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color management - Spyder
iamagoo
Registered Users Posts: 45 Big grins
OK, bear with me, I'm new at this. I've been reading a ton of forums trying to figure out why my shots look dark in PS, but bright in other apps like various viewers. They naturally come out over-exposed after editing and then posting to my website. I bought Spyder2 and calibrated my monitor (old iMac G3). This is what I think I know. Please correct my errors. Let's say I've set my camera (20d) to sRGB. I set my PS color settings to: Working Spaces - RGB: sRGB IEC61966-2.1 (does the 2.1 refer to gamma, because my old mac works on 1.8?) The way the image looks then should be the 'actual' way I should be seeing it then, irregardless of how it looks in other apps that don't have color settings, right? What I haven't been able to clarify is the relationship between PS and my calibrated monitor profile. I first thought that I would have to choose that as my Working Space, but from what I've read, that's not correct. Am I right in assuming that having calibrated my monitor, the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 Working Space will automatically use that Spyder profile without it being designated anywhere in the settings? Also, do I need to do anything with the ColorSync utility or should I just stay out of there? Finally, assuming I'm working with a shot that has sRGB embedded and that is my working space and is also how I will upload it to my smugmug site, is there any reason for me to need to assign or convert a profile? Thanks for your patience and any assistance. I have searched a lot of sites but none I have found clearly state what to do with the Spyder profile!
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I'm afraid I can't offer much help (I'm a PC guy and I don't have a monitor calibrator) but, there are some folks around here that are mac users with calibrators that I'm sure will be able to offer up some advice. Just hang in there!
I bought a Spyder and tried to calibrate my old G3 iMac SE DV 400, but all my shots look dark in PS. So I've been trying to edit them but end up overexposing them when viewed on the web or in another application. According to an excellent color management site I was referred to, my profile mustn't be accurate if the shots only look bad in PS. The shots were exposed accurately and looked great on the camera, but dark in PS. I think the problem is that during calibration with the Spyder, at the point where I should see 4 distinct black/dark squares, I can just barely distinguish 2 shades only no matter how I set my monitor brightness. I've tried this with 1.8 and 2.2 gamma to no avail. Is it likely that my monitor is just too old and not able to be calibrated correctly?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Here's more on the too dark problem:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/too-dark
I hope this helps.
Thanks,
Chris
I had the same problem with my CRT for my B/W G3 tower. Couldn't get the thing bright enough to see the squares (Apple's internal calibration routine, but same thing). I cheated by setting the gamma to around 1.7 or 1.6, but that was an unsatisfying work around. Now I have a Cinema display at home, and one at work, they're both calibrated with the internal program, and the one at work displays images darker and redder than the one at home. Meanwhile, the monitor at work fits in to the proofing work flow there, and my monitor at home fits in with my web work flow. Which one's accurate? Ya got me.
The myth of color management is that there exists, out there somewhere, a device-independent color space that is "accurate", and to which we can refer for all our own color calculations and translations from one space to another. The problem is there's no such thing as color gnostism, no direct link to higher realms; we only have access to this idyllic color space through, you guessed it, a device, whether it be camera, monitor, film separations or eyes. I've been trying to satisfy clients for over a decade, all of whom want "accurate" color. I have a manager right now who keeps sending files to different shops all over town and then comparing the resulting proofs with our own internal proofs, all of which are different, and then asking as he tears his hair out "Which one is right?" The correct answer: the one we get the client to sign off on. The one the printer accepts as a contract proof and agrees to match on press. Forget accurate. Color is accurate within a given context, a specific work flow. All that counts is the final result.
A few questions occur to me, reagarding your situation. What is your working RGB space? What is your Proof Setup? Do you Convert to Profile, or Assign Profile? While I don't want to talk down to someone knowledgable, if you are misapplying profiles, it can really screw things up, and it's not clear how you are using the profiles you mention. If you are certain that the images themselves aren't too dark, and they come tagged with sRGB, see what happens if you "Assign Profile>Apple RGB" or "Assign Profile>Colormatch RGB". Do not use "Convert To Profile." There's no harm at all in making Photoshop agree with how you ultimately want your images displayed, and if that means assigning a profile that tells PS that the image is darker than it really is, forcing it to lighten its display more, so what? The numbers haven't changed. Don't start modifying the image itself until you're reasonably certain that, in the context of your output target (print, web, family TV screen, whatever) your image is off track. Which is another important question: what is your target? How many other programs are important enough, in terms of viewing accuracy, to present a problem? Browsers, to be sure, but you have so little control over those it's almost a fool's errand to spend too much time worrying about it. I have a Windows machine that I'll glance at to make sure things are reasonably in the same region, but I know that no one out there will necessarily agree with what I'm seeing.
Monitor calibration is no less tricky than any other aspect of color management, though I find it interesting that two posts in this thread obtained equally unsatisfactory results with the same product. For what it's worth, everytime I've been in a place where they attempt to bring all the monitors into "calibration", chaos has been the result. One shop I worked in did it "right", a top-down all-inclusive approach; every step of the workflow came with explicit instructions as to which profile to open the image into, which profile to convert to for output. We cranked out 50 or so images one afternoon and in the morning, looking at the proofs, the precise color management meant that they were all wrong by exactly the same amount, which meant that we could rely on the most accurate color management system of all: a proof next to the original art in a light box and a good pair of eyes.
—Korzybski
I think I've gotten control of the situation for the most part. I think my monitor may be the weak link and cannot be calibrated well enough for PS to show the pics a little brighter (as I believe they should be) so I will just have to trust the histogram and use levels accordingly. As for working color spaces, I've got that under control too. I usually shoot Adobe98 and use that as my working space, before converting to sRGB prior to uploading to Smugmug. I will try that "Assign profiles" trick to see if I can get PS to more accurately portray what I see on my Canon LCD. Just to be sure, assigning a different profile 'may' just make things look the way they would on a 'perfectly' calibrated device, right? When I'm finished editing and choose to Save As sRGB for Smugmug, I assume it will prompt me about that assigned profile? Or is that automatically dumped? Sorry, I could try this when I get home tonight and find out, but I have some spare time at work today and didn't want to delay my appreciation any further for your detailed posting.
Chris