Calibration and Viewing Colors

Rockporters

Sorry this is long!

My MacBook Pro display was calibrated using Huey, the gamma is set to 2.2, I have set Photoshop CS3 to use the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile, and I've converted the photos to this profile as well. My photos now look consistent across: Camino 1.0.4, Firefox 2.0.0.6, Safari 3.0.3. This is the case, too, even if I set everything to use Adobe RGB (1998) D65 WP 2.2 Gamma. But there continues to be two areas in which I continue to struggle with color/appearance.

Colors in Photoshop & iPhoto differ from those on the web, the colors/saturation is brighter. Photoshop setup is: RGB: sRGB IEC61966-2.1, CMYK: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2, Gray Gamma 2.2, Policies are all set to preserve. Proof setup is set to sRGB IEC 61966-2.1 with preserve rgb numbers unchecked. (problem?) What else might I try to fix this?

When viewing the photos on another uncalibrated MacBook the pictures again lose saturation. This has been a problem all along for me with Windows, too, but I don't really have access to a decent Windows display anymore to know just how far off it is these days. On our uncalibrated mini the photos look more towards too much saturation but that monitor tends to do that with everything. Most people aren't going to calibrate their monitor, so I'm concerned that what I'm seeing on my screen, particularly while editing, may look fine for me but terrible for everyone else. How do you deal with this? Or do I just not worry about it?

This photo uses the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile, and washes out significantly when viewing on an uncalibrated MacBook. The colors are pretty bright naturally so it takes the hit a little better, perhaps, but it still loses saturation. (and same from Photoshop to the web)



Converting to Adobe RGB (1998) D65 WP 2.2 Gamma, oversaturates, but there is still saturation loss as described above.



Thanks, you guys are always such a great help!

Rockporters

Clarifying Questions
I've edited my post above in an effort to clarify the questions. Hopefully it makes more sense now, and someone will have suggestions / feedback.

Thanks again!

OffTopic

Most people won't be viewing your images on a calibrated website, so I'm surprised this doesn't come up more often. I found one photographer that put a mini calibration tutorial on his website and on his CD's. Looks like the webpage is no longer accessible from his main site, so I'm not sure if I'm just seeing a cached copy, but the link is at www.johnharrington.com/calibrate.

Not sure if it's okay to post a copy of the slide he uses on the CD's, but I think it's better than the webpage, and he posted it in another forum a few years to show how he handles the concern. So here it is, mods can delete if a problem:

Rockporters

Hi Lori -- Thanks for posting this. The calibration thing is difficult. I tried every display setting in system preferences, including the Huey profile, and from his instructions, any of the profiles would have been ok . While the colors obviously change somewhat, the gradient changes are clearly viewable with all of them. The white background never changes hue really, though there is an obvious change in brightness.

Interestingly using the Huey software/hardware makes my screen a little on the dim side, which is one of the reasons I'm questioning the accuracy. Maybe it would be beneficial for me to post a couple of pics here on dgrin for feedback from Windows users. It would be good to know if they were, or weren't completely off contrast/color-wises.