Calibrating a Projection System

BradfordBenn

Hello All-

So I have a question if anyone has ever calibrated a projection system for large format display. Here is the situation I am thinking about. I am spending time processing images I have to be backgrounds of PowerPoint slides I am presenting at my company's annual international sales meeting in a couple of weeks. When I say processing, what I mean in a nut shell is taking an image that is "typical and bright" and darkening it to be used behind white text and other brighter images in PowerPoint.

Here is a real quick example (not cropped or anything real yet just a quick contrast sweep):
Original


"Backgrounded"


So if I am going to do this, I am realizing that all this effort can be for naught if the video system is not adjusted properly. So does anyone have any experience with this issue and have solutions to make it easy to use. My understanding is that the source will be a Mac tower for the playback. I can also be "picky" and ask to use my computer but I do not think that the source makes the difference as much as the ability to compensate for the variation.

I do know that the system will be adjusted against a reference Blu-Ray played from a player, but they did not know about computer variations.

Any ideas or am I worrying about nothing?

Oh, and if anyone has ideas on how to do the background process, feel free to share. I am trying to use product "action" shots as the backgrounds.

ian408

There are ways to calibrate projectors but multi-gun systems don't take long to fall out convergence and making adjustments seems to be a kind of a black art. Sometimes you need multiple projectors or rear projection to give you adequate light output (which affects how your presentation will look).

Small projectors with low light output (typical cheap conference room for example) are a crap shoot.

I guess the answer is it depends on what you're working with.

BradfordBenn

Thanks for the response. The system was very good, but no one other than me had any comments on the colors for anything during the entire conference. Look what you guys have done to me.

Since I am a techie guy and know the production guys, I got a chance to look at the projection system close up and compare the colors. The biggest challenge was Mac gamma versus Windows. I sent them over to the Smugmug help for info about that.They said I was the first person who asked, but were more than happy to accommodate.

Unfortunately I had to miss the first day of the conference and seeing my pictures on the big screen.