Monitor Color Preset Mode & Calibration

BradfordBenn

I did a search and could not find the answer so figure it is time to ask. I just got a new monitor external to my MacBook Pro and it has multiple modes and I am not sure the best settings. It is an NEC Multisync EA Series. The manual says

Colour Control System Colour Control System
Six colour presets select the desired colour setting (sRGB and NATIVE colour presets are
standard and cannot be changed).
R,G,B: Increases or decreases Red, Green or Blue colour depending upon which is selected. The change in colour will appear on screen and the direction (increase or decrease) will be shown by the bars.
NATIVE: Original colour presented by the LCD panel that is unadjustable.
sRGB: sRGB mode dramatically improves the colour fidelity in the desktop environment by a single standard RGB colour space. With this colour supported environment, the operator could easily and confidently communicate colour without further colour management overhead in the most common situations.
NOTE: When MOVIE, GAMING, or PHOTO is selected as the DV MODE, NATIVE is selected automatically as the six colour preset and cannot be changed.

I read up on the color spaces at http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998 and think that going to sRGB will present a better representation of what the print will look like. Is that a correct interpretation?

Once I decide on the Color Preset, I am planning on using my new HueyPro to calibrate it (getting old might not be fun but getting birthday presents is ). After I have followed those directions I was going to install the ICC profiles for EasyPrints and BayPhoto and open the files for the sample/calibration prints in CS3 and compare to the hard copies I ordered. Once I get those images matched up (hopefully without too much work) I should be all set to get more consistent and reliable prints.

Did I miss a step? Is there a suggestion for how to make it easier/better/more accurate?

Thanks!

Newsy

EA231WMi ??

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BradfordBenn

Ah sorry about that. It is a NEC MultiSync EA231WMi Thanks for any tips and tricks

Newsy

BradfordBenn wrote: »

I did a search and could not find the answer so figure it is time to ask. I just got a new monitor external to my MacBook Pro and it has multiple modes and I am not sure the best settings.

You want to use the mode that allows you to adjust the RGB settings in the hardware of the monitor. Most of the modes are pre-configured and you'll find that while Brightness and Contrast can be adjusted, RGB cannot as those controls will be "grayed" out.

As the EA231WMi has a native color space that covers about 100% of sRGB and does not expand enough into the AdobeRGB space to be considered wide gamut, using the RGB mode and your calibrator should result in a nice sRGB color space to work in. Don't use the preset sRGB mode.

I read up on the color spaces at http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998 and think that going to sRGB will present a better representation of what the print will look like. Is that a correct interpretation?

You really don't have much of a choice with the EA231WMi. The monitor does not cover the AdobeRGB space. So you get to use either NEC's take on what sRGB should look like or with your Huey, set up a calibrated sRGB space which would be my choice as the NEC version is not particularly accurate though better than the sRGB mode on many other monitors.

Once I decide on the Color Preset, I am planning on using my new HueyPro to calibrate it (getting old might not be fun but getting birthday presents is ). After I have followed those directions I was going to install the ICC profiles for EasyPrints and BayPhoto and open the files for the sample/calibration prints in CS3 and compare to the hard copies I ordered. Once I get those images matched up (hopefully without too much work) I should be all set to get more consistent and reliable prints.

Sounds right for "soft proofing" the printed image on screen versus the post processed image. However, this probably won't give you satisfaction when comparing an actual print against the monitor. You will likely have a problem with is trying to match the emitted light from your monitor to the reflected light off the prints. They're never 100% identical.

First, you have to ensure you have the brightness of the monitor set to balance against the ambient lighting of the room you edit in. This is to ensure that, while post processing, your perception of the brightness of the image on screen versus the background lighting of the room does not fool your eyes into thinking the image on screen is too bright, hence you darken it by adjusting its' exposure or other methods only to find later that prints from this edited image are too dark.

I don't believe you should edit in a very dark room. IMHO, I think it is best to have a balance of light. One reason is that today's LCD monitors are very very bright to yesteryear's CRT's. When you try to get below 100 cd/m2 of white luminance you have to have Brightness at "0" and then start lowering the RGB controls and going too low with these can skew the gamut on the screen. Most people have their monitors around 110 cd/m2 to 140 cd/m2 where, when balanced against the ambient lighting, their post processed images produce prints that are not dark.

The second reason is that for comparing prints, quite a few of the really serious guys have editing rooms with controlled lighting (curtains over windows) and that lighting is typically 5000K in temperature with their screens also calibrated to 5000K rather than the standard 6500K. This way they come closest to matching the emitted light of the monitor to the reflected light off the print, in their editing space.

Personally, I seldom compare prints against my monitors. I take them out of my editing space to a room with lots of indirect lighting from outside and look at them there.

One last point.... I'm assuming that the Huey Pro creates an ICC monitor profile that gets saved to your Windows system32\spool\driver folder. Make sure it saves these as version 2.0. The reason for this is that if you later upload these to SmugMug for viewing with a browser and you've embedded the sRGB profile in your image when saving in CS3, and you trying to view it in true colors, you will be using the FireFox browser. FireFox is the ONLY Windows browser that currently supports a color managed workspace by use of ICC profiles. But... at this time it can only read ICC v2 profiles. There is a bug that prevents the current 3.6.xx version of FireFox from using v4 ICC profiles.

More here....
http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html#

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BradfordBenn

Thanks Newsy that helps an awful lot! I am wanting to make sure that I am getting closer on the brightness needed to get a good print as that has been my problem recently. Most of my color issues have been a lack of brightness in the print causing blues to look wrong. I do agree with you on having some light in the room when editing the images. One of the reasons I have the monitor at 90 to the window and have curtains.