Calibrating psd files for printers and other screens

[TomA]

Is it possible to calibrate or adjust the brightness, colours and contrast of an entire psd file with lots of layers to match that of a printer or other computer screens, without messing around with each individual layer, or alternatively to flatten the psd and do this with the jpeg/other image file version?

 

I am working with a large file and it comes out a lot darker and more vivid when printed or viewed on colleagues screens.

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited November 11, 2013 by TomA

[Matt McDonald]

Welcome to Pandora's box...what you are needing to do is implement a color managed workflow. I won't go into all the details here, some reading and research will help you better than my little post, but basically you need to ICC profile your monitor, your colleague's monitor and your printer then make sure that all of your images are tagged with the proper ICC profile and transported in a format which supports ICC profiles.

 

A tremendous book on the subject is "Real World Color Management".

[Stephen Thomas]

Yup, sorry to say it's your hardware that needs to be callibrated rather than your image file. A lot more work, unfortunately. Although can't you embed an ICC into a PDF?

[Matt McDonald]

Most formats support an ICC profile but the advantage of PDF is that it is typically opened in Adobe Acrobat which is color management aware. Some JPG or other image viewers are not. So long way of saying, "yes, PDF is a good format" and that is a start. The monitors and printers really have to be profiled as well to achieve the desired results and then they have to be re-profiled frequently and then of course there is no way in hell your client has a profiled monitor so you're up a creek.