Set Your Monitor for Magazine-Quality Headshot Prints

Start with the sRGB Color Space

Your first setting is a choice: which color space lives on your monitor? Think of it as the box of crayons your screen uses to draw a picture. Adobe RGB is a bigger box with more exotic colors, but sRGB is the universal language. Here’s the concrete fact: every commercial print lab, every magazine publisher, and every website browser on the planet is built to read sRGB by default. I once delivered beautiful Adobe RGB files to a major tech magazine’s portal. The automated system stripped the profile, making every skin tone a sickly, desaturated green. We caught it, but only because I called the art director directly after uploading. Set your monitor to sRGB now. On a Mac, it’s in System Settings > Displays. On Windows, it’s often in your graphics card control panel. This single switch guarantees what you send is what they start with.

Why not use the bigger color box for editing? You can, but you must convert. I edit in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB on a calibrated screen because they hold more color data, especially in highlights and shadows. But my monitor is still set to sRGB. This creates a reliable preview. When I export the final JPEG for print, I convert it to sRGB and embed that profile. The file carries its passport. If your monitor is set to Adobe RGB but you send an sRGB file, you are lying to your own eyes—the colors will look duller on your screen but correct everywhere else. Trust the standard.

Calibrate Your Monitor with a Hardware Tool

Your eyes are terrible judges of absolute color. They constantly adjust. The white point you see at noon looks different by lamplight at night. Software-only calibration is a guess. A hardware calibrator—like a Datacolor Spyder or an X-Rite i1Display—is a scientific instrument. It physically measures the light coming from your screen. You stick it on your monitor, run the software, and in 10 minutes, it builds a custom color profile that tells your computer exactly how to display red, green, and blue. The target numbers are 6500K for white point and 2.2 for gamma. Luminance? Aim for 120 cd/m². Those are the print industry’s common daylight viewing conditions.

I calibrate every single Thursday morning. Why? Because monitors drift, especially cheaper ones. The cost is less than one client session. I watched a photographer spend hours correcting a magenta cast on every image, only to realize her uncalibrated monitor was the source. She bought a calibrator that afternoon. The before-and-after is shocking. Suddenly, skin tones look alive, not jaundiced. Blacks are deep, not muddy. Your prints will match your screen. It’s the single most important investment after your camera.

Set Your Editing Software's Color Management

Your software must be in sync. In Lightroom, go to Preferences > Presets and check “Use profile’s embedded color space for import.” In the Export dialog, under File Settings, set Color Space to sRGB. In Photoshop, it’s more involved. Go to Edit > Color Settings. For “RGB Working Space,” choose sRGB IEC61966-2.1. Set “Color Management Policies” to “Preserve Embedded Profiles.” Most crucially, check these two boxes: “Ask When Opening” for profile mismatches and “Ask When Pasting.” This stops you from accidentally merging files with different color spaces, which corrupts color data.

Let me tell you about a shoot that taught me this. I was on location, tethered to my laptop. The client, a CEO, kept glancing at the screen. “My suit looks purple,” he said, pointing to his navy blazer. On my calibrated laptop, it was a perfect dark navy. On his uncalibrated, wide-gamut monitor, it was indeed a purplish blue. I had to explain color management on the spot. Now, I bring a small, calibrated portable monitor to every tethered session. It shows the client exactly what the final print will look like. No arguments, just confidence.

Avoid This Common Soft Proofing Mistake

Soft proofing in Photoshop or Lightroom simulates how your image will look when printed on a specific paper. You turn it on, choose a printer/paper profile, and see a duller, lower-contrast version. Here’s the mistake almost everyone makes: they then crank up the saturation and contrast to make the soft-proofed version look as vibrant as their original. Stop. You are over-correcting for a simulation. The actual print, on textured paper under light, will have its own vibrancy. The correct method is subtle. Enable soft proofing, then create a new adjustment layer or snapshot. Make tiny tweaks—maybe +5 to contrast, a slight bump in brightness. Then toggle the soft proof preview on and off. The two versions should be close, not identical. If your soft-proofed image looks great on its own, your print will be too punchy.

What paper profile should you use? Ask your lab. They provide downloadable ICC profiles for their printers and papers. Load that profile into your software. If you’re printing for a magazine, they often use standard coated or uncoated stock profiles. Simulate that. This step is where magazine-quality separation happens; you see how the deep shadows will hold detail instead of turning to ink-stained mud.

Deliver Final Files with Embedded Profile

This is the final, non-negotiable step. When you export your JPEG or TIFF, you must embed the sRGB profile. In Lightroom’s export box, it’s a checkbox. In Photoshop’s “Save As” dialog, it’s the “Embed Color Profile” checkbox. An embedded profile is the file’s instruction manual. Without it, the magazine’s system makes a guess—usually wrong. A file with an embedded sRGB profile will look the same in New York, London, or Tokyo. One time, a client called, panicking. The magazine said her skin looked orange. I asked one question: “Did you embed the sRGB profile?” Silence. She re-sent the files with the profile embedded. The problem vanished. The magazine’s pre-press system was applying a generic profile to her “naked” files.

Do you send proofs in a different color space? No. Keep everything in sRGB from start to finish for client delivery. It removes variables. Your calibrated monitor ensures you see it correctly within that space. Their uncalibrated phone or laptop will at least be in the same universal language, even if the accent is off.

So, the practical takeaway is a three-part ritual: calibrate your hardware weekly, set your software to speak sRGB, and never, ever send a file without its profile attached. This turns printing from a lottery into a predictable handshake. You’ll know the file you send is the print they’ll get.

Related, and worth reading next: Skin Smoothing in Headshots: Finding the Line That Keeps You You.