The Framers Forum

Hi John,

i'm wondering if you can help me before i go fiddling around with Pre-View tomorrow,

i've not been happy with the results coming from our lighting, its low voltage halogen 50w lights and they emit a sort of bluey reddy tinge to everything, which is leaving our customers a bit miffed when the picture and moulding they see in front of them looks completely different on the screen and in printing, so much so i've been embarrased to use Pre-View until i get it looking satisfactory.

before i go ahead and fiddle with the settings in Pre-View i'm wondering if theres a quick fix solution, such as colour profiles,which a customer told me about, that i can try which will make it a bit better.

thanks in advance

There is no substitute for good lighting.

If you are not ready to go that route, there are a couple of things you might try.

• Experiment between setting the camera to manual and automatic. In manual, tweaking the white balance, as well as your exposure controls, can yield big improvements. However, in my experience, poor lighting conditions are often handled best by the camera's auto mode.
  
  Use Pre-View's 'Adjust Colours' dialog to make corrections, and having found the settings that give the best result, check the box 'Apply these settings to all images as they are loaded'. This is useful when there is a slight colour cast to be corrected, but in very poor lighting conditions you will find that each subject will require its own colour correction.

In our shop we use a couple of studio flash units to cast an even, balanced light on the subject, however we have found that fluorescents fitted with daylight tubes give excellent results.