Monitor calibration

Epson ET8550, Printing

Apple’s Monitor Display Calibrator.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

There are two major aspects of calibrating the color rendering of your system if you want to make prints that match what you see on the display. And while no print – a reflective medium – can hope to match the dynamic range of a transmission technology like an LED screen, you still want to get as close as possible.

The first is to use the right icc paper profile for your printer and paper, something I describe here. And you must not let the printer manage color. The only way to invoke and use that paper/printer profile is to set up your computer to manage color. Leave the printer color management turned off.

The second aspect is monitor calibration. While in OS 10.15 Sequoia it’s hidden away, Apple’s Monitor Display Calibrator is still around and has been for ages. It’s a cheap (free) alternative to calibration hardware which will set you back a minimum of $170. While my Benq monitor comes very well calibrated out of the box, the Apple tool can make things even better. As for my X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter it is toast as the makers have refused to update it to work with Apple Silicon CPUs. A business with the integrity of Adobe.

The problem is that Apple seems not to want anyone using the Monitor Display Calibrator as it’s well and truly hidden. Here’s how to find and use it.

Go to ‘System Settings (Apple symbol)->Displays’:


System Settings->Displays

Click on ‘Color Profile->Customize’:


System Settings->Displays->Color Profile

See that little ‘+’ symbol at the lower left, below? Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and click it. This will get you into the Monitor Display Calibrator which looks like this – be sure to click on ‘Expert Mode’ in the right hand window:


System Settings->Displays->Color Profile-Customize

The application will walk you through a five step process to adjust your monitor. Be sure to do this in an ambient light setting as similar as possible to that in which you will display your prints, as ambient light color (‘temperature’ if you speak Geek) affects color rendering in a print. Save the result and then go back into ‘System Settings->Displays’ and make sure your new monitor profile is the one you have selected – see the first image above.

You are done.


A nice print to display match.

Lightroom Classic and paper profiles

Epson ET8550

How to make sure you are using the paper/printer profile.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

There’s a poor piece of interface design in the Print module of Lightroom Classic (LRc) which, if the user is not aware of it, will result in a custom paper profile NOT being used and will have LRc default to color management by the printer, which is NOT what you want. I’m on LRc 14.1.1 but would bet that earlier versions have the same bug. Easily checked if you read on.

Most quality paper manufacturers make icc profiles available for a variety of printers and for a broad selection of papers. For example, my default paper’s maker, the French Canson company, lists a host of profiles for its papers here. Dial in your printer’s make and model – the Epson ET-8550 in my case – and you can download and install the relevant profile(s) for use with LRc.

If you are using a custom icc profile matched to your printer and paper then you must not allow the printer to manage color. You want your computer to manage color which in the case of a Mac means you must use Colorsync. This will ensure that the tailored profile is applied when the print job is sent to the printer. Adobe has a somewhat cryptic italicized note to this effect in the Print Job section of the Print module, thus:


The Canson paper profile has been invoked under
‘Color Management’. Note Adobe’s italicized advisory.

The problem is that you cannot ‘turn off’ color management on purpose (meaning selecting ColorSync – see below) as LRc does that for you. But you sure as heck can accidentally turn it on, and I explain how that can happen in the details which follow.

Now click on Printer, lower right above and you get this:


The Print dialog.

Click on ‘Color Matching’ and you will see:


LRc has selected ColorSync. It’s greyed out,
so you would think it cannot be disabled. Read on.

Whatever you do, do NOT click on ‘Cancel’ to exit this dialog. If you do click on ‘Cancel’ and click on ‘Color Matching’ again guess what? Adobe switches the printer setting to ….


The Print dialog. LRc has switched
to ‘Managed by Printer’. WRONG!

The tailored custom paper and printer profile you think you are using will be bypassed and the printer will take control of color management, which is exactly what you do NOT want.

Instead, to exit the Print->Printer Options->Color Matching-> dialog (go up two images) you MUST click on ‘OK’. That will preserve the ColorSync setting and you should not have to go into that dialog box ever again. The ColorSync setting is stable and is preserved even if you exit and restart LRc.

How did I discover this? Well, print colors were off in my first run with Canson paper and only after a bit of digging did I realize that I had lost the ColorSync setting which ensures that LRc manages color using the custom paper/print profile. The Epson printer had taken over, messing things up as it does not know to apply the custom icc printer/paper profile. All the printer knows is that you are using glossy paper (if you told LRc that – in the ‘Print Settings’ drop down in three images above) and nothing else.

You can safely confirm that color management is indeed Off by clicking on Print Settings->Advanced Color Settings whereupon you should see this:


Confirmation that Color Management is Off.

Hardware changes in 2024

Photography

More of the same, really.

For my demanding Studio Dogs project big prints were de rigeur. The project took most of the year to complete, concluding with thirty-six large prints, all made on the excellent Epson ET-8550 printer, as frugal as it is reliable. After one year and over 400 13″ x 19″ prints I have had but one paper jam, probably my fault as I may have overloaded paper in the feed tray.


The Epson ET-8550 photo printer.

More software than hardware, the later images were printed on Canson paper from France and that paper is proving superior, as regards gloss retention, to the many sheets of Hewlett Packard dye ink paper which preceded it.


Canson high gloss printing paper.

Those Studio Dogs were all photographed on a Nikon D800 whose over ten year age makes it ancient in these digital times, yet there’s no improving on the images it delivers at a fraction of the cost of Nikon’s latest hardware. As for triggering the strobes, a remote strobe trigger, now almost two decades old, makes for a wireless connection.


The Nikon D800, introduced in 2012.

And if you think 2012 is old, how about the Novatron studio flash outfit I continue using, manufactured over a quarter of a century ago? Sure it has wires not rechargeable batteries (ugh!) but it’s as reliable as a hammer and puts out a lot of light.


Novatron outfit with Bert the Border Terrier.

And speaking of the Nikon D800 and its splendid 36mp sensor, another major project in 2024 was the re-digitizing of old film images at a quality level significantly superior to that obtained with dedicated Nikon film scanners. And we are not talking about a handful of scans here. How about over 2,200 in a matter of a few short weeks? This setup is not only good, it’s also spectacularly fast.


Inexpensive and outstanding film scanning setup.

The biggest hardware change in 2024 involved migration from the behemoth 2010 Mac Pro with its seven cooling fans and vast bulk to a minuscule single fan Mac Mini M4 which is a fraction of the cost of the oldie, confers the latest security updates via the Mac OS and delivers performance which is …. identical! Sadly the old Mac Pro will have to go to the recyclers as selling it with attendant shipping costs and transit risk is not a viable proposition. It is, in other words, worthless and I hate Apple for forcing me to upgrade from a bulletproof machine by obsoleting it with its truly useless annual OS upgrades.

And the Mini ‘upgrade’ with its Apple Silicon CPU/GPU meant that my old non-subscription Lightroom and Photoshop processing applications would no longer work and I am now on the hook for $10 monthly to Adobe for Lightroom Classic until I croak, and even my heirs will likely see these greedy bastards continue to make money off my estate. As for Photoshop, fughedaboutit. I bought Affinity Photo 2 which does every thing I need for a one-off payment.

On the movie display front I added a second ancient Intel Mac Mini to the living room TV to permit routing of movies, stored on hard drives in the remote home theater, to that TV. You would think the existing AppleTV 4K attached to the TV would suffice to do this but Greedy Timmy in Cupertino sees to it that routing of content from hard drives attached to remote Macs is impossible with the AppleTV puck. He wants you to buy more hardware and a sub-$150 ancient Intel Mac Mini is more than up to the task.

As for the Home Theater with its 120″ screen and LG UST projector, allied to a fine Sonos sound system, all is sweetness and light. The Theater continues to show a movie every night, the hardware has proved to be robust and fault free and the recent addition of a magnificent 1955 Rolleiflex 2.8D to the display of photo hardware adds that special touch.


The Rolleiflex 2.8D, manufactured
between Aug 1955 and Sep 1956.


The Home Theater with the LG Ultra Short Throw projector.

So 2024 paid homage to the old belief that buying the best is consonant with a long life, along with some ingenious gadgets which cost little but truly deliver. I only regret being forced to remainder that great Mac Pro and having to give Adobe more of my hard earned money.

Frank Horvat

Book reviews

Wit and class.

You can view my library of photography and art books by clicking here.

“You’re using a Rollei? Did God put your eyes on your stomach? And a flashlight? It’s an arbitrary interference! And color? I would only use color if I had my own palette, but I certainly wouldn’t rely on Kodak’s!”

The year is 1950, the city is the center of the western world – Paris – and a very young Italian photographer named Frank Horvat (1928-2020) had just received this tongue lashing at a weekly critique session. The lashing came from none other than Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Suffice it to say that Horvat traded in his Rollei for a used Leica and went on to become one of the mainstays of fashion photography in the last great decades of haute couture, the 1950s and 1960s.

Like the Englishmen Duffy, Donovan, Bailey and Armstrong-Jones, Horvat ditched the large format negative swapping it for the much grainier one from a Leica or Nikon and took the model out of the studio and into the streets. Lots of fun. Luxuriate in the host of images contained in the book’s 250+ pages, Horvat’s work filled with wit and whimsy.


Paris, 1958. Givenchy dress.

Tracking Charnier

Movies, Photographs

The French Connection.

This post contains spoilers regarding the conclusion of the movie The French Connection II so if you have not seen the movie and it’s on your list, quit now.

The original The French Connection was released in 1971 and was directed by William Friedkin. Famous for its car chase under the elevated subway, it’s a far lighter movie than its 1975 successor, directed by John Frankenheimer. Both movies address the smuggling of heroin through the French port of Marseille and the sequel has some truly horrifying footage of a heroin addicted Gene Hackman nearly dying from his captors’ ministrations.

Suffice it to say that the last ten seconds of the second movie are some of the most dramatic on film, culminating in the death of the drug kingpin Alain Charnier, splendidly acted in both movies by the distinguished Spanish actor Fernando Rey.


Montpellier to Marseille.

My son Winston spent an extended sojourn in France during the first half of the year, extending his French studies with a tour of Europe, centered in the beautiful ancient town of Montpellier, some 70 miles west of Marseille on the Mediterranean Sea, and he came up with the idea of finding the exact location from which Hackman fires the deadly shots at the evil Charnier. He did this using his memory of the documentary style ending, no GPS involved, but his image of the shooter’s location comes with GPS data courtesy of the iPhone he used. This is from the shooter’s viewpoint, though Charnier’s luxury yacht is missing:


Winston’s image of Charnier’s location.

And here are the exact coordinates:


The site of the climactic closing seconds of the movie.

Tremendous fun and encomiums to Winston for his diligent tracing of a great movie location.


Hackman, as ‘Popeye Doyle’, fires the killing shots.