the Asus, but I have not calibrated the Asus in over a year (yea, I know, tisk, tisk), and that was done with the old X-rite Monaco colorimeter which is no longer supported. My next step will be to calibrate the Asus using the same settings, and using the DreamColor kit. I'll report on that next time.