Canon BJC-50 User Manual

Page 62

Adjustments made to the monitor

If you have high quality monitor capable of finely controlling the amount of light allocated to each
component of the RGB mix of colors, it is possible to adjust the colors appearing on the screen in such
a way as to approximate the printed result. However, normal monitors allow only rough control of
brightness and contrast, control which is applied indiscriminately to the entire screen and is not very
effective for anything more than rough adjustment of the appearance of whole screen images. We
recommend selection of a highly reliable monitor which suffers from as little deviation in the
reproduction of colors as possible.

Some software applications allow you to adjust the Gamma value, a value which adjusts the contrast
of a color. One rule of thumb holds that a monitor Gamma value of about 1.4 brings the colors
displayed on a monitor into close agreement with the colors displayed on the printed page.

Adjustment of color from within software applications

When the software application allows adjustment of color, the appearance of colors on the monitor
screen can be adjusted after comparison with printed results.

Normally, colors are adjusted according to the procedure outlined below. For further information
about how to adjust colors, see the documentation accompanying your software application.

First, print out a color sample using the CMYK method, and adjust the colors appearing on the
monitor screen as you compare them to the printed result. This process is called color
calibration. By performing this calibration, it is possible to bring the colors displayed on the
monitor screen and on the printed page into closer match.

If your software application uses a color palette to set color levels, it is possible to finely tune

the appearance of a particular color by adjusting the color palette.

If your software application permits you to adjust the colors over the entire screen through use
of a color balance, you can make adjustments like washing out red colors or strengthening
yellows over the entire screen at a single stroke.