Review by Eric Berkow

Oh, for the days when we didn’t need all this gadgetry! Way back in the day type was set by professional typesetters using giant machines, and color artwork was actually separated by taking several filtered pictures of the artwork to create actual film separations! Here in the digital age, accurate color reproduction is available to almost anyone with a computer! All you need are a few tools to make sure that your equipment is accurate.

If you are trying for accurate color reproduction, you need a good set of color management tools. The i1Photo XT is a good place to start for most photographers/designers. 

This color management package will calibrate and profile monitors, projectors, scanners, printers and digital cameras. Basically it can do everything a designer/photographer will need.

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By Eric Berkow
As the design and print world has moved to all digital workflows, color management has become more important. While good color starts at capture, the next step is equally important- your computer monitor.
 For photographers, the monitor has become the darkroom. For designers, it is the color palette. For printers it can often be used as a color verification tool. In print, virtual soft-proofing; color proofing on screen, is becoming more accurate and is gaining wider acceptance. All of this serves to underscore why having a monitor system that is calibrated and profiled is so important.
 There are many devices available now for monitor calibration and profiling, and I have used several. The X-Rite (formerly Gretagmacbeth) i1 Display 2 is one of these systems, and I recently had an opportunity to review it.
 The software that drives the i1 Display 2 is impressive. It offers two modes for calibration- easy and advanced. Easy mode just asks what type of monitor you have (your choices are LCD, CRT and Laptop) and tells you to attach the i1 to the monitor and it goes. You have no real controls over the settings it uses. For the novice, this would be OK, but for the serious pro, you should stick to the advanced mode.

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