DIY: color it spring

Here are some projects to bring some color back to your life after the cold, snow, and bleak of winter.

The 36th Avenue by Desirée offers 20 Spring DIY Ideas and Party Time. Among the ideas is a project for putting together a knotted t-shirt headband by Talitha at love, pomegranate house. The Milwaukee and Wisconsin Journal Sentinel also features old t-shirt to headband or bracelet instructions in its Fresh section.

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Talitha, Knotted T-shirt Headband, love, pomegranate house

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At Refinery29, you can find 30 Awesome DIY Projects -- For EVERY Level. In the collection is Grace Bonney's Papier-Mâché Cacti, based on a design by David Stark Design (the D.Stark site's design is, uhm, interesting too).

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Grace Bonney, Papier-Mache Cacti after D, Stark, Design Sponge

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At BuzzFeed there's 33 Irresistibly Spring DIYs, where #30 is Decorate your computer cords with washi tape by Bri Emery at Design Love Fest.

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Bri Emery, Decorate Your Computer Cords, Design Love Fest

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-- Marge

Managing color on your PC or Mac

A number of factors contribute to the quality of the images and their color as rendered on your PC or Mac.  Devices and applications such as the monitor, the video card, the operating system (OS) and applications for producing and/or editing digital images.  If your machine is out of calibration, you probably won't know it unless you check how your latest webpage or uploaded photo renders on another computer, your smartphone or tablet.

In my humble opinion (IMHO) it's best to adjust your monitor to settings that you find comfortable, then color calibrate using the functions available in your OS.  Then, if using an graphics application, point it to the color, aka "ICC", profile produced by the OS.  In the case of Windows, this is usually a file with the letters "sRGB" in it.

For calibrating your monitor, here are two references:

• Mac color calibration  
• PC color calibration  

For calibrating color in your OS and producing a color profile:

•  Mac display calibration (same link as above) 
• Windows 7 display calibration  

Since I don't have a Mac, I don't know much about them.  The article by Kirk McElhearn at Macworld recommends a color calibration device.  This link loads a search on "color calibrator" at Amazon turned up.

In closing here's a mind-bending article on color rendering index (CRI) I found while researching this post and a quote:

Film and video high-CRI LED lighting incompatibility

Problems have been encountered attempting to use otherwise high CRI LED lighting on film and video sets. The color spectra of LED lighting primary colors does not match the expected color wavelength bandpasses of film emulsions and digital sensors. As a result, color rendition can be completely unpredictable in optical prints, transfers to digital media from film (DI's), and video camera recordings. This phenomenon with respect to motion picture film has been documented in an LED lighting evaluation series of tests produced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences scientific staff.

-- Marge