My old color management was a mess, finally switched to a calibrated workflow

For three years I just eyeballed colors on my laptop and exported JPEGs straight to my online gallery. Everything looked fine on my screen, but clients kept saying prints came out too dark or too warm. Last month I bought a ColorChecker and a basic calibrator for about $120 total. Now I build my palette in a soft-proofed space and check every piece on two different monitors before uploading. It took me two weeks to break the old habit, but the difference is night and day. Has anyone else dealt with client complaints about color and just accepted it for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

eva_moore26d ago

Stop blaming yourself when the prints are off, your eyes were never the real problem.

keith27426d ago

The soft proofing part is what really changed things for me too. Once you see how much the ink and paper shift the colors, you stop trusting your monitor completely. I used to get the same dark print complaints and just bumped the brightness up, which made everything look washed out on screen. Now I keep a small test print file with skin tones, grays, and deep shadows and pull it up before I finalize anything. That little reference takes five minutes and saves me a whole round of reprints. Did you also adjust your screen brightness to match your viewing room, or just rely on the calibrator?