My Newly Calibrated New Monitor Looks Horrible

sara505

I have recently calibrated my new monitor, using Spyder-Pro, and to tell the truth, it looks simply horrible. The colors and contrast are over-the-top, bordering on garish.

It's a new computer (Studio xps), new monitor (2209wa), and my first experience calibrating a monitor.

I really am not liking what I am seeing. Not only my previous work (all done on non-calibrated, but perfectly acceptable, monitors) is looking slightly electric, but everyone else's photos do too.

What should I do? I have four jobs in the can, waiting to process, but can't proceed until this is resolved (I figured there would be some lag time, adjusting to a whole new system, but I don't want to fall too far behind).

Thank you in advance.

edit: Yes, I have read a nearby post regarding same issue, but am unable to follow much of it. I'm afraid I need step-by-step assistance, from the beginning.

Toshido

I think you should try calibrating again.

I just calibrated my monitor last night with my "new to me" Spyder2 and am very happy with the results.
Yes it looks different but not bad by any means.

Sorry can't be of more help. Completely new to calibrating systems and colour management in general.

Newsy

I'd just start over. The first time I used my Spyder2-PRO I really botched it up as I did not understand the entire process.

Ensure your video card is set to defaults; ditto for monitor settings. Then start over.

Use the mode that samples the ambient lighting in the room. With my Spyder it is a separate option and with the Spyder3's I'm not sure if it is simply part of the workflow.

I also accepted the suggested gamma & temperature settings.

Be very careful with setting brightness. It was not clear at first but I came to understand that with my LCD monitor it is really the "backlight" I was adjusting and not the traditional "brightness" control per a CRT. In the Spyder software I use there is a definite option to acknowledge you are adjusting the backlight.

You goal should be to have minimal adjustment of the RGB controls - by minimal I mean don't go below 70%. You may have to drop the RGB substantially from the 90-100% range due you find it difficult to get to a white luminosity level of 100 to 120 cd/m2 (impacts the perceived brightness of the monitor). You may find 110 or 105 cd/m2 better for print matching (Eizo suggests 80 cd/m2 btw, and even suggests operating the monitor above that level violates warranty) so expect to recalibrate several times. If you drop the RGB levels too much you end up having a skewed colour palate, possible posteriztion, etc etc.

.

Qarik

can you post some shots that you have edited using your new profile? Perhaps some shot that are not heavily processed and ones with some skin tones.

sara505

Qarik wrote:

can you post some shots that you have edited using your new profile? Perhaps some shot that are not heavily processed and ones with some skin tones.

When I open up a folder in LR, all the faces look overly red and orange.

I'm going nuts. I contacted the Spyder folks, they sent me instructions to download a different version, which I did, and calibrated a few times, and I'm still not very happy. Very unhappy and quite discouraged. I've lost my bearings. I've never seen my photos looking quite like this. And most other photos look pretty bad too. Too intense. Or maybe what I was seeing in my old lap-top wasn't real after all, and now this is - but no, that's not right, either.

Here's a shot straight out of the can, no processing. To me, even though the temp shows 4600, on the cool side, the boy's face is way too pink, and the grandfather's is even worse, like he's got a bad sunburn.





And all of your avatars are brighter and more intense than I've ever seen them (maybe it's something in the water :-) )

sara505

Newsy wrote:

I'd just start over. The first time I used my Spyder2-PRO I really botched it up as I did not understand the entire process.

Ensure your video card is set to defaults; ditto for monitor settings. Then start over.

Use the mode that samples the ambient lighting in the room. With my Spyder it is a separate option and with the Spyder3's I'm not sure if it is simply part of the workflow.

I also accepted the suggested gamma & temperature settings.

Be very careful with setting brightness. It was not clear at first but I came to understand that with my LCD monitor it is really the "backlight" I was adjusting and not the traditional "brightness" control per a CRT. In the Spyder software I use there is a definite option to acknowledge you are adjusting the backlight.

You goal should be to have minimal adjustment of the RGB controls - by minimal I mean don't go below 70%. You may have to drop the RGB substantially from the 90-100% range due you find it difficult to get to a white luminosity level of 100 to 120 cd/m2 (impacts the perceived brightness of the monitor). You may find 110 or 105 cd/m2 better for print matching (Eizo suggests 80 cd/m2 btw, and even suggests operating the monitor above that level violates warranty) so expect to recalibrate several times. If you drop the RGB levels too much you end up having a skewed colour palate, possible posteriztion, etc etc.

.

I did not select the backlighting option, and when I recalibrated, that option never appeared again, even when I tried uninstalling, reinstalling.

Your last paragraph is totally lost on me. No clue. What does that mean, don't go below 70%. Where? What? I have no idea where those settings are, or where to find them.


Quite discouraged and undone by this.

I just want to go back to my dumb little lap-top where everything looked normal, and wasn't so far off, ultimately.

Newsy

sara505 wrote:

I did not select the backlighting option, and when I recalibrated, that option never appeared again, even when I tried uninstalling, reinstalling.

Your last paragraph is totally lost on me. No clue. What does that mean, don't go below 70%. Where? What? I have no idea where those settings are, or where to find them.

I'm going to dig my Spyder out of its hidey hole and run a calibration..... tomorrow. I'm overdue. I'll pinpoint and try to get screen shots of exactly where I see that backlight option.

Btw... that image of the boy and his grandfather looked perfect and I'm using FireFox 3 with colour management enabled so we need to work on your monitor profile.

As to the RGB mumbo jumbo.... it is a bit of a black (level) art. (har har har) Your monitor ships with default settings for Red Green Blue in it's configuration menus. They may all have, for defaults, 100 100 100 as settings. That's 100%. During calibration with the Spyder it will ask you to adjust these. That is where the value should go no lower than 70 (approximately).

You may benefit from what people in another forum found with their 2209WA's. Here's the threads.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=31354013

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=31080653&q=2209wa+spyder&qf=m

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=30952937

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=31498740

Post from Part 1 of long 2209WA thread... http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=30950068
Part 2 of thread... http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=30972745
- you'll find lots of tidbits in the last two threads; a daunting read but scan thru them.


**** btw.... have you removed any other calibration/gamma software that is running on your system? for example.... Adobe Gamma? You have to stop ALL other software from running that affects the monitor profile before you calibrate. The only monitor software that is to run is the Spyder profile loader on boot-up and you can also use ProfileChooser after bootup.

This means you will have to go through the Startup folder and remove programs and also "Run" msconfig and disable Adobe Gamma if it is there.

Stick with it.... it is no more difficult than learning Lightroom (somewhat still a mystery to me).

.

Wil Davis

There have been many threads on monitor calibration; you might try using search.

I've found these links to be very useful:

http://www.gballard.net/photoshop/hardware_calibrate_monitor.html

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm

Good luck!

HTH -
- Wil

D'Buggs

Newsy wrote:

Btw... that image of the boy and his grandfather looked perfect ....

Same here - It doesn't come close to what the poster describes.

Toshido

That pic looks more natural on my uncalibrated laptop than my calibrated desktop.

Still looks good on the desktop though.

Dogdots

Your going through the same process I went through with my 2209WA monitor when I got it. And it took me 2 days of dedicated frustration and lots of paper before I got it. The paper was to write down all my settings and final calibration numbers so I could remember what I got and what may need to be changed.

This is what I did. I finally went into my Graphic Card options and there I can adjust for desktop color. I set Brightness, Contrast and Gamma to 50%. All others I left at '0'. I then calibrated my monitor using the Advanced mode with the i1display2. I did have to drop down my reds in the RGB settings before I started the calibrations since I was getting a red tint with my calibrations and I couldn't get lumiance close to 120 nor my temp to 6500 without dropping it. Seemed strange to me, but it worked. I'm finally editing at 6500, 2.2, 120.7.

You might need to calibrate -- adjust your RGB -- then calibrate again till you find the right settings for you. I did this many times to find the right combo to start with.

Right now my RGB is set at 98, 89, 98 if that may help you with a starting point.

Scary thing now...I need to recalibrate again and I'm alittle worried about doing it :cry

***I'm not saying I did it "right" I'm just letting you know what I did to get my monitor calibrated.

Dee

sara505 wrote:

When I open up a folder in LR, all the faces look overly red and orange.

I'm going nuts. I contacted the Spyder folks, they sent me instructions to download a different version, which I did, and calibrated a few times, and I'm still not very happy. Very unhappy and quite discouraged. I've lost my bearings. I've never seen my photos looking quite like this. And most other photos look pretty bad too. Too intense. Or maybe what I was seeing in my old lap-top wasn't real after all, and now this is - but no, that's not right, either.

Here's a shot straight out of the can, no processing. To me, even though the temp shows 4600, on the cool side, the boy's face is way too pink, and the grandfather's is even worse, like he's got a bad sunburn.





And all of your avatars are brighter and more intense than I've ever seen them (maybe it's something in the water :-) )

I totally agree with you that the boy's face is too pink and the grandfather does look like he has a bad sunburn.

I have a Hannspree LCD monitor and use a Mac. My monitor is calibrated with a Huey from Pantone. I haven't heard anyone say that my photos look too red or too weird from other photographers using other computer systems (like Windows) or from my daughters (who both use Macs) and they would tell me for sure, .

I also used the Mac's calibration to double check Huey and they both produce very similar tones. I have set my gamma at 2.2 (against all my offset print experience). The "normal" setting on my monitor is too light and washed out, so calibrating did make a difference.

I hope you can find some easy to understand instructions. I feel you frustration! Good luck.

sara505

Dee wrote:

I totally agree with you that the boy's face is too pink and the grandfather does look like he has a bad sunburn.

I have a Hannspree LCD monitor and use a Mac. My monitor is calibrated with a Huey from Pantone. I haven't heard anyone say that my photos look too red or too weird from other photographers using other computer systems (like Windows) or from my daughters (who both use Macs) and they would tell me for sure, .

I also used the Mac's calibration to double check Huey and they both produce very similar tones. I have set my gamma at 2.2 (against all my offset print experience). The "normal" setting on my monitor is too light and washed out, so calibrating did make a difference.

I hope you can find some easy to understand instructions. I feel you frustration! Good luck.

I really appreciate all the responses. Seems I am not alone.

I did figure out how to go back and re-set the back-lighting option.

I recalibrated (for about the 6th time), and I am looking and thinking, thinking and looking. One minute the boy's face looks ok, then yes, way too pink (with all due respect to the folks who said it was perfect), then I start poking around - especially the past 3 years' worth of work in my galleries - oy vay - way more red than I ever saw. Yes, it was an uncalibrated monitor, and I have had issues with prints too dark, but never had an issue with such red skin tones. I surely would have seen it or heard about it.

And it's not just my images, but when I'm poking through others' images, posted here (allowing for the fact that not everyone is offering an image from a calibrated monitor), and I see the same overly-red skin tones.

Meanwhile, I've got four jobs sitting here (with two more in the offing in the coming week) and I'm afraid to touch any of it.

Yes, I did have a feeling I would up against a learning curve with the new system, but I do need to figure this out pretty soon (and let's not talk about Vista - I stuck with Dell partly so as to not have to learn a new OS - Mac - but I think the joke is on me. But I've been told that Windows 7 will be released on 10-22 - my birthday )

Anyway, I've cleared the decks and have designated this afternoon to work on this...

Yes, a set of easy-to-follow instructions would be nice.

I'm going to keep reading these posts and see if anything jumps out.

For starters: "You goal should be to have minimal adjustment of the RGB controls - by minimal I mean don't go below 70%. "

Where do I adjust this? And why do I need to if I'm letting my calibration software work for me?

And how should I be setting up my color folder in CS4?

sara505

I am digging a little deeper into Spyder3. However, when I get to the screen that says, "adjust the sliders so RGB are all equal, then click on update," I can't for the life of me figure out how to adjust the sliders. Nothing moves.
Same with black and white points. It tells me to adjust the sliders, but nothing moves.

What am I doing wrong?

Dee

We share the same birthday, .

I don't know ANYTHING about calibrating a Windows machine, so I'm not help at all. Try doing a google search using different search terms and maybe someone somewhere posted some simple directions maybe with images, which while you may not be able to see them accurately, might show a color shift to show what you are supposed to see.

Hang in there, I know it's frustrating, but it will be worth it in the end.

Dogdots

If all else fails -- call Dell. They told me they would help me and in the end I called them. They showed me the graphic card stuff and then it worked for me.

Oh....when mine was really messed up my i1display2 tool wasn't being seen, but xrite told me that was ok and to proceed. I know your using something different. Maybe you can call them.

Just make sure to re-set your monitor to factory defaults and not re-set settings before you start.

sara505

Dee wrote:

We share the same birthday, .

I don't know ANYTHING about calibrating a Windows machine, so I'm not help at all. Try doing a google search using different search terms and maybe someone somewhere posted some simple directions maybe with images, which while you may not be able to see them accurately, might show a color shift to show what you are supposed to see.

Hang in there, I know it's frustrating, but it will be worth it in the end.

Thanks, Dee. I'm plugging along. I'm giving myself until 10am (ET) to work on this. I'm recalibrating, changing a few things, but am still plagued with persistent red faces, too much contrast. I'm on hold with Dell, trying to reach someone I can actually understand (have they gone back to India? at least the Philipinos I could understand).

A day or two more of this and I'll be ready to pack this thing up and send it back and make a radical change.

Love your surf photos. I took it up again a couple of years ago after a 40 year break. I'm not quite the hot-dogger I was in the 60's but I do ok. Yes, east coast surf isn't quite like Steamer Lane. My goal was to become a surfing grandma - my wish will come true in September .

Thanks, and happy birthday in advance.

Art Scott

sara505 wrote:

I see nothing wrong here...looks very good.

sara505

Art Scott wrote:

I see nothing wrong here...looks very good.

This is heartening to know - that it is a good image, with only a conversion to JPG from RAW.

I can't wait to see it looking good too .

Dee

Here is Firefox on the top and Safari on the bottom. Firefox gives a slightly redder cast to my old eyes.



And here I did some slight red reduction in the bottom image (original on top) but I was reduced to making a selection of the man's face and using a hue/saturation layer to manually lessen the red. Is this more to your liking? I may have been a little too aggressive on the red removal. I can not find any "yellow" in his face which I would have wanted in order to lower the saturation of both yellow and red.



Somewhere on this forum is a good tutorial on adjusting for skin tones. Did you shoot this image in raw? If so maybe some adjustments could be made in the raw image.

Another thing to look at is your photoshop color settings. But in any case, I do see too much red in the image which was the point of your thread.

I hope you can see the color changes on your monitor. The one from Firefox to Safari is very slight.

I will happily remove these if you wish, just let me know.

sara505

Dee wrote:

Here is Firefox on the top and Safari on the bottom. Firefox gives a slightly redder cast to my old eyes.



And here I did some slight red reduction in the bottom image (original on top) but I was reduced to making a selection of the man's face and using a hue/saturation layer to manually lessen the red. Is this more to your liking? I may have been a little too aggressive on the red removal. I can not find any "yellow" in his face which I would have wanted in order to lower the saturation of both yellow and red.



Somewhere on this forum is a good tutorial on adjusting for skin tones. Did you shoot this image in raw? If so maybe some adjustments could be made in the raw image.

Another thing to look at is your photoshop color settings. But in any case, I do see too much red in the image which was the point of your thread.

I hope you can see the color changes on your monitor. The one from Firefox to Safari is very slight.

I will happily remove these if you wish, just let me know.

I don't want to color correct this image. I want to see it correctly. I can't even begin to process my images until I get my monitor straightened out.

Does anybody know if there's a back-light adjustment on this monitor? 2209W

I've been going back and forth with a technician from Spyder -also spent two useless hours on the phone with Dell this morning. In my heart of hearts, I don't think it needs to be this complicated.

Newsy

I think that you're making it way more complicated than you need to.

The RGB adjustments are done on the monitor, NOT in the video card software.

You start off with everything set to default - everything means the driver for your video card and.... also the monitor. With the video card, whether it be ATi, NVidia, or a generic Intel GMA whatever card, there is usually a button you can click to revert to default settings.

With the monitor there is an adjustment menu you can get to using the buttons on the monitor. There is usually an option to revert to factory defaults. Somewhere in the monitors' menu is also where you adjust the red green and blue, let or force the Spyder unit resample, see if it is within an acceptable range and then move on to the next phase in the calibration.

.

Newsy

sara505 wrote:

I am digging a little deeper into Spyder3. However, when I get to the screen that says, "adjust the sliders so RGB are all equal, then click on update," I can't for the life of me figure out how to adjust the sliders. Nothing moves.
Same with black and white points. It tells me to adjust the sliders, but nothing moves.

What am I doing wrong?

Adjust using the monitor RGB menus via the monitor buttons.

At this point you do nothing with your mouse.

After you adjust with the monitor menus, then you use mouse to click on the button which allows the Spyder to resample the configuration before clicking NEXT to go to the next step. I'm trying to recall a procedure I have not done in 3 months or there abouts so I may have this incorrect.

Just have not had time to run a calibration so I can be of more help to you.

.

Newsy

Btw... maybe I've missed your reply in amongst all the other posts, but I have not seen you comment on my question to you as per below.

Newsy wrote:

**** btw.... have you removed any other calibration/gamma software that is running on your system? for example.... Adobe Gamma? You have to stop ALL other software from running that affects the monitor profile before you calibrate. The only monitor software that is to run is the Spyder profile loader on boot-up and you can also use ProfileChooser after bootup.

This means you will have to go through the Startup folder and remove programs and also "Run" msconfig and disable Adobe Gamma if it is there.

.

If you have installed any Adobe software on your system, it is highly likely that Adobe Gamma may have been installed.

There is NO POINT going forward trying to calibrate until you determine Adobe Gamma or similar are not loading up every time you reboot your PC. It will skew the calibration making it very difficult to get a CONSISTENT accurate result from one calibration to the next.

.

sara505

Newsy wrote:

Btw... maybe I've missed your reply in amongst all the other posts, but I have not seen you comment on my question to you as per below.



If you have installed any Adobe software on your system, it is highly likely that Adobe Gamma may have been installed.

There is NO POINT going forward trying to calibrate until you determine Adobe Gamma or similar are not loading up every time you reboot your PC. It will skew the calibration making it very difficult to get a CONSISTENT accurate result from one calibration to the next.

.

I started to reply to this question but never finished - I did not find Adobe Gamma anywhere.

sara505

Newsy wrote:

I think that you're making it way more complicated than you need to.

The RGB adjustments are done on the monitor, NOT in the video card software.

You start off with everything set to default - everything means the driver for your video card and.... also the monitor. With the video card, whether it be ATi, NVidia, or a generic Intel GMA whatever card, there is usually a button you can click to revert to default settings.

With the monitor there is an adjustment menu you can get to using the buttons on the monitor. There is usually an option to revert to factory defaults. Somewhere in the monitors' menu is also where you adjust the red green and blue, let or force the Spyder unit resample, see if it is within an acceptable range and then move on to the next phase in the calibration.

.

Believe me, I do not want to make this complicated. All I know is, no matter how many times I re-calibrate, everything still seems too red.

I have brightness and contrast checked.

monitor settings are all on default, as are the graphic card settings.

gamma is set at 2.2 Native (recommended by the Spyder tech, and I've tried 6500 and 5800)

I keep thinking, it's me. But most of the photos I see right now, not only mine, lean quite a ways into too pink or red skin tones.

Wil Davis

I'm not sure if you had a chance to read my post (#8) about calibrating monitors (for Firefox or whatever browser…); I found it to be extremely useful, but I might be totally off base, however from your replies it looks like you're still having problems.

I though your original picture was a bit red (on my system); I did a couple of quick tweaks (see thread "putting the pop back in your pictures" (use search if you can't find the thread)) and here's what I did in about 5 mins:

Newsy

sara505 wrote:

I started to reply to this question but never finished - I did not find Adobe Gamma anywhere.

Excellent.

I'm just trying to rule out things that can be causing a problem.

I'm hoping that Sunday morning I'll be able to run a calibration here, take some screen shots and post them to guide you. I think I know where you have gone wrong.

Btw... I took the suggestion of the Spyder device and used a temperature of 5800 as I found 6500 just too blue for my tastes. What you perceive is a function of your rooms lighting - I'm in a room that is dark except for one incandescent bulb bounced off a whitish ceiling.

Another tip for calibration is to let the monitor warm up for 30 minutes - other 2209WA users have said it makes a difference. So run a slide show or surf, just don't let it go dark in power saver mode.

.

D'Buggs

Art Scott wrote:

I see nothing wrong here...looks very good.

Ditto!

I re-call'd just to be sure and I see a kid with pastey white skin that NEEDS more sun and a Dad that has a nice deep tan.... obviously they don't spend a lot of "quality time" together (!!!).


NO SUNBURNS.

Qarik

just another data point..from my uncalibrated laptop monitor..I see a boy with mostly white skin with touch of pink and a tanned older gentlemen (not sun burned).

Could you please process the photo so that it looks "right" on your monitor and the post both shots?

sara505

Qarik wrote:

just another data point..from my uncalibrated laptop monitor..I see a boy with mostly white skin with touch of pink and a tanned older gentlemen (not sun burned).

Could you please process the photo so that it looks "right" on your monitor and the post both shots?

Hi, I've been insanely busy so had to put this on hold for a bit.

I think I'm all set now. Once I stopped obsessing over that one image and starting working on a wider variety of exposures and shooting situations, I see that my monitor is looking pretty good.

I was able to easily correct the image I posted, and others nearby, with WB in LR - turns out it was not so far off after all - extremely close, in fact.

I think I'm on my way, now. Thanks! I think I was thrown off partly by the completely new appearance of everything.

I've also had a chance to run a few test prints with a local lab - everything looks good, except that my straight, uncorrected images are running a tad dark.

There must be a way to compensate for this? Change the brightness levels so that it reflects a more accurate rendering?