PC Video Monitor - color adjustment

hadron · July 22, 2012

I have tried several different 1hour photo processing labs, but all of my printed photos come out darker than what shows on my screen. So I end up changing the exposure to better reflect what i get from the labs.

My current Acer X213W monitor does not have the adjustability needed to fine tune the colors to match the printed copy. I have tried everything. The Acer eColor management screen is limited, and I don't know if it has a lower level adjusting capability.

Can someone please give some recommendations on a couple of 20"+ PC monitors which will better reflect to colors, and has the adjustability needed for proper color management.

I have a Sapphire Radeon HD4650 video card, granted not an expensive video controller card. I'm not sure if there exists software to adjust color.

Thanks

SteveM · July 22, 2012

Unfortunately, this is a pretty common problem with lots of monitors. Manufacturers want to have the brightest, most vivid monitor, so they're typically over-bright. Thankfully, most manufacturers, although they ship overbright, give options to adjust them properly.

Your Acer OSD menu won't allow you to crank the brightness down to match the prints? That's the fastest and easiest method of calibration, and the one I recommend usually. Be sure your prints were printed without enhancement or color correction at the lab, then just use your settings to adjust the monitor to match.

You might also consider a hardware calibration device. X-rite, Datacolor, and Pantone are the leaders, and many of the models come with software that will further let you adjust your monitors. Check out 'monitor calibration devices' on Google or directly at Amazon.

As for a nice monitor, there's absolutely no guarantee that any monitor you buy will be in the ballpark out-of-the-box. Almost all of them need some form of adjustment. I'm personally partial to Dell monitors, Samsung, and if you have the cash, Apple. Newegg.com has great prices.

jhofker · July 22, 2012

I'm guessing this thread will get moved, since it isn't really a SmugMug question. :-)

That said, for starters, you might want to look into getting a display calibration device like a Huey or Spyder. These will help you get your display calibrated correctly. The color profile the device will create is different from what any manual controls on a monitor can give you.

If you want to go whole-hog and replace your monitor, look for an IPS screen like a Dell Ultrasharp.

ZBlack · July 22, 2012

I recently picked up a printer and tried printing some stuff only to find that it was also darker than expected and had a reddish hue to it all. I picked up a Spyder Express (their basic one since it was a Lightning deal on Amazon a while back) and set that up on one of my monitors. I am using 2 24" Acers and my tv is also attached, but thats really only used for movies. Just the simple calibration tool made a HUGE difference in print quality and what I see on screen, is pretty dang close to what I get out of my printer.

So I have my photo editing monitor which really is significantly less bright and better colors than my other monitor which is out of the box bright but I use it for gaming and such so I like that. These are 2 of their cheaper LCD's and nothing fancy. If you're looking to get more accurate screen representation, definitely pick up one of the calibration tools.

Newsy · July 22, 2012

hadron wrote: »

I have tried several different 1hour photo processing labs, but all of my printed photos come out darker than what shows on my screen.

This is usually the result of editing images on a monitor that is too bright for the room you are editing in. Your best option may be to increase the lighting in the room while editing. I'll explain this later.

It is a perceptual issue of the human eye/brain. You might be able to confirm this by selecting an original image that is unedited, straight from the camera, with a histogram that shows it is properly exposed. Print this as is, unedited. Then edit the same image as you usually do and print this also. You may already have samples you can use for this test.

So I end up changing the exposure to better reflect what i get from the labs.

My current Acer X213W monitor does not have the adjustability needed to fine tune the colors to match the printed copy. I have tried everything. The Acer eColor management screen is limited, and I don't know if it has a lower level adjusting capability.

The X213W is a gaming monitor and as such uses a "TN" TFT LCD panel and is most likely uses a 6bit + FRC (Frame Rate Control) system to simulate an 8bit color depth of 16.7 million colors. Viewing angles are limited on this type of LCD panel before you start to see shifts in gamma/color and the 6bit + FRC system means you may see more banding/posterization in color gradients than you would with a better quality 6bit + AFRC (Advanced FRC) or a true 8bit or pseudo 10bit (8bit + AFRC) monitor.

Can someone please give some recommendations on a couple of 20"+ PC monitors which will better reflect to colors, and has the adjustability needed for proper color management.

Do you want to run two dual monitors or just want a couple of options?

I have a Sapphire Radeon HD4650 video card, granted not an expensive video controller card. I'm not sure if there exists software to adjust color.

Does this card support the AMD/ATi "Eyefinity" feature? From what I can quickly Google, it seems NOT.

The reason I ask this is that with dual monitors and the use of a hardware calibrator, you want a unique and independent LUT (Look Up Table) for each monitor port off the back of the PC feeding to a monitor. The LUT on the video card holds the data found in the ICC profile created by the hardware calibrator for each monitor.

Each monitor MUST have it's own independent and unique ICC profile for displaying colors to a standard in order that the monitors match closely (they seldom match exactly even if the same model and calibrated but can get very very close). The ICC profile holds information that compensates for the unique electronic character of the device calibrated. Every monitor, even if the same model as the one next to it on your system, will be different enough electronically that a unique calibration is required for color accuracy.

If you are using a video card with only one logical LUT shared by 2 or 3 ports on the back of the video card (and I believe this to be the case with your card) and you calibrate them, the monitors will end up sharing the ICC profile from the last calibration. One of the two will not be accurate because is being fed video signals optimized for it's sibling.

...

In terms of monitors for image editing there is quite a range.

You can go from a...

- budget 21.5" 16:9 ratio 1920x1080 resolution offering a standard sRGB (about 95% coverage) gamut using a e-IPS TFT LCD panel and a 6bit + AFRC 16.7million color depth with 8bit internal processing at about $169 USD to a...

- mid-level 24" 16:10 1920x1200, sRGB gamut, H-IPS, 8bit color depth and 10bit internal at about $600, or...

- upper mid-level 24" 1920x1200, wide gamut 100% sRGB + 100% AdobeRGB, H-IPS, 10bit color depth, 14bit internal for about $1000 USD, or...

- high end.... over $1500

So your $$$ budget will help us narrow down what you want.

I suspect it is limited as you have asked for a smallish size. As such you should consider:

Dell U2212HM (sometimes as low as $169 on sale or with coupons in North America)
HP ZR2240w (seldom discounted and if done, I've not seen below $229)

Both of these are budget 21.5" 16:9 ratio 1920x1080 resolution offering a standard sRGB (about 95% coverage) gamut using a e-IPS TFT LCD panel and a 6bit + AFRC 16.7million color depth with 8bit internal processing.

I mention these specifically because they are reasonably accurate once calibrated and have an excellent range of adjustment in Brightness. These fit into the budget category.

You can read more about them here....
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/review
http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html

.....

Now, back to the monitor brightness issue....

The room you edit images in should have controlled lighting - i.e. no open windows that allow random light in from outside. Blinds are essential so that the ambient light in the room remains about the same as per when you calibrate your monitor.

You can use extra lamps to bring the ambient light level up to help prevent dark prints because what you are doing is addressing a perceptual weakness of the human eye/brain.

re: raising ambient lighting

You're likely aware of how the human eye can be fooled into thinking that certain shades of color or gray are different even though they are the same, depending on the shade placed alongside the swatch that you're examining. So it is with the brightness of your monitor in relation to the room around it.

Think of your back lit monitor as being something like a 21" diagonal spotlight shining in your eyes. If the room around the monitor is very dark, the monitor will appear brighter to your eye and any images on it will be perceived to be too bright so that they require that their levels be adjusted lower - hence when printed, you get dark prints.

If you raise the ambient light level, it will seem that the monitor is not as bright as before even though you have not touched the monitor's controls. If you raise the ambient room lighting too much, the monitor will appear dark in relation to the room lighting and you may actually be tempted to raise the levels of the image. If printed, these images would appear too light.

Several hardware calibrators have a mode or feature in which the sensor measures the white luminance level (brightness) of the screen. Most people will have their monitors, after some trial and error, set between 100 and 120 cd/m2 of white luminance in a room with one or two 800 lumen lamps. Some people will go as low as 80 cd/m2 in a fairly dark room. Imho, you should not edit in a very dark room - some lighting is required to prevent eyestrain and to balance out the perceptual issues. Also, some people can perceive a flicker from LED backlit monitors at low brightness levels (because some or all LED monitors rapidly pulse their LED's to simulate a lower brightness level). I have an LED backlit monitor next to a CCFL backlit monitor and can't see any difference.

What you can do is the following as a rough estimate of what the "balanced" ambient light level is for your monitor. This is a good starting point as well if you do have a hardware calibrator.

Eyeball Technique

A rough method of setting brightness is to grab a sheaf of white printer paper (several pages thick) and hold it up next to your monitor while it is displaying a white screen (full screen Notepad works well) and while the room has its' typical lighting used while you edit. If the paper looks brighter than your monitor, then your monitor is too dark. If the paper is darker, then the monitor is too bright or perhaps you need to increase the ambient lighting of the room. Imho, it is less than ideal to edit in a near pitch black room.

Most LCD monitors have a native color temperature somewhere near 6500K in order to have whites appear like they would in natural sunlight. Most people still use incandescent or CFL bulbs with a color temperature near 2800K for their room lighting.

Under this traditional lighting the reflected room light off the paper will, in comparison to the monitor screen, appear more yellow (warmer) and this may make you think it is a little darker. You may want to buy some 6000 to 6500K compact fluorescent bulbs, of equal lumen output, for the lighting in your room and use them while attempting this paper method. If these are too blue (cool) for day to day use in your editing room, 5000K bulbs may be a workable compromise.

Here's another website that may help with fine tuning. It's eyeball technique so if you're half blind or color impaired, good luck.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

.

hadron · July 26, 2012

Thanks everyone!
I had no idea you all replied, even though I subscribed to my post. Maybe because it was moved??

hadron · July 30, 2012

I did the test of printing an unedited file. The printed photo was still dark.
I messed around with the monitor settings and found that with the Acer default setting AND tilting the monitor TOP back about 20 degrees does the job.

When tilting the monitor back, the LCD screen becomes much darker.

I'll live with that solution.

Thanks again

Newsy wrote: »

This is usually the result of editing images on a monitor that is too bright for the room you are editing in. Your best option may be to increase the lighting in the room while editing. I'll explain this later.

It is a perceptual issue of the human eye/brain. You might be able to confirm this by selecting an original image that is unedited, straight from the camera, with a histogram that shows it is properly exposed. Print this as is, unedited. Then edit the same image as you usually do and print this also. You may already have samples you can use for this test.

The X213W is a gaming monitor and as such uses a "TN" TFT LCD panel and is most likely uses a 6bit + FRC (Frame Rate Control) system to simulate an 8bit color depth of 16.7 million colors. Viewing angles are limited on this type of LCD panel before you start to see shifts in gamma/color and the 6bit + FRC system means you may see more banding/posterization in color gradients than you would with a better quality 6bit + AFRC (Advanced FRC) or a true 8bit or pseudo 10bit (8bit + AFRC) monitor.

Do you want to run two dual monitors or just want a couple of options?

Does this card support the AMD/ATi "Eyefinity" feature? From what I can quickly Google, it seems NOT.

The reason I ask this is that with dual monitors and the use of a hardware calibrator, you want a unique and independent LUT (Look Up Table) for each monitor port off the back of the PC feeding to a monitor. The LUT on the video card holds the data found in the ICC profile created by the hardware calibrator for each monitor.

Each monitor MUST have it's own independent and unique ICC profile for displaying colors to a standard in order that the monitors match closely (they seldom match exactly even if the same model and calibrated but can get very very close). The ICC profile holds information that compensates for the unique electronic character of the device calibrated. Every monitor, even if the same model as the one next to it on your system, will be different enough electronically that a unique calibration is required for color accuracy.

If you are using a video card with only one logical LUT shared by 2 or 3 ports on the back of the video card (and I believe this to be the case with your card) and you calibrate them, the monitors will end up sharing the ICC profile from the last calibration. One of the two will not be accurate because is being fed video signals optimized for it's sibling.

...

In terms of monitors for image editing there is quite a range.

You can go from a...

- budget 21.5" 16:9 ratio 1920x1080 resolution offering a standard sRGB (about 95% coverage) gamut using a e-IPS TFT LCD panel and a 6bit + AFRC 16.7million color depth with 8bit internal processing at about $169 USD to a...

- mid-level 24" 16:10 1920x1200, sRGB gamut, H-IPS, 8bit color depth and 10bit internal at about $600, or...

- upper mid-level 24" 1920x1200, wide gamut 100% sRGB + 100% AdobeRGB, H-IPS, 10bit color depth, 14bit internal for about $1000 USD, or...

- high end.... over $1500

So your $$$ budget will help us narrow down what you want.

I suspect it is limited as you have asked for a smallish size. As such you should consider:

Dell U2212HM (sometimes as low as $169 on sale or with coupons in North America)
HP ZR2240w (seldom discounted and if done, I've not seen below $229)

Both of these are budget 21.5" 16:9 ratio 1920x1080 resolution offering a standard sRGB (about 95% coverage) gamut using a e-IPS TFT LCD panel and a 6bit + AFRC 16.7million color depth with 8bit internal processing.

I mention these specifically because they are reasonably accurate once calibrated and have an excellent range of adjustment in Brightness. These fit into the budget category.

You can read more about them here....
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/review
http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html

.....

Now, back to the monitor brightness issue....

The room you edit images in should have controlled lighting - i.e. no open windows that allow random light in from outside. Blinds are essential so that the ambient light in the room remains about the same as per when you calibrate your monitor.

You can use extra lamps to bring the ambient light level up to help prevent dark prints because what you are doing is addressing a perceptual weakness of the human eye/brain.

re: raising ambient lighting

You're likely aware of how the human eye can be fooled into thinking that certain shades of color or gray are different even though they are the same, depending on the shade placed alongside the swatch that you're examining. So it is with the brightness of your monitor in relation to the room around it.

Think of your back lit monitor as being something like a 21" diagonal spotlight shining in your eyes. If the room around the monitor is very dark, the monitor will appear brighter to your eye and any images on it will be perceived to be too bright so that they require that their levels be adjusted lower - hence when printed, you get dark prints.

If you raise the ambient light level, it will seem that the monitor is not as bright as before even though you have not touched the monitor's controls. If you raise the ambient room lighting too much, the monitor will appear dark in relation to the room lighting and you may actually be tempted to raise the levels of the image. If printed, these images would appear too light.

Several hardware calibrators have a mode or feature in which the sensor measures the white luminance level (brightness) of the screen. Most people will have their monitors, after some trial and error, set between 100 and 120 cd/m2 of white luminance in a room with one or two 800 lumen lamps. Some people will go as low as 80 cd/m2 in a fairly dark room. Imho, you should not edit in a very dark room - some lighting is required to prevent eyestrain and to balance out the perceptual issues. Also, some people can perceive a flicker from LED backlit monitors at low brightness levels (because some or all LED monitors rapidly pulse their LED's to simulate a lower brightness level). I have an LED backlit monitor next to a CCFL backlit monitor and can't see any difference.

What you can do is the following as a rough estimate of what the "balanced" ambient light level is for your monitor. This is a good starting point as well if you do have a hardware calibrator.

Eyeball Technique

A rough method of setting brightness is to grab a sheaf of white printer paper (several pages thick) and hold it up next to your monitor while it is displaying a white screen (full screen Notepad works well) and while the room has its' typical lighting used while you edit. If the paper looks brighter than your monitor, then your monitor is too dark. If the paper is darker, then the monitor is too bright or perhaps you need to increase the ambient lighting of the room. Imho, it is less than ideal to edit in a near pitch black room.

Most LCD monitors have a native color temperature somewhere near 6500K in order to have whites appear like they would in natural sunlight. Most people still use incandescent or CFL bulbs with a color temperature near 2800K for their room lighting.

Under this traditional lighting the reflected room light off the paper will, in comparison to the monitor screen, appear more yellow (warmer) and this may make you think it is a little darker. You may want to buy some 6000 to 6500K compact fluorescent bulbs, of equal lumen output, for the lighting in your room and use them while attempting this paper method. If these are too blue (cool) for day to day use in your editing room, 5000K bulbs may be a workable compromise.

Here's another website that may help with fine tuning. It's eyeball technique so if you're half blind or color impaired, good luck.

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

.

Newsy · July 31, 2012

hadron wrote: »

I did the test of printing an unedited file. The printed photo was still dark.
I messed around with the monitor settings and found that with the Acer default setting AND tilting the monitor TOP back about 20 degrees does the job.

When tilting the monitor back, the LCD screen becomes much darker.

Interesting.... and that test print was from a one hour photo place?

Did you also get an edited version of the same image printed to see if there was a difference?

.

PC Video Monitor - color adjustment

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