Reset Monitor before calibrating

jdryan3

Rather than hijack this thread by Baldy (interacting with Andrew Rodney), I want to pursue a different slice from the comments.

Baldy states:

Baldy wrote:

In Ted Padova and Don Mason's book, "Color Management for Digital Photographers for Dummies," they make an interesting point: unless you manually adjust your monitor to get it close before running a calibration, you probably won't get as good a result from calibration. I wasn't sure why that would be. Does the monitor profile only have limited ability to adjust the display color via the graphics card?

Andrew replies:

arodney wrote:

Based on that statement, the book probably is OK for dummies.

On an LCD, the ONLY control you have is over the intensity of the Fluorescent lights. There's nothing more you have to "adjust". Nor should you.

My question is should you 'reset' the monitor to it's factory defaults before recalibrating? I have always just created a new profile, using the current one as a baseline.

The reason I'm asking is when I got my MacBook Pro several months ago I profiled both the laptop screen and my external Dell 24" FPW monitor (DVI connection). Then I have reprofiled the external monitor. Without resetting.

But I noticed it seems a little sepia like -kind of yellowreddish. The Mac and an FP Acer on a Dell desktop seemed the same. As did the Sony Trinitron CRT I hooked up to the Dell. The Dell monitor used to be on a Vaio (profiled) which matched the CRT. I had always figured the difference was the MacBook Pro display, but obviously not. It is the MacBook profile to the external flat panelv via the DVI.

dadwtwins

Just a quick comment,

Are you using PS3 to view the color calibration of your pictures???

If so, have you chosen through ps3 menu "View->Proof Setup" to choose the profile you want to be displayed.

I use to get frustrated with my macbook for similar reasons you mentioned without realizing that MAC LCD screens need one profile while an external LCD hooked up to my mac needed a different profile to achieve the same calibration results in my pictures.

As far as reseting your monitors to the default, it is suggested by EIZO and LaCie to always start of with the default settings to have a consistent base line for your profiles. Of course, before you calibrate your monitors, you have to set your ambient light to be the same for all of your monitors you are trying to calibrate.

edit: I should of asked, which software/ hardware are you using for calibration? Are you using Mac's internal calibration software to build your calibration profile??

jdryan3

dadwtwins wrote:

Are you using PS3 to view the color calibration of your pictures???

I see it in Bridge/ACR and LR.

dadwtwins wrote:

If so, have you chosen through ps3 menu "View->Proof Setup" to choose the profile you want to be displayed.

I have that down pat. I have ICC profiles for all my papers, the whole bit

dadwtwins wrote:

I use to get frustrated with my macbook for similar reasons you mentioned without realizing that MAC LCD screens need one profile while an external LCD hooked up to my mac needed a different profile to achieve the same calibration results in my pictures.

They each have their own profiles. Actually have a separate profile for each PC, Mac and monitor.

dadwtwins wrote:

As far as reseting your monitors to the default, it is suggested by EIZO and LaCie to always start of with the default settings to have a consistent base line for your profiles.

I guess this is the crux of my question. I did this the first time I profiled the monitors, but haven't each subsequent time.

dadwtwins wrote:

Of course, before you calibrate your monitors, you have to set your ambient light to be the same for all of your monitors you are trying to calibrate.

Always. No ambient light, profiled back to back. At night even.

dadwtwins wrote:

I should of asked, which software/ hardware are you using for calibration? Are you using Mac's internal calibration software to build your calibration profile??

Spyder 2
Thanks for your feedback!

dadwtwins

you are definitely on the right track with all of your practices, hardware is good, software is good, your techniques are good,
now all you need is that baseline so you start off the same everytime