When you hear the term middle gray, you might be thinking of the halfway point between white and black, only to later learn that photographers refer to middle gray as 12%, 12.8%, or 18%. Why isn’t middle gray 50%? Even aside from percentages, what's the point of finding or using...
Color Management and Printing Category Archive
8-Bit vs 16-Bit Images
The term “bit” is common in any form of digital media. With respect to digital imaging, bit depth goes by many names like pixel depth or color depth. In digital photography, the debate of 8-bit vs 16-bit files has been going on as much as Nikon vs Canon.
How to Calibrate Your Apple Mac Monitor
In this article, I will go over the process of calibrating Apple's iMac and MacBook monitors. I will be using a hardware colorimeter along with DisplayCAL software, and demonstrate why properly calibrating your Apple display is extremely important. As photographers, it is important for us to establish a consistent and...
sRGB vs Adobe RGB vs ProPhoto RGB
Color spaces are essential in photography; they apply in some way to every photo you take. The most well-known color spaces are sRGB, Adobe RGB, and ProPhoto RGB. But what makes them so important? Beware: There’s a lot of misinformation about this topic online. Outdated and inaccurate recommendations abound -...
How to Calibrate Dell Wide Gamut Monitors
In the past, hardware calibration feature was limited to premium wide-gamut models from companies like NEC or Eizo. Those models offer wide gamut, great uniformity and advanced calibration features…but at a fairly high price. Affordable wide gamut solutions with hardware calibration started in 2013 with Dell and after that other...
DPI vs PPI – What is the Difference?
There is much confusion out there about the acronyms DPI and PPI. This confusion is understandable, given that people often use the terms in error interchangeably. So what do DPI and PPI mean, and how do they apply to printed photographs and digital image files? In this article, we will...
Where Do You Print Your Photos?
Many of our readers have been asking us to write detailed howto articles on printing, a topic we have certainly neglected over the years. Getting our work seen is very important for us photographers, because that's why we shoot in the first place. While posting images to Facebook and Instagram...
Camera Color Calibration Explained
Two recurring questions that we often see from photographers are: "I have color management properly set up on my computer; why is it that the color is different between an out-of-camera JPEG and, say, Lightroom (substitute with your favorite 3rd-party converter)?" and "Why is it that the particular color on...
The Basics of Monitor Calibration
The subject of monitor calibration and profiling can be quite difficult to understand not only for a beginner, but also for professionals working in the field. With so many different hardware and software components, color profiles, bit depth and other related terminologies, one can get quickly confused and lost, potentially...
Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Banding and Calibration
Just like Romanas, I love my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (in fact, I was the one who convinced Romanas to get one after my experience with the Surface Pro 2 and eventually 3rd generation). Although Romanas has already put a lot of great information in his excellent in-depth review, there...