How to calibrate the brightness of your monitor?

jfriend

I have a beautiful 30" monitor that I use for photo work and I've color-calibrated it with the Eye-One Match 3 and the color calibration works great. I have no issues getting the colors to match my Epson 3800. But, I haven't found a way to get the brightness of the monitor and prints to match and the Eye-One Match 3 doesn't seem to really tell me how bright to make the monitor.

I've learned through experience that I have to make the images borderline too bright on the monitor in order to get the right brightness in the print. Obviously that means my monitor is a bit too bright.

So, the question is. How do you go about getting a calibrated brightness for the monitor? I could do it with guess and test, but that's not very reproducible over time and certainly not very automated.

Does anyone know if the Eye-One Match 3 system will calibrate the brightness? Or how I should best do it?

arodney

Well its all visual really. A picture is worth a thousand words:

jfriend

arodney wrote: »

Well its all visual really. A picture is worth a thousand words:

Care to share how you adjust for the optimal brightness of those different monitors?

arodney

jfriend wrote: »

Care to share how you adjust for the optimal brightness of those different monitors?

For the Sony, I’d use its host software. For the NEC, the same, its host, SpectraView II software. I simply try differing cd/m2 values until I get a visual match.

pathfinder

I think a critical point here ( Andrew's image of print and monitors side by side ) is that the print is directly illuminated by an appropriate light - you just cannot look at a print by diffuse room light, particularly the dim light in an editing studio.

jfriend

pathfinder wrote: »

I think a critical point here ( Andrew's image of print and monitors side by side ) is that the print is directly illuminated by an appropriate light - you just cannot look at a print by diffuse room light, particularly the dim light in an editing studio.

So you really have to just do it by guess/test with a print evaluated in appropriate lighting compared to your monitor? Why is there no instrumented way to set brightness? Isn't there a single right answer for an accurate monitor brightness?

I'm also worried that if I match my monitor to my printer, I may get good brightness on my prints, but when I'm tweaking images, will they be an appropriate brightness to be seen on other people's calibrated/profiled monitors? What if they tweaked there's to a different printer? Shouldn't there be a single right answer here?

arodney

jfriend wrote: »

So you really have to just do it by guess/test with a print evaluated in appropriate lighting compared to your monitor? Why is there no instrumented way to set brightness? Isn't there a single right answer for an accurate monitor brightness?

Correct.

I'm also worried that if I match my monitor to my printer, I may get good brightness on my prints, but when I'm tweaking images, will they be an appropriate brightness to be seen on other people's calibrated/profiled monitors? What if they tweaked there's to a different printer? Shouldn't there be a single right answer here?

The right answer is to get a display and print, both within view to match. When you take that print elsewhere, you eye adapts to the new conditions and that display is out of the equation.

IF you want to work with multiple users, setup a reference display (reference because all users expect to see the identical previews), you all buy the same type of display, hopefully something really good and easily calibrated like the SpectraView II. You all share the same target calibration settings. Such display systems allow you to save out settings, load them on other systems. Everyone is viewing the prints the same way, using the same booth. Like the one you see above, its got a digital dimmer. I can set mine to 50, so you can you. You use the same NEC SpectraView you see above, calibrate just like I do, control the ambient light in the area. We both see print and display the same.