The screen as a working tool
When the work is about colour, the screen stops being a support and becomes an instrument. A display that shifts hues makes a palette comparison unreliable, and the client takes away a reference that doesn't correspond to what she'll find in the shops.
The second constraint is light. A screen viewed in a room with mixed lighting shows different colours from the same screen under daylight: a calibrated display in the wrong light gives no better result than an uncalibrated one.
The third use is the deliverable. What the client takes away — palette, guidance, notes — is produced on the same device and has to be legible outside the session, where nobody will be there to explain it.
What conditions the result
The chart is qualitative and shows how much each factor affects the reliability of the work.
How to set it up
Calibrate the display
And check it under your working light.
Keep the physical palette
It stays the reference.
Show the comparisons
Two or three options at a time, not twelve.
Produce the deliverable
Legible without your commentary.
In the consultation
- Calibrate the display and check it under your working light.
- Keep the physical palette as the reference.
- Produce a deliverable legible without you.
A deliverable that only works with your commentary is a deliverable that stops working the moment the client leaves. Writing the criterion alongside the palette — why those colours, in which situations — is what makes it usable months later.
Checking the screen under the light you actually work in is a five-minute test that saves you from a recurring mistake: calibration done under different light guarantees nothing about what the client sees in the room.
From conversation to guided consultation
Saloria brings guided consultation to image consultants: face analysis, look plan and protocol help make a consultation concrete when it could otherwise stay abstract between palettes, proportions and references.