Screen Calibration Issue HELP!

Hi all, wonder if someone can help/advise please.

I use my mac for design for print. However it drives me nuts (sometimes) that I have to use experience and also take lots of sampling in photoshop using the eyedropper & info of images to colour correct them. So when they print on a press in CMYK they look how someone wants them to look, not as they do on screen.

Wonder if there is a way I can calibrate my screen so it looks more or even a bit more like how an image will look in cmyk on press.

I did try and use the adjustments in the preferences on my mac, but wow its more like guesswork!

I'm working on a PowerBook G4 15" running OSX 10.3.9

Really hope someone can help

Many kind thanks in advance

Kind regards

Its a very dark art, calibration, sometimes I am not sure I understand it all myself

The following link shows you how to use the built in preference calibration pane
Color Calibration in OS X | 32packets

THere seems to be a debate on whether the target gamma should be 1.8 or 2.2. I would say that 1.8 is better for print, while some photograthers prefer 2.2, which is also better for web work.

THere is also a link here to another calibration app that seems to get favourable reviews, in fact I am going to give it a go myself

SuperCal™ by bergdesign

Apart from that the best way is to use a hardware calibration device

Spyder2express - Datacolor AG, Europe (Zurich, Switzerland)

Other than that you should make sure that Photoshop uses sRGB for RGB images and US Web Coated for CMYK images, unless your printer specifies a different CMYK profile

You should be able to get reasonably close to a printing press's colors, at least you shouldn't be getting to many nasty surprises when you see the printed product