If you own a digital camera and a photo quality printer or even a flatbed or film scanner and a photo quality printer there comes a time when you realize that what you are seeing on screen is not what your getting on the paper. The chances are good that you come to this realization quickly, probably with the first or second print.

There are many things that you can do about such a thing. One you can not worry about it as long as green is green and blue is blue. I felt this way for a long time, I didn't really care what shade of green the grass or trees were as long as it was some shade of green. I can tell you right now that this is not a good approach.

You can attempt to do what a friend of mine does and that is print out your photo and then using it and the controls on your monitor adjust your monitor colors to that photos colors. Now this can work and work pretty good provide there is a very small difference between your print and your monitor. If there is too great a difference the chances are good that you will not have enough adjustment leeway on your monitor to fully compensate or match it to the print. Color will be better, but still not close.

The third option is to use color calibration technology. Now I felt the same way about this as I am sure you are feeling right now. This is going to cost a small fortune and I am going to need a doctorate in color theory and electrical engineering to make this work. Well, neither is the case. When I started looking at color calibration I decided right up front that I didn't want to spend a lot of money and I wasn't going to spend the next 20 years of my life learning how to do it. A human's life span is short enough with out wasting it on something like this.

While color calibration is important it shouldn't at this stage of the technology game be an all consuming process. Thankfully it isn't. It is actually quite affordable and quite easy to do. First thing is first, you really only have to calibrate your monitor. That is providing you have a couple of other things. These other things are...

1. A name brand photo printer like an Epson or HP. Now other brands I am sure will work, but you need to make sure first, see number 2 below for why you need a brand name printer.
2. The maker of your printer needs to offer you printer profiles for their papers and inks. This is where number 1 above comes in. I know that Epson and HP do offer these profiles.
3. You use only the printer makers papers and inks so that you have access to the printer profiles for them. If you want to use third party paper or ink make sure that they offer profiles for those papers and inks. This can get tricky if you are using paper from one company and ink from another, the chances of getting a profile that covers the paper and ink from these two different sources is next to nil. Myself I choose to use only the paper and inks available from my printer manufacturer, this way I know I have profiles for the paper and ink. If you wish to use someone else's paper and some else's inks and you can't find profiles for that combination then you will need to spend more money on a calibration system that does monitor and printer calibration. These are available and they aren't that expensive.

With the above in mind I recommend for an affordable and easy to use solution the Pantone Huey Screen Shot. This is a simple to use, but very effective monitor calibration system. It works with both CRT monitors and LCD monitors. Setup is simple, simply plug-in the unit in to a USB port, install the included software and then follow the onscreen step-by-step instructions to calibrate your monitor.

One of the nice little touches is that since you have to attach the little device to your monitor screen for calibration they include a nice little starter package of screen cleaner and lint free wipe cloth, so everything you need is in the package. Also, you don't have to worry the little suction cups that hold the device to your monitor while you are calibrating your screen are safe for both CRT and LCD screens. They leave no marks of any kind.

Once your screen has been calibrated Huey On Screen you simply insert the Huey in to the included holder and aim at yourself. From time to time (you set how often) it will read the ambient light in the room and make adjustments to the screen calibration. This is great for when your lighting changes. For example early morning light, vs. dusk or artificial light at night, etc. From time to time you will be prompted to recalibrate your screen, this is to make sure that the calibration is kept up to date and accurate.

A color calibrated workflow is quite simple...

1. Install and calibrate your monitor using the Huey. Once this is done your monitor has been calibrated and that color profile is now active.
2. Load your photo in to Photoshop and make any needed adjustments to it. Basically get it ready to print.
3. Turn off color management in Photoshop. You want the printer to handle this, not Photoshop.
4. Go in to the Print option and the driver for your printer and choose the proper printer profile (usually for the paper you are going to use). The profiles from the printer maker assume you are using their ink and since the in doesn't generally change the name the profiles by paper.
5. With the monitor profiled with the Huey and the color management turned off for Photoshop and the proper paper (printer profile) selected in the printer you are now ready to print.

While I like the Huey a lot. It is very affordable, very easy to use and it really does make a big difference between what I see on screen and what I get in print. I do not get a 100% screen to print match nor do I think this is possible no matter what system you are using. It is my opinion that color matching (what you see on screen and what you see on your print) can only match to a certain point. Printing is not an absolute even with a color calibration system. Why? Because there are far too many variables for this to be possible. Variables like:

1. We are talking about two different kinds of technologies here. The screen which is RGB and printer which is CMYK (the printer driver converts your RGB data to CMYK for that printer, this is why you should never convert to CMYK yourself before printing, let the printer driver do it.) Both of these have very different color gamut's (the number of colors they can reproduce.). Also, one uses projected light (the monitor) and one uses reflected light (the print.)
2. The minute the angle or type of light changes or the amount of light changes that falls on the print the colors will change. Just look at a print indoors with fluorescent light and then outside with sunlight.
3. I believe that the age of the ink can also have an effect. Ink that was made 2 days ago is going to show different than ink made a year or two ago. If you think this far fetched just remember that nothing in all of creation really ages all that well and I would like to point out that most printer makers put expiration dates on their ink and some have even designed the printer to alert you after a set amount of time letting you know that the ink has expired. So I feel strongly age plays a part.
4. How the paper is stored (drier environment, more humid environment, etc.), how old it is and even small differences in the construction of the paper.

Basically, what I am saying is that printing is not an absolute. There are far too many variables that are going to have even small effects on how an image prints out, because of this expecting a 100% screen to print match I think is unrealistic.

With that out of the way I have to say that the Huey considering it costs of less than $100 has taken my print quality and my happiness level over my prints to a whole new level. While my prints are not a 100% match to my screen they are very close and the differences are so small that I really don't care.

Now for my one and only complaints. I really wish Pantone wouldn't assume that whoever buys their products knows what they are doing. By this I mean they include no information of any kind on how to use the Huey in a color calibrated workflow. They tell you how to install it, how to calibrate your screen, but now how to get it all to work with your software and printer. I had to do a search on the internet to find out that I needed to turn off color calibration in Photoshop and that I needed the profiles for my printer for the paper and ink I was going to use. Considering that this is an entry level product I would have expected more information and more help included with the package. I can understand that they can't cover every software program and every printer out there, but they can at least give you the basics and specific instructions for Photoshop and say Epson and HP printers the two major brands of photo printers. Then with this information user's could extrapolate what to for other printers, etc. This was a big disappointment for me.

Needs

• CRT and LCD Monitors
• Windows 2000, XP, and Vista
• Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
• USB port