I still can't calibrate my monitor - HELP!

07/27/2004 02:54:19 PM · #1

Thanks Britannica for this site:

Here's my problem.

First of all I go into Adobe Gamma and, as instructed, set my Contrast to 100% (as high as possible) and then lower my brightness until the centre square is as dark as possible whilst the outer square is still white. It seems to me that I can lower my brightness down to 0% and still have white whites.

Then I continue through and adjust gamma (leaving the setting as 2.2) and using the little sliders as I squint from as much of a distance as possible, I find a setting where the solid centre merges into the striped edge. It's quite close to the far left of the slider.

Then I continue through and check the colour temperature matches my hardware (6500 degrees) and finish the programme.

All fine and dandy.

Then I go to the site above and look at the calibration lines.

I can see a difference between each of the 4 white squares. I can't detect any difference between squares 0 and 10 on the black scale. The gamma thing isn't quite right here either - the central panel appears a touch darker than the edges. AND when I also check the calibration scale provided by DPC (on voting pages) I notice I can't distinguish between the two lightest whites OR the SIX blackest squares.

I don't know WHAT to do!!!

PLEASE HELP ME!

I have a project I'm desperate to start on and I don't want to invest hours processing the images only to find my monitor calibration was just not good enough.

Message edited by author 2004-07-27 14:54:58.

dwoolridge

07/27/2004 03:38:04 PM · #2

Why do you want your monitor calibrated?
Example answers:
1. I want to vote on DPC and approximate the settings used by most people.
2. I want to submit to DPC and approximate the ideal settings for the voting DPC public.
3. I want images out of my camera to "close enough" to the camera LCD and/or my memory.
4. I want to edit my images and am worried about color accuracy when publishing on the web (or DPC).
5. I want to edit my images and am worried about tonal accuracy when publishing on the web (or DPC).
6/7. Like 4/5, but for printing at home.
8/9. Like 4/5, for for printing with DPC (or other online printer).
etc.

You can believe that online "calibration" methods work, that's your bag, but they are neither accurate nor correct. On the other hand, for some applications (say 1 through 3, perhaps 4 above) they're good enough.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L USM

07/27/2004 03:45:48 PM · #3

I want to calibrate so that when I edit my images and get them printed (by DPC Prints, by other online digital printing services AND by high street digital printing services locally) I am happy with the results because the colours and tones and so on match what I saw on my monitor.

Well... as closely as print CAN match a monitor output since, of course, the colour gamut is smaller for printing than monitor display.

Displaying on web and voting on DPC are secondary.

paganini

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

07/27/2004 03:46:34 PM · #4

Get a colorimeter like Spyder.

07/27/2004 03:48:24 PM · #5

Paganini, er... could you translate that?
A what, now?

:o)

07/27/2004 03:58:18 PM · #6

Originally posted by Kavey:

Paganini, er... could you translate that?
A what, now?

:o)

A hardware thingummy that sticks on the front of your screen and works out what the colours should be

//www.monacosys.com/ or //www.monacosys.com/ for examples.

Basically, your eye is incredibly good at adapting to changes in colours - which is why you don't really notice how orange it is indoors or how blue the light is from a tungsten lamp, or how much bluer it is on a cloudy day compared to a sunny day.

Your eye is also fantastically good at adapting to dynamic lighting conditions and changing the visible tonal range - This is why you aren't completely blind walking out of a dark room in to bright sunlight, though you might be momentarily dazzled as your eye adapts. And that's the key here - your eye adapts all the time, to increase tonal contrast, to adjust the visible dynamic range, and to remove colour shifts.

These adaptions make your eye crap for calibrating a monitor - because it is always changing to remove the very things you need to be able to see to get a good, accurate calibration that is the same day in and day out.

A colorimeter is just something that can read the colours and doesn't adapt like your eye - giving a reliable reference point.

07/27/2004 04:01:44 PM · #7

The annoying flip side of this is that many of the online and local photography printing places would like to pretend that these issues don't exist and refuse to support the complexity of proper colour management. and actually, for the majority of their clients, printing family holiday snaps, this is no doubt the correct way to go, while things are in the sorry state that they are in.

I still think about 75% of people using digital cameras would get better results using a 35mm point and shoot, having a lab doing all the colour and exposure correction on their negative film. Digital has put the snapshot industry back about a decade - but that's a whole different discussion...

digistoune

Canon EOS-20D

07/27/2004 04:06:51 PM · #8

Originally posted by paganini:

Get a colorimeter like Spyder.

That's at least a $200 investment. For the average joe, that isn't practical. I'd like to see more info on monitor calibration that doesn't require a colorimeter.

07/27/2004 04:09:12 PM · #9

Gordon, do you use one of these thingummy's?

And as for the problem of printer's not playing the game with colour management systems, I have vague memories of this from the long ago days when I used to teach graphic designers QuarkXPress but that seemed to be less complex to me. Or at least it did then. To be honest I think my brain has atrophied as the whole topic seems immeasurably more complex to me now and my own notes from that period make no sense.

So... given that I can't change the systems used by printers, the best solution is presumably to calibrate my monitor as best I can to a general point?

How much are these thingummies?

What do you do?

07/27/2004 04:09:40 PM · #10

$200?

Oh dear.

No that's not really an option for me.

So, any solutions to my problems that don't involve separate widgets?

Message edited by author 2004-07-27 16:10:12.

Olympus 50mm f/1.8 MF Normal Zuiko

07/27/2004 04:17:59 PM · #11

Originally posted by digistoune:

Originally posted by paganini:
Get a colorimeter like Spyder.

That's at least a $200 investment. For the average joe, that isn't practical. I'd like to see more info on monitor calibration that doesn't require a colorimeter.

The more info was what I posted above - that your eye, by construction, is terrible at this.

I don't have shares in panatone, no vested interest in Monaco Systems, but I understand a little bit about human vision. Visual calibration is pretty much a waste of time. You can improve things by keeping everything consistant, using exactly the same viewing conditions each time, and printing lots of test cases to adjust things, but frankly wasting weeks of my time and significant printing costs trying to out adapt my eyeball in a very loosely controlled closed loop system, just to get prints right on one printer, with one set of lighting conditions, with one lab is not something I'd bother with.

You can get reasonably controlled results with an inkjet at home, if you are willing to waste a lot of time, ink and paper, but then you don't have much hope of printing accurately anywhere else.

It is similar with the 'calibration images' places like ezprints will mail to you. You adjust your screen to suit their printer. In the process you make it impossible to print reliably anywhere else, on any other printer or show to anyone else on the web. That's great until they change the ink in their machines and further break your original adaption.

It also depends how much you really care. Most places like ezprints/ ofoto etc have an 'optmise my image' check box that makes the result look averagely okay on their printers, much in the same was the 'auto color' or 'auto levels' options do in photoshop. Nothing wrong with just hitting those and not wasting time colour correcting an image on a screen you have no idea is correct or not.

Also, the average joe doesn't usually hand over $1000+ for a camera. The average joe also usually doesn't spend $600 on editing software. Colour management kind of assumes that you are using tools that are colour profile aware, like photoshop - and probably isn't worthwhile
with tools that don't understand profiles.

Message edited by author 2004-07-27 16:34:51.

emorgan49

Olympus E-5

07/27/2004 04:22:52 PM · #12

Trail and error? Set it up as best you can and order a sample print? I use ImageStation and I have a feel for how extra saturated an image has to look on my monitor to come out good in the print.

07/27/2004 04:24:41 PM · #13

Originally posted by digistoune:

Put it another way - I spend over $50 on many of the prints I get made. Each time I get one that I'm happy with is another $50 I've saved by having a properly calibrated monitor that means what I see on the screen is mostly similar to what I get, within the bounds of the realities of montior phosphors and paper/ink.

Prior to getting a spyder, I'd have roughly 1 in 5 prints that I'd throw away because the labs idea of what 'red' is was very different to what my montior showed me as 'red' - After all, 255 0 0 is all you send the lab - they have no idea if that is a bright, vibrant purply red, or an orangy, yellowish vibrant red - you have to tell them. The numbers are just that - numbers, without meaning (a profile) they are just vague directions. Without a calibrated screen, you don't know what those vague colours even look like to you, never mind to the lab.

Heavy

Fujifilm FinePix S7000

07/27/2004 04:27:13 PM · #14

Originally posted by digistoune:

When used does this Spyder then go and hide in the cupboard until a new monitor is purchased? Or does the monitor require continuous checking?

If its pretty well a single use then we should have one available for hire and sent out and returned! Or maybe the local camera clubs might have one that could be hired?

Bob

07/27/2004 04:28:00 PM · #15

Originally posted by Kavey:

$200?

Oh dear.

No that's not really an option for me.

So, any solutions to my problems that don't involve separate widgets?

Get a color test target (or very colourful image) print it out. hold it up beside the screen and adjust until it looks like the print.

Do exactly the same adjustments to the thing you want printed, and it should look roughly how it will when you print it. Print it, using exactly the same settings, don't adjust the monitor screen etc.

Try and do it in the same light, at the same time of day.

Then at least you'll know how things will look on that one printer, from your screen.

The advantage of real colour management is that you calibrate your screen to a known reference, which can be translated to any output printer or device that you want to use - this 'a to b to c' approach is much more flexible than fixing the screen for just one printer/ output device.

Also note, that as the printer and monitor is an analog (not digital) thing, that they'll vary over time so need to be recalibrated occasionally.

Message edited by author 2004-07-27 16:29:04.

07/27/2004 04:32:01 PM · #16

Originally posted by Heavy:

Originally posted by digistoune:

Originally posted by paganini:
Get a colorimeter like Spyder.

That's at least a $200 investment. For the average joe, that isn't practical. I'd like to see more info on monitor calibration that doesn't require a colorimeter.

When used does this Spyder then go and hide in the cupboard until a new monitor is purchased? Or does the monitor require continuous checking?

If its pretty well a single use then we should have one available for hire and sent out and returned! Or maybe the local camera clubs might have one that could be hired?

Bob

The software runs every time you start your computer, to set up the profile - so legally you require a license - which is sold with the hardware device only.

Also, as a monitor is an analog device it changes over time, with movement, age, temperature, shifting magnetic fields etc.

Typically monitors need to be recalibrated once a month or so, if they haven't been moved at all and none of the controls have been changed.

If you move it, the colours will probably change, so it needs to be recalibrated. If you change a graphics card, you need to recalibrate, if you change video mode, you need to recalibrate.

For really colour critical work, you should probably calibrate once a week and some places I've heard recalibrate their screens every day, though that's bordering on overkill.

Some high end monitors do this automatically now too (cf Sony Artisan).

Tamron SP AF 17-35mm f/2.8-4 Di LD Aspherical IF for Nikon

07/27/2004 04:37:49 PM · #17

Originally posted by Kavey:

Well... as closely as print CAN match a monitor output since, of course, the colour gamut is smaller for printing than monitor display.

As an aside, it is slightly worse than that - printers can print a load of colours that you can't display on a monitor. Cameras can capture a load of colours you can't see on a montior. Monitors can display a load of colours that you can't capture, and that you can't print.

Image a triangle for each one of a printer, monitor and camera. Lay them over each other so they roughly overlap each other - that's closer to what the gamuts for each device looks like in relation to others - lots of overlap, lots of colours that can only exist in one device and not the others.

Node

Nikon D300

07/27/2004 04:45:02 PM · #18

Oops... Was updating my wifes score and posted while still logged in as her... She will kill me! runs and hides....

lol Bob

digistoune

Canon EOS-20D

07/27/2004 04:45:20 PM · #19

Originally posted by Kavey:

$200?

Oh dear.

No that's not really an option for me.

So, any solutions to my problems that don't involve separate widgets?

Gordon, what do you mean, "do I care?" Well no, I enjoy wasting time and money and if the print I spent 50 bucks for turns out crappy - oh well!

Come on! Don't be so hollier-than-thou - try to be helpful instead. Like I pointed out, the average user might not have the money to invest in professional monitor calibration. So again, lets try to help those folks out as best we can without sending them shopping for something they may not truly need.

07/27/2004 04:49:14 PM · #20

Yes I remember that - there's some screen I remember taking them into that showed a visual indication of the monitor gamut and how much of that was outside range of printers and which colour areas of a printer gamut was outside areas of monitor colour.

Anyway...

I do use Photoshop as my post processing software.

Do you know if DPC Prints/ EZ Prints use a particular profile thingy and how I set things up so I'm using the same one?

Oh dear.

This is all too complicated for my small brain.

No, actually it mostly makes sense.

It's just demoralising.

07/27/2004 04:49:46 PM · #21

Originally posted by digistoune:

Originally posted by Kavey:
$200?

Oh dear.

No that's not really an option for me.

So, any solutions to my problems that don't involve separate widgets?

Gordon, what do you mean, "do I care?" Well no, I enjoy wasting time and money and if the print I spent 50 bucks for turns out crappy - oh well!

Come on! Don't be so hollier-than-thou - try to be helpful instead. Like I pointed out, the average user might not have the money to invest in professional monitor calibration. So again, lets try to help those folks out as best we can without sending them shopping for something they may not truly need.

I am trying to be helpful. By explaining the problems I've had, the amount it costs me and the only useful solutions. I'm not being hollier than thou. Suggesting that most people don't really care is actually true - sorry if that offends you. The majority of people printing things don't really care that much about how closely the colours match what's on the screen.

If you plan on spending significant amounts of money printing images and actually do care to have accurate (and I mean accurate - not just in the same ball park) colour reproduction, then $90 or 90 UKP for an entry level colour management system is a insignificant investment compared to the amount of bad prints you'll have trying to judge it with your eye.

If however, you are happy paying $10 for a print from places like ofoto and the like, and are happy with the results - more power to you. There is nothing wrong with that. However, you shouldn't expect very good matching of the colours that you send them - it'll be roughly right, but the reality is it won't match or pass anything like careful inspection.

There is nothing wrong with that, nor is it being superior or high and mighty to point out that cheap prints cut some corners in terms of control and management. It is just true - they save money by cutting corners and pass those savings on to the customer, who should realise that - and in most cases it doesn't matter. For my holiday snaps I personally don't care too much about accurate colour - roughly close is good enough for me. However, for things that I'm spending hundreds of dollars on to frame and put on my wall are a different thing. I edit them specifically to have a certain look, certain colour palette etc - I want to see that in the print, not some rough approximation of it.

Message edited by author 2004-07-27 16:56:21.

07/27/2004 04:52:35 PM · #22

Gordon,

OK, let's say I get one of these doobries... get myself a colour management system. That helps me set up my monitor to be accurate assuming a given printer is using a given colour profile.

How many printers DO use these?

Does DPC Prints?

07/27/2004 04:55:05 PM · #23

Originally posted by Kavey:

EZ prints will send you a sample colourful image, printed on their printers. You can load the image up on your screen and adjust the contrast, brightness, R, G, B settings for your monitor and your screen will be calibrated pretty closely to the printers EZprints used to make that image.

It will be pretty terrible for day to day usage and certainly look bad for putting images out for the web, but what you see on your screen will look pretty close to what you'll get printed from EZprints.

They don't really support colour profiles very well unfortunately.

07/27/2004 04:59:39 PM · #24

Btw, there is an entry level system available from Jessops for 89UKP

link here

Though again, I'm not trying to say that everyone must have a colour management system, or that it is required.

However, if you are frustrated by the colour rendition of prints that you get and you do spend time getting the prints looking 'right' on the screen, then it is a small investment to ensure that what you are doing on the screen is actually anything like what you are storing in the file. If the screen isn't calibrated, or you used your eye to calibrate it, it is at best, a guess to say that the colours you adjust the image to in Photoshop will look anything like what you get back from the printer.