QTR-Quadtone RIP

For those reading this thread who don’t have good quality monitors, don’t worry. People printing in a darkroom don’t have good monitors either. I always tell people that the pudding is in the proof. So if you linearize (or otherwise standardize) your printer and exposure workflow then you will be ok even with a sub-par monitor just as long as it’s consistent and you can do some translation work in your mind’s eye. The cheapest way to effect the monitor is to change the environment around it (increase the light behind the monitor a bit, make sure your print is lit properly, etc).

Soft-proofing in Photoshop helps (Preserve RGB forces the monitor into the contrast range of your paper) because Photoshop is “icc aware” of the contrast of your monitor. So even if your monitor is low quality and you see some banding in gradients on the monitor, as long as your over-all contrast is matching your print then you’re ok. This approach (monitor matches print) is the most stable from print to print on the same media but if you change media (say from matte to gloss) your contrast ration changes as well and you must change the soft-proof profile and also re-image your file for a higher contrast paper. That is more work. ICC Profiles (print matches monitor) bake a “standardized” contrast into the final print so the same file will appear roughly the same contrast no matter if on glossy or matte paper. But this has the un-helpful side-effect of destabilizing the shadows.

Cheers,
Walker




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