Recently, I attended an x-rite seminar on color. This is the second seminar I have attended on color presented by x-rite. Photographer Phil Nelson, who has also worked for Adobe and Apple, moderated the program on color psychology, color trends, color theory, spot color, color palette tools, monitor color, application color set up and color printing.

These seminars are very helpful for learning about new instruments (the ColorMunki) and new systems (the Goe Guide to Color) to control color management. One of the valuable things I learned is how to calibrate computer monitors to make them as color accurate as possible. Patrick Burns at Hammock Inc. knows this, but it's valuable to have another person capable of this.

Color control is very important in the magazine production process. It's important that the computer monitors that our artists and editors use accurately reflect as closely as possible what the printing presses can print. As we now prepare all our files for the printers we use, it's essential that the PDFs we supply the printers are made using the same color management profiles.