I still can't calibrate my monitor - HELP!

07/27/2004 05:05:23 PM · #26

Originally posted by Kavey:

How many printers DO use these?

Does DPC Prints?

Unfortunately, this is the next problem. You get your montior calibrated - you have that base starting point correct. Next you have to find a printer willing to use colour profiles to let you print.

Many places 'unofficially' support profiles, and you can often get profiles for local shops. You then do the image set up yourself and get the lab to print the image 'as is' without any additional colour correction. I've had okay results from DPC prints following this approach. They will send out profiles on request, that are averagely good. I'm also not sure how often they actually update their profiles (printers, like monitors change over time, so you have to re-calibrate the monitor occasionally and re-profile both devices)

Most of the mid to higher printing places will support proper colour management - however this again comes at a price premium.

I use cheaper places like ezprints and shutterfly for family album prints and use higher end places like west coast imaging for more colour critical printing. I also have exceptionally good colour match from my profiled/ calibrated monitor with my epson inkjet printer (using canned profiles from Epson, and their own brand inks and papers) It was the huge disparity from the results from ofoto/ dpc prints that originally motivated me to get a spyder and manage my workflow end to end to get decent output. (this mind boggling complexity is why again I'd say that the current mess of digital colour management has put snapshot style photography back about 10 years in terms of ease of use)

07/27/2004 05:08:38 PM · #27

Thanks Gordon.
All clear.

Now I just have to decide whether ANYthing I've ever taken is worthy of this kind of level of attention.

:o)

07/27/2004 05:10:01 PM · #28

PS What differences are there between entry level doobries and more expensive ones?

07/27/2004 06:13:53 PM · #29

Originally posted by Kavey:

PS What differences are there between entry level doobries and more expensive ones?

Mostly, flexibility and control, that I'd say probably isn't worthwhile for a home system.

Entry level: slap the meter on the screen, calibrate, get a profile out that Photoshop can use.

Mid tier: get a profile, have the ability to tweak it for different colour temperatures, edit the profile and see lots of pretty graphs

High tier: create multiple profiles, create profiles for output devices too (like your inkjet printer) and other input devices like scanners (did I mention they should be profiled too ? :) ) There are levels within this high tier too, again predicated on the amount of sample points you want, how manual/ automated the process is etc.

I haven't seen the need to create my profiles, finding the canned ones and lab supplied profiles good enough for my needs - though I don't use 'off brand' papers or inks, which would probably need profiles to be made. I don't calibrate too often, probably once a month/ every two months or so and get results that I'm very happy with every time I get a print back, or out of my printer. It is however quite a complex, technically involved process to set up the fully colour managed flow - but the first, basic step is to get a monitor that you know what you are seeing is anything like what you think it actually is internally.

07/27/2004 06:22:07 PM · #30

Originally posted by Kavey:

Or are there lots of profiles and the printer tells me which they are using and then I adjust my file in Photoshop to look right when viewed using that profile?

The second one. Colour management uses a colour equivalent of esperanto as an internal representation of colour. From this internal representation, the colours are translated to/from each input and output device (monitor, printers(paper/ink), camera, scanner)

While this may seem complex, it actually simplifies things to a great degree.

Instead of having to have a translation dictionary from your monitor to every possible printer in the world, you just need to be able to translate from the internal representation to your monitor.

In turn, you translate from this internal representation to the output printer's colour language. This means that for every input or output device, you only need one profile (ending up with a handful of profiles) (device to internal representation) rather than one profile for every input/output pair (requiring hundreds or thousands of profiles)

Going through the intermediate representation makes this whole management thingy possible.

07/27/2004 06:29:29 PM · #31

Thanks Gordon...
The doobry seems a small investment and might be worthwhile given I'd like to get a number of prints made from places such as DPC Prints and also from a local printer too...
I'll think more about it.

In mean time any hints about why the Adobe Gamme calibration gives me different results to the one on that site Britannica gave me?

07/27/2004 06:37:40 PM · #32

Originally posted by Kavey:

In mean time any hints about why the Adobe Gamme calibration gives me different results to the one on that site Britannica gave me?

Eyeballs ? :)

These eyeball based approaches are just approximations.

Your eye's response varies through the day, depending on when you last ate, how tired you are, if you've had anything to drink, what your mood is (seeing red isn't just a figure of speech :) ) and on the ambient lighting conditions (people that are really serious about colour control pay a lot of money for colour balanced lighting and paint their walls a mid grey - it can make visibly noticable differences)

Point being, many factors make adobe gamma and other web based calibrations come up with different results, even if you ran the same thing on different days you'd get variable results.

digistoune

Canon EOS-20D

07/27/2004 07:31:02 PM · #33

Gordon, I have to say you know your stuff. And I have to apologize for my outburst. I was a little pissed off about another issue and I saw your post and my mind immediately snapped to, 'oh great! here's another blow hard trying to tell a home user they gotta get this and they gotta that, blah, blah, blah' - in other words, that elitist attitude that some artists drape over themselves like a mantle just irritates me to NO end.

Anyway, I didn't have the right to pounce on you in the manner that I did and I hope you will accept my apology, no hard feelings on either side.

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

07/27/2004 07:57:22 PM · #34

Originally posted by digistoune:

No offense taken - and this colour management thing is a large mess that the various marketing departments of Kodak/ Canon/ Epson et al would prefer to pretend isn't happening. They have a vested interest in pretending it is all simple and plain sailing.

The 'don't care' comment wasn't even really meant as a negative - for the vast majority of people printing images, colour accuracy just isn't a big deal - they really don't care. But if you are going to spend the money, getting a $90 entry level calibration system can save a lot of wasted time and print costs - I tried a lot of schemes to avoid spending the money on a simple system (a professional colour management system costs $3000+ btw)

In the end, I wasted easily more time and prints than the $150 I spent on a colourvision spyder that sorted the problems out straight away.
But it only becomes worthwhile when or if you start being unhappy with how the prints you get look compared to the images you send them.

Once you end up there, all of the immediately cheaper options lead to more of a mess and more pain than the upfront cost of a spyder. The only real issue is that a colour spyder is one of those things that when it works well, you can't see the point of having at all.

But - if you are happy with how your prints look from DPC Prints or the various other ways that you get prints - then I wouldn't recommend buying a spyder. Either by luck or by preference, you are getting images that are just what you want - and that is great - there is no need to spend more money to keep getting what you want.

When that stops happening, be happy to know that there are options that can improve things further.

Message edited by author 2004-07-27 19:59:24.

David.C

07/28/2004 04:47:26 AM · #35

Who calibrates the spyder? You can give it a target to hit (set the gamma, temperature and such or give it a profile), but how do you know the spyder is setting them correctly. They spyder reads analog data from your monitor, so it will vary the same as any other analog device -- and need calibrated just the same. I suppose you could say it doesn't need calibrated, but I have lost count of the number of Apple computer users that have told me the same things about their macs, "it's a mac, it doesn't need calibrating."

But, for the sake of arguement, I will assume the spyder does not need calibrating -- that colorvision has done what no other manufacturer in the world has accomplished and has perfected a manufacturing process that produces, item after item, devices with no variances.

Use this device to calibrate your monitor. Open photoshop (or whatever) and create an adjustment layer (most any will do, but lets use levels). What device are you going to use to adjust the levels with? Move the slider back and forth until you find the 'right' spot. But wait, that is using your eyes to adjust the image -- that can't be allowed, your eyes can not be trusted because they adjust.

There is no difference in using any of the sliders in PS to adjust the image and using the brightness, contrast and gamma sliders on your monitor (even if they are knobs instead of sliders, you get the idea I hope).

Yes the human eyes are incredibly good at adjusting to meet any need; but that is exactly why they are capable of discerning minute adjustments -- adjustments that can be used to choose the exact setting that looks right when editing an image as well as when calibrating a monitor. Visual calibration of a monitor is done by a technique that is very similar to the technique optomitrists have been using for decades to correctly match a persons perceptions with the physical universe through the use of a profile called an 'eye glass/contact prescription.' The object to be calibrated is taken first to one extreme and then another, then moved back until it just looks to be moving slightly toward the other extreme, and then is moved back. This is continued back and forth until the mid-point is achieved. If that technique can be used successfully for so long in calibrating something that is as flexible as the human eye, it can certainly be used to calibrate something like a monitor. A device which, in comparison with the human eye, has practically no adjustability at all.

It is just a matter of who do you trust, yourself or someone else. Learning a new task can get frustrating when it doesn't work out right; and that frustration can make you willing to spend quite a bit, especially if it promises to relieve the frustration. How much are you willing to spend to trust someone else to tell you what your eyes are seeing.

---

But, to digress to the original question for a moment. The most likely reason I can give for the difference (as explained) is that Adobe Gamma has you adjust the white point and black point on the screen at the same time, while the site has them done seperately. When they are both set on the screen at the same time the eye adjusts (as it is always doing) and picks some midpiont (based a lot on how bright or dark what is around the rest of the screen and room).

David

07/28/2004 05:49:09 AM · #36

OK, that makes a lot of sense too - yes I'll be adjusting the image based on my eyesight. But I guess a doobry reduces another variable.

I can either be adjusting the image based on my eyesight whilst it's displayed on a monitor also adjusted (poorly) by my eyesight. A step further away from WYSIWYG.

Or I can invest in a doobry which will (alledgedly) calibrate my monitor for me more accurately and then I can adjust the image based on my eyesight.

I guess the answer would be to print something from DPC Prints and other places to see how happy I am with the match to what I see and then decide but

a) I don't want to spend ages processing an image and printing it and waiting for it to arrive in the post only to realise that I do need a doobry and have to do it all again

and

b) Even with film I have OFTEN been unhappy with the accuracy of colour from the printers and have tried several different places. It means I often end up paying significantly over twice what I could pay at the cheaper places for results that are more acceptable. I mean, the differences between prints from the SAME negative made by two places are quite shocking sometimes.

Sigh!

THANKS so much for all the input folks, it IS really appreciated.

Gordon, is Spyder the name of the doobry you use, is it more expensive than the Jessops' one, is there much difference between these two systems that you can see, and can you come and shake my brain around inside my head for me until I make a darn decision!

07/28/2004 09:07:46 AM · #37

Originally posted by Britannica:

But, for the sake of arguement, I will assume the spyder does not need calibrating -- that colorvision has done what no other manufacturer in the world has accomplished and has perfected a manufacturing process that produces, item after item, devices with no variances.

Measuring equipment gets calibrated all the time. This isn't exactly novel. Your digital camera for example has an analog sensor that manages to do a resonable job of recording tone (but not colour) consistently across multiple devices, once initially calibrated. So Canon & Olympus would be other manufacturers you should add to that list of those who've never managed to 'perfect a manufacturing process' or manage to calibrate an analog sensor.

Yes your eye is good at noticing minute differences in an image, so you can make the adjustments. However, if you have no idea that what you are looking at is correct, you have no idea how the changes you make are impacting it. In fact, one of the things you really need to do when editing an image is maintain the original - so that you can switch back and forth between them - otherwise your eye _does_ adapt to the changes you've made. You can see differences well, but if you look at the same thing for a while, your eye adapts to remove 'defects' like white balance issues - you can see the deltas more easily than the absolute.

Like I've said a few times, if you are happy with the results that you are getting - that's great. But it does not mean that more accurate methods are a sham or a con, or that colour management doesn't have real value. I'd happily not have spent money on measuring devices if I'd gotten good results using visual inspection - but I was far from happy with the results. And yes, I am picky about it - I've spent a lot of money on camera and computer equipment, I spend a lot of time getting images to look exactly how I want them to look. I'm not willing to waste that time and effort with an inaccurately calibrated display. But that is my own personal choice - I don't say everyone needs to do it - but if you are having problems getting output to look like you want it to look, and you are outputing to multiple sources (web, lab, inkjet printer, etc) a properly colour managed workflow is the solution that has been proven to work. This starts with a properly calibrarted monitor, not something dependant on the amount of coffee you drank that day.

Message edited by author 2004-07-28 10:38:55.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

07/28/2004 10:24:29 AM · #38

Originally posted by Kavey:

b) Even with film I have OFTEN been unhappy with the accuracy of colour from the printers and have tried several different places. It means I often end up paying significantly over twice what I could pay at the cheaper places for results that are more acceptable. I mean, the differences between prints from the SAME negative made by two places are quite shocking sometimes.

That is the sort of variance I've seen with digital images from places like ofoto etc - it isn't just that the monitor isn't calibrated, but that the various output places are set up differently, leading to quite dramatic shifts in the end product - colour management provides some control to that process.

Like I said earlier, I'd recommend not bothering, until you are concerned by how far away the results on your monitor are to the printed results.

Adobe Gamma and other schemes are better than nothing, though not by much. As you pointed out, trying different eye based calibration schemes gives you quite different results - also if you tried the same scheme say first thing in the morning and then late at night you'd also get similarly different results. But it is still better than nothing.

Image matching to a particular printer (e.g., by getting guide prints) is a pretty horrible half way house, but can be workable - I would strongly recommend against it, unless you for example have the inkjet printer beside you and never plan on printing the images anywhere else, or showing them online - then a closed system can work, but it doesn't scale usefully at all.

The next step up is to get in to colour managment, which is a reasonably involved process. However, it does give you the means to communicate with your printer what colours you actually want to see in the final print. No other method (other than sending them guide prints) allows you to do this. Without known reference points from your screen and the particular printer that you are going to use, you are just throwing estimates around. The reference points are stored in the profiles. To use a profile successfully you need to put the 'stake the ground' by calibrating and profiling your monitor - adobe gamma and similar techniques give you a very approximate way of doing the calibration, but don't let you create a profile - so aren't really any use for colour management. A spyder will help with the calibration, and will generate the profile that you need. However - this is the start, not the end of the process. You'd still need to set up photoshop to use profiles, learn how to soft proof an image (neither are very hard, but require a bit of reading) and also find a printer that will 1/ provide you with profiles and 2/ let you print with profiled images or at least print exactly what you provide to them (you can then do the conversion yourself)

Yes this is all complex. I'd suggest as a first step finding a library to get something like Bruce Fraser's Real World Colour Management or Tim Grey's Color Confidence: The Digital Photographer's Guide to Color Management. I've bought and read the first one - not sure I'd recommend actually owning it though, certainly good information but probably not worth the $30. My copy seems to be on permanent loan around the camera club I help with as everyone has print match issues with their work not looking like what it does on their screen.

I bought a colorvision spyder because the cheaper one was not available at the time. You can see the difference between the colorvision products here //www.colorvision.com/products_compare.shtml

For my needs, the most basic system would still provide all the features I'd really need. Monaco Systems also do relatively cheap calibration systems. I'd avoid the solutions that use a flat bed scanner as an intermediate color meter, as you are then subject to the gamut limitations of your particular scanning device.

//www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm has a good article comparing some of the techniques available. And in general
//www.drycreekphoto.com/ has a lot of good tutorial articles, that are worth taking a look at before you spend any money.

Message edited by author 2004-07-28 10:53:00.

zerocusa

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

07/28/2004 10:43:02 AM · #39

Gordon, you forgotten the the type of monitor also affects the output of the sypder calibration. One can get more accurate color if their monitor is able to adjust the RBG. - which i found out my samsung 763mb can't :P

07/28/2004 10:47:01 AM · #40

Originally posted by zerocusa:

Yup - certainly the flexibilty of the montior varies how well it can be calibrated. Some for example can't even go bright enough for a proper display of an image. Having controllable R, G & B channels certainly helps with calibration. But profiling can be used to help circumvent these limitations. It is also why LCDs are less configurable - though in both cases the graphics card DAC LUTs can be adjusted to compensate, even if the monitor channels can't be adjusted externally - so it isn't a total loss, if your monitor doesn't have those controls.

However, all monitors can be profiled, which is the second part required for colour management - you can't create a meaningful monitor profile without a recording device. The profile then lets photoshop compensate for any limitations in the monitor as best as is possible.

Calibration gets your monitor in the best place to display images.
Profiling then documents exactly where the monitor is and communicates it to photoshop - both are neccessary for a colour managed workflow. Calibration on its own (either by spyder or by eye) is only half of the process.

Message edited by author 2004-07-28 10:47:56.

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM

08/14/2004 07:45:42 AM · #41

I've been looking into this and could do with a little more feedback please.

I'll be calibrating an LCD monitor (iiyama ProLite E481S) that seems to give me quite a lot of control in it's own menus.

ColorVision sell

a really basic package with Spyder and ColorPlus software.
a basic package with the Spyder and PhotoCal software.
a package with (I assume) the same Spyder and OptiCal software.

I don't think I need Optical. I'm not entirely sure I need PhotoCal over ColorPlus but don't mind paying the small extra for PhotoCal if it's going to give me more flexibility.

And then there's the Eye-One Display by GretagMacbeth which I can't find much about but which I have seen mentioned on some review sites as the giant in the colour management industry. Can't find this on sale easily in UK though I'd no doubt find it somewhere.

And then there's the MonicoOPTIX you mentioned above, similarly hard to find (compared to ColorVision's stuff).

Any thoughts?

Message edited by author 2004-08-14 08:54:06.

PerezDesignGroup

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

08/14/2004 09:01:49 AM · #42

I had good success with ColorWizzard. I even took some screenshots and posted a quick review so you know what you're getting in to. It used to be called Colorific.

I had tried the Spyder, but it was unable to calibrate my Dell 5100 Laptop LCD's gamma correctly. It did calibrate my Dell 19" 1901fp LCD standalone monitor at home just fine. I found the Spyder with Photocal lacking in features. I would definitely dish out the extra money for the Spyder with Optical in hindsight. Or better yet, go with the more professional Gretag Macbeth EyeOne if you have the money. Good luck!

08/16/2004 02:23:11 PM · #43

Jessops have ColourPlus in stock for Â£90 AND the PhotoCal option for Â£114.

I am intending to get one this week...

Not sure which!

Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM

08/16/2004 02:30:28 PM · #44

Originally posted by PerezDesignGroup:

I had tried the Spyder, but it was unable to calibrate my Dell 5100 Laptop LCD's gamma correctly. It did calibrate my Dell 19" 1901fp LCD standalone monitor at home just fine. I found the Spyder with Photocal lacking in features. I would definitely dish out the extra money for the Spyder with Optical in hindsight. Or better yet, go with the more professional Gretag Macbeth EyeOne if you have the money. Good luck!

Just curious, what features did you find that photocal was lacking, that you needed to use ? Are you looking for features for a professional environment, or typical hobby usage ?

SteveJ

Canon EOS-7D

08/16/2004 02:50:33 PM · #45

Does it make any difference if you use a CRT monitor, an LCD analogue monitor or a Digital monitor??

Or do they all require same calibration?

08/16/2004 02:52:09 PM · #46

Different calibration but the later versions of all these things cover LCD and CRT...

Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM

08/16/2004 03:00:36 PM · #47

Originally posted by Wolfie:

Does it make any difference if you use a CRT monitor, an LCD analogue monitor or a Digital monitor??

Or do they all require same calibration?

LCDs are harder to calibrate (there is less that can be done with them) when compared to a CRT. They are getting better, but the majority (other than very expensive displays) are inferior to CRTs for editing - though they obviously have a lot of space advantages.

Any screen you use requires calibration. To see this in action, visit any place that sells televisions, get them all put to the same channel and notice the colour/ brightness differences. LCDs and CRTs are just the same in this respect.

SteveJ

Canon EOS-7D

08/16/2004 03:58:16 PM · #48

Right, cos I have a digital LCD and graphics card, so I thought it would display same as software.

But being a dinosaur, I just go with the flow.