True Reds

Icebear

I cannot for the life of me obtain a true red in a photo. No matter how I set the WB in the camera or adjust it in post, I cannot get the red in a flower (for instance) to match the actual flower in my hand. Is this a common problem? This is NOT red. It's orange. The actual flower is red dammit. :scratch

racer

maybe try recalibrating your monitor? To me that looks red! maybe a bit to much saturation, but definantly looks red to me?

rsquared

It's looking truly red to me too... I pulled it into PS and grabbed a few spots with the eyedropper and the first few clicks showed the R value above 200 and B and G below 10. It doesn't get much more red than that. I'm voting for calibration also.

Icebear

Will try that. I'll admit to have being less than diligent about keeping up with that. OOHHHH! Maybe I need a Lacie, right!!! Hey Honey . . .
Thanks for the kick in the pants guys. I'll post my findings.

ziggy53

At very least grab some monitor calibration target images and adjust your monitor against the targets. For colors that need to be a specific hue and/or shade, adjusting "by the numbers" using Eyedropper samples or Color Sampler dots (in Photoshop) are very valuable and more accurate than any calibration method.

Ultimately you may also want to test print using your desired print service or print technique for total quality control.

Icebear

I have a new computer running Win7. Same old Dell monitor. I installed my Colorvision Spyder2 software that worked fine on my old XP machine, and it won't recognize the sensor. Went to the Colorvision website and downloaded the 64 bit version, but now it apparently doesn't like my serial number. I'm thinking someone's trying to force me to spend another several hundred dollars. :bash

pathfinder

Of course....
Red flowers are very intense, and you must watch your histogram in the red channel very carefully, or the red channel can be blown, long before the blue or green channels.

Icebear

Well, dang . . .
Couldn't get my Spyder 2 to work on my new computer with Win7. Contacted Datacolor tech support, and got a very rapid response, copied below for your edification:

"Please note, that our Spyder2-products are officially not supported under Windows 7.

Furthermore, this 2nd generation sensor has been construced more than 5 years ago and is therefore no longer compatible with latest display technologies, such as LED-Backlight, Wide-Gammut and screens with a glossy surface.

A Spyder3 product would solve all your compatibility issues.
We could look into offering it for a special price. Simply let us know if you are interested in this option and if yes, in which country you are located."

Well poop. What to do, what to do . . . ?

ziggy53

Icebear wrote: »

... Well poop. What to do, what to do . . . ?

http://dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1445198&postcount=5

racer

not exactly sure were the compatibility problem is, but have you tried running the software in compatibility mode? (right click program, properties, and chose winXP compatibility). You might want to also try, with sensor plugged in, running windows update to see if windows has a fix for it. You also might want to search online for a possible fix?

misterb

Looks way red to me!

divamum

This looks seriously red on my monitor too, if anything heading more to magenta than orange (although not too much). It just looks.... red.

Good luck with calibration!

Icebear

Thanks Ziggy. I'm workin' on it.

Racer, thanks for the hint. I'll see if I can make any headway trying that.

Misterb & Diva, thanks. I've reset the monitor to the default settings and it looks better than it did, but gotta get a better monitor (one that can actually be adjusted for contrast, gamma, etc) and more capable calibration equipment.

Even if I CAN force the Spyder2 to work with the new machine/Win7, I have little confidence it will be a satisfactory fix. FWIW, after their initial fast response, I can get nothing out of Datacolor with respect to the "special price" they mentioned.