<p>OK, I am the Rip van Winkle of photography, I did a lot 30 years ago and was even a professional wedding photographer for a while. In those days every shutter release cost money, and you had to do most of the thinking before the click.</p>
<p>Now I am trying to get fully into digital photography. I want a computer system to handle Photoshop, with an emphasis on accurate colors on the screen that would show up the same in print even if sent to a publisher half way round the world.</p>
<p>How would I choose a good monitor for this? Is it even a problem? Is there some calibration procedure?</p>
<p>You may try posting this on the forums at dpreview dot com. There is a forum for ‘PC Talk’ where you should be able to search for previous threads or post a new one. Don’t be put off by the high-tech talk over there…it is Digital Photography which you say is new to you. There are some great people with a lot of knowledge, many who are also professionals. </p>
<p>Hi sorghum, I remember the old days too. I LOVE having the ability to do my own edits on the computer using Photoshop.</p>
<p>What are you planning to do with your images? If they will mostly be displayed on monitors, then there isn’t much you can do balance-wise, except make your image look good on your own screen, which you can calibrate if you wish
( see [Color</a> calibration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_calibration]Color”>Color calibration - Wikipedia))</p>
<p>If you are going to be printing images, then you are dependent on the printer. I do book covers that are printed using print-on-demand publishers and have found it useful to convert images to CMYK to see how they will print.</p>
<p>If you are taking the digital image to the local photo printer for prints, then I think the best approach is to do a test print. I was shocked at how lousy some of my prints were and have had to shop around to find the best quality. Frankly, I think the home color printer does a very good job of faithfully reproducing colors, but is inconvenient for making lots of prints.</p>
<p>The other major frustration I found is that most of these photo shops will crop your photo to fit their print aspect ratio e.g. They do 4x6 prints but you are shooting something else, and rather than reduce the image and leave borders they will chop off chunks. I ended up having to do my own crops, then placing the image on a 4x6 gray background, yielding neutral gray edges (which were often discolored, depending on who was doing the printing). Most cameras give you some aspect ratio options, so if you know your final print size, use that.</p>
<p>By the way, you can blow up your image to work on it on any monitor, even up to the pixel level. And you can ‘white balance’ images so that something that you think should be white really is white. It just may not look that way on your prints.</p>
<p>I would be publishing some of it in magazines or books.</p>
<p>I always knew the relationship between a Kodachrome slide and the appearance of the printed image, but I don’t get it for digital images. I would like to know that what I see on my screen is what the editor will see, so I have a reasonable expectation of what they will at least try to achieve in print.</p>
<p>^ $2000 for that thing, whatever it is. I just use the mouse, and sometimes a little pen/graphic pad attachment. Usually just the mouse. But I don’t do freehand artwork.</p>
<p>The printer will have some kind of spec that you can consult as to their color space. For beginners, you would convert your image to CMYK, where the reds will loose some vividness, for example, and some blues may turn purpleish. You can see the difference on your home monitor.
[CMYK</a> color model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_space]CMYK”>CMYK color model - Wikipedia) see links at bottom</p>
<p>I’d be curious to see how this goes for you. My experience with the POD printers is that their reproductions are just wonderful, with the CMYK limitations noted. Most of my photos have looked just fine on book covers.</p>
<p>One thing I did early on was set up a single test book on Lulu.com, a POD printer that prints color interiors on nice magazine style paper. I included many photos of different kinds just to see how things would print. Generally, the images are really nice looking. I can go into more detail if you like.</p>
<p>You probably don’t do any heavy-duty editing/drawing, or you would be very familiar with Wacom products. “That thing” is a professional tool used by serious graphic designers and animators. My suggestion was a very serious one. As someone I know said, it amazing that folks would spend $2K on a software package and then use it with prehistoric tools, sort of like performing precision microsurgery with a hacksaw. Wacom screens utilize pressure-sensitive pens making drawing as close to natural as possible and intergrate with Photoshop seamlessly. Of course, the price is steep, but it is a tablet and a monitor in one, and carpal tunnel treatments are a pain (and not cheap due to lost productivity and copays). Intuos is a step down, but a huge upgrade compared to a mouse. There might be some alternatives to Wacom by now.</p>
<p>Sorry about my tone - I was still reeling from the $2K price tag. We actually have a Wacom Graphire pad, which is really nice, but as I do no hand drawing, I only use the mouse pad portion of it, and usually skip the pen attachment. I do quite a bit of photo editing, but it doesn’t involve hand art, as I am no good at all at it (hence the love of photography). In terms of (the equivalent of) dodging/burning in, color adjustments over portions of an image, perspective adjustments, etc. the mouse works fine for me. I can see where mouse overuse could lead to carpel tunnel problems, so for someone who can actually draw, the better tool would be great.</p>
<p>Can I say again that I love doing photos and images on the computer? There really is no limit on what you can do, though there is a pretty sizable learning curve.</p>