calibration question

sara505

I'm spending hours tweaking and adjusting and fine tuning lots of images. They look one way in photoshop, slightly different in my Windows folder, and different still on my web site. They also look different in my Brookline computer than they do in my Edgartown computer. They will assumedly also look different on other people's monitors. I know (only a little) about calibration, but how do I reconcile my 4 different views as well as the various stranger's monitors who view my web site? Thanks.

Brooks P

You probably can’t. Different monitors from different manufacturer’s, and even different model lines within the same manufacturing line will have different display parameters, and capabilities for modifying the display. Calibrating a LaCie , Eizo, or Princeton graphics monitor will produce different results then what you get from trying to calibrate a cheap Korean monitor, and CRT monitors are different from LCD monitors. If you want to calibrate your own monitor there are meters (often called spyders) you can get that will attach to the screen and help you calibrate your display. I believe that all of these tools will run you in excess of $100. I used to sell monitors, and I have seen three monitors, all the same model, hooked up to three computers, and no amount of adjusting could get the three displays to look anything alike.

As for visitors to your gallery, I am sorry but you have no control over what they see, many of them will not even have adjusted the brightness and contrast on their monitors since they took them out of the box.

You can also do a Web search. There are a lot of sites that have procedures to help you calibrate your monitor. This is one although I have not yet tried it.
http://www.easyrgb.com/calibrate.php

illuminati919

Well images in windows picture viewer are gonna look way different then in PS. Even if your monitor is calibrated it will still look different in different programs, things like PS and DPP are gonna give you the closest to exact of what your image looks like. Graphics cards are a good investment to give you true images.

As far as other people viewing photos on your site and things like that everyone is gonna see a slightly different image because their monitors are dfiferent.

Just make sure what you're seeing on your monitor is good especially in PS and other photo programs. Hope that helps out.

wxwax

A printed picture is an absolute.

A photo displayed online is at the mercy of whatever monitor is being used to view it.

There's nothing you can do about it. All you can do is make sure your own monitor is calibrated, so that your image adjustments are "true." Even so, I too notice differences between the image hosted on my machine, and the one in smugmug. I always post to smugmug and compare, before I finally settle on what I want it to look like.

Duffy Pratt

Even a printed picture is not an absolute. How the colors look will depend on the matting, the framing, the colors surrounding the frame and the light source.

The same thing might be one of the reasons why your pictures look different in different types of monitor displays. Are the background colors in each of the applications the same? The same photo will look slightly different against a grey, black or white background, not to mention any of the other colors one might use.

And no matter what you do, you aren't going to have much control over how much light is in the rooms of all the monitors people have, nor what clothes they are wearing, what color their walls are painted, etc.

Duffy

imann08

I do know that no matter how well calibrated your monitors are they will look different. No way around that. Some people, like myself, more or less ignore calibration. I set my monitors to the default and call it quits.

When using photoshop, you can correct by the numbers and pay close attention to the info palette. While neutrals are the only thing that we can really verify an exact value for, there are many things such as skintones and natural greens, and skies, etc where we may not know the exact value but we can tell when it's wrong by the numbers. Of course, when you are within that correct area, it becomes subjective and you are going by what you see on the monitor. Also, RGB and CMYK have a number of different versions and produce slightly different numbers with each not to mention they are device dependent which means each computer will read them just a little differently. LAB, which is much harder to comprehend, is device independent and there is only one in regards to photoshop. It has an advantage in that area.

This however, is just another area that requires a knowledge of photoshop and colorspaces which takes time. This isn't easy is it?

imann08

wxwax, what do you mean by the printed image being an absolute? I am not good in this area but as far as I know, even the printed image varies depending on the type of paper it's on. Maybe you are referring to once it's been printed that you have what you have whereas on a monitor you can show that same image on another monitor and have something different.

wxwax

imann08 wrote:

wxwax, what do you mean by the printed image being an absolute? I am not good in this area but as far as I know, even the printed image varies depending on the type of paper it's on. Maybe you are referring to once it's been printed that you have what you have whereas on a monitor you can show that same image on another monitor and have something different.

Yes, that's what I mean.

Once a piccie is printed, it will look the same to everyone who views the print. A digital image is display dependent.