If I had enough money, I'd spring for a MacPro (2.66), and a decent monitor, and add better graphics cards, HDs and RAM over time.
Am I missing something? The fastest MBP I see on the Apple site is a 2.4Ghz? Also, does this discussion refer to the non-glossy MBP display? What about the "High-Resolution" MBP screen? So in general all MBP screens are no good for editing photos?
Am I missing something? The fastest MBP I see on the Apple site is a 2.4Ghz? Also, does this discussion refer to the non-glossy MBP display? What about the "High-Resolution" MBP screen? So in general all MBP screens are no good for editing photos?
Sorry- MacPro's are Apple's towers. The OP was mainly asking about iMacs- the all in ones. The MacPros actually go up to 8-core 3 GHz... I just wish I could afford it :cry
Sorry- MacPro's are Apple's towers. The OP was mainly asking about iMacs- the all in ones. The MacPros actually go up to 8-core 3 GHz... I just wish I could afford it :cry
Don't worry about it...most photo applications can't take full advantage of 8 cores (yet?) when editing a single image. The 4-core is the price/performance sweet spot right now. 8-cores pay for themselves if you are a video editor.
Thanks for the help! If I understand it correctly, callibrating actually adjusts stuff going on inside the monitor, and with the new iMac screen, the glossy outer coat will always make it look different than it's "supposed" to look. Is that a simplified way of saying it, or am I still way off?
The calibration and profile know nothing about the screen attributes. They allow you to keep an unstable device in a consistent behavior so everytime you view the same set of numbers, they always appear the same color appearance and with the resulting profile, the colors should be correct based on what profile you ultimately use to soft proof your output.
I don't like the fact the glossy screens show finger prints and potentially more relfections/flar than matt screens. But the calibration and profiling hardware/software don't know anything about the surface type.
I'm curious how usefull you find this? All of the apps I use day in and day out have their own up-to-date check in them, that when I tested it out beat the iusethis.com based AppFresh. As I look at my dock right now, there's only three applications that aren't already covered by their own auto-up-todate check, and they're either ones that I don't want upated (a couple of corporate tools that I'm intentionally staying downlevel on because I want a working version) or are ones that are so old they're not being updated anyway (PSE 2.0 anyone?)
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
I'm curious how usefull you find this? All of the apps I use day in and day out have their own up-to-date check in them, that when I tested it out beat the iusethis.com based AppFresh. As I look at my dock right now, there's only three applications that aren't already covered by their own auto-up-todate check, and they're either ones that I don't want upated (a couple of corporate tools that I'm intentionally staying downlevel on because I want a working version) or are ones that are so old they're not being updated anyway (PSE 2.0 anyone?)
Well, the one time I used it, I updated 18 aps that I have that were out of date, and it did it in minutes, and very easily. But: it got the latest version of SAFT, which is actually only compatible with Safari 3, not the Safari 2 that I use, so there you go. In the end, for SAFT, it caused me more work than if I had done the update myself.
I forget which apps it was that it updated, but I guess not all of my apps update automatically, so that was helpful. And although I don't imagine that I'll be doing this all THAT often, I do hate how apps always update at the worst possible time....when I want to use them.
I recently downloaded a demo of this software because it works with the Spyder2 hardware I already own. I have been calibrating the two LCDs hooked up to my Mac Pro for the past year with the Spyder software and the results have been OK, but not great.
Well, the leap to outstanding provided by the Coloreyes software was very welcome. The colors just popped off my screen, like what I expected but never obtained. Now it is a matter of budgeting for the new software.
Highly recommended.
M
Weird. I use an Eye-One to calibrate an Apple PowerBook LCD, an Apple Cinema Display LCD, and an IBM Thinkpad LCD, with the latest version of the Eye-One software. It's never failed.
New Mac + New Espons = Printing Nightmare - suggestions??
Hi friends -
Sorry if this has been covered specifically but I have searched this forum, others and done general googling without much success and am finally at wits end
About six months ago I transitioned from a Windows desktop with CRT + Epson 2200 to a MacBook Pro + large Apple display + 2 new Epson printers, a 3800 and 7800. Then and now I have the Monoaco Optix XR calibration system.
Under the old regime, prints from the Sony/CRT to the Epson 2200 were perfect. I always printed in CS2 and let Photoshop handle color management using relative rendering intent and no blackpoint compensation.
Under the new regime I've tried everything....calibrating and re-calibrating both Mac displays, every possible combination of software or printer controlled color management in both Photoshop Cs2 and Lightroom. In all cases the prints, on both new printers are (identically) dark and muddy. The only way I can seem to get anything close to what I'm seeing on my "calibrated" monitor is to go into Lightroom's Develop module and dial up the exposure about 2 stops....and even then the colors shift all over the place. Having the printer control color management seems to give the prints a little more life, but they're still not right. Have tried tech support from all three hardware and software vendors to no avail. I'm using the paper profiles provided by Epson for both printers which others seem to think are very good.
Surely someone out there is running with this or a similar combination and is getting good results. If anyone could point me to a resource that might help me straighten this out I'd be grateful. I'd love to start printing again!
have you set the gamma to 2.2 instead of the Mac default of 1.8? That's important.
Calibrating with gamma @ 2.2, native white point (not sure how else to adjust white point on these Mac monitors). I found a string tonight over on photo.net where a couple of guys with similar woes suspect it's an Intel Mac / Adobe problem.......so, I grabbed my retired copy of Apple's Aperture and viola! The result wasn't perfect but the prints are an order of magnitude better than printing out of CS2 or Lightroom.
I'd be interested to know if anyone else on the forum have these hardware/software combos and are /aren't having issues (Intel Mac, Adobe software and an Epson 3800 or 7800 printer).
At the local community college I attend and work at, we have acquired three 3800's for start of fall semester. They are hooked up to Mac G5's which are running PS CS3. We are having the same difficulty getting the printers to print correctly. Prints from all three are dark/muddy. We have calibrated the screens with x-rite colorimeter. Also reloaded drivers. No avail. Talke with Epson tech and it was brought out that there is apparently a glitch with using CS3 with 3800 and Epsonis working with Adobe to release a patch to fix this.
We also set up a new 7800, but have not been having print problems with that model.
Don't know if this helps, but you might try contacting Epson support.
Available light is any damn light that's available -W. Eugene Smith
Don't know if this helps, but you might try contacting Epson support.
Thanks - this all helps...I've been thinking I'm crazy. Interesting in that I'm having problems with both Lightroom and CS2 on both printers and don't use CS3. Some more indication I found over the weekend that Macs with Intel processors might have something to do with the problem (I let the trial of CS3 expire after encountering a host of other Mac/Intel bugs).
I have called Epson and they point the finger at Adobe; Adobe points the finger at Epson. Sounds like they're finally getting the message though. In the meantime I'll just wait and print out of Aperture or Nikon's Capture NX.
I don't know if this will help or confuse things, but I have an Intel Mac, CS3, and an Epson R1800 printer. I do not have any of the issues you describe, and I have a less then ideal monitor that is calibrated as best I can anyway. Maybe this knowledge will help lay the blame in Epson's lap, as I can tell you that my prints match my monitor pretty well.... (My Monitor is a Samsung 204B, which I have fell outta love with, the darn thing shifts frequently.)
Mac Calibration Questions
I have an iMac and have been using the EyeOne monitor calibration tool. I periodically use the latter, and it creates a profile that then resides in System Preferences. I also have EZ Prints' ICC profile in System Preferences. When I go into System Preferences and click on the monitor's most recently created profile and then on the EZ Prints profile, the display changes quite noticeably. What am I supposed to be doing to "marry" my monitor to the EZ Prints profile via the results of the EyeOne calibration exercise? Until I just went through the toggling exercise referenced above, I had assumed that that was taking place automatically somehow.
Adding to my confusion, when you click on a profile, you can then click on "Calibrate" to which takes you into a 10-step manual process. I just don't understand the interrelation between the EyeOne profile, the EZP profile, and the Apple calibration exercise.
The profile you generate with the eyeone is the only one you should apply to your monitor.
The EZPrints profile is for feeding to applications such as photoshop so that they can do what is known as "soft proofing", that is to say give you an impression of what the image would look like printed with that device/profile. This of course requires that your monitor be faithfully reproducing colors, which is the whole reason for the generated profile.
The calibration button is for folks that don't have a hardware profiler. It's usefull when you have a generic profile from the monitor manufacturer and want to balance the settings (brightness, contrast, color temp, etc) to what that profile is expecting. You should leave those settings where they were when you generated the profile.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
The profile you generate with the eyeone is the only one you should apply to your monitor.
The EZPrints profile is for feeding to applications such as photoshop so that they can do what is known as "soft proofing", that is to say give you an impression of what the image would look like printed with that device/profile. This of course requires that your monitor be faithfully reproducing colors, which is the whole reason for the generated profile.
The calibration button is for folks that don't have a hardware profiler. It's usefull when you have a generic profile from the monitor manufacturer and want to balance the settings (brightness, contrast, color temp, etc) to what that profile is expecting. You should leave those settings where they were when you generated the profile.
So in short, if I understand you correctly, the EZ Prints ICC profile has nothing directly to do with my monitor. If I may ask one follow up question, with what benchmark, then, does a generated eyeone profile calibrate my monitor?
So in short, if I understand you correctly, the EZ Prints ICC profile has nothing directly to do with my monitor.
Correct, it has everything to do with what their printers are capable of.
If I may ask one follow up question, with what benchmark, then, does a generated eyeone profile calibrate my monitor?
I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to ask.
The purpose of the profile is to say "these are the limits of this device." To put it in the most simplistic terms Think of your monitor as a single light bulb. The calibration process turns the bulb on to full power and measures how much light it generates. Say it's supposed to be a 1000 lumen bulb, but due to it's age and other environmental factors at full power it only generates 950 lumens. The calibration profile would record that information, then if a piece of software wanted to display say, 712 lumens of light, it would know to set the bulb to 75% power in order to compensate for the specifics of degradation on the bulb. If you didn't have the profile, and the software wanted 712 lumens, it would have wanted to put the bulb at 71.2% power. But because of the capabilities of that particular bulb, you would only have gotten 676 lumens worth of light... which would have seemed dark compared to what it was supposed to be.
That's a hugely gross over simplification... but the principal holds true. In your monitor it's more complex in 3 ways:
1. it's not just one "color" of light ("white" in my example) but actually 3 (for most monitors, red, green and blue) or 4 (for many printers, Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and blacK.)
2. since it's color and not intensity that's being measured, it has to account not only for the amount of light, but also the color distortion. (one monitor's "red" might be a few nanometers different in wave length than anothers.)
3. it needs to deal not only with the TOP of the curve, but also the bottom and a myriad of places in between. (the relationship of input, or requested brightness, and output, or delivered brightness, might not be a simple linear relationship like "output is 0.95 times input" so the profile needs to be able to map the whole curve from 0 to 100%
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
The EZ Prints profile is for you to soft-proof in Photoshop. In other words, you work in whatever color space you work in, but let's assume sRGB for now.
You work on your image, and then when you're pretty happy with it, and think it's ready to print, you go to View>Proof Setup>then choose the ezprints profile. Then go back up to View>Proof Colors, and PS will show you the image in approximately the same way that it will look when printed by ezprints. Andy must have a tutorial on that somewhere, I'll go look.
So yes, it has nothing to do with your monitor profile, which is what determines the look of your monitor.
D'oh! so *that's* where that was. I spent ages searching dgrin for that text because I swore it was a post someone made here. (working from fuzzy memory) I should known it was a smugmug help page!
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Read? yes -- at least 5 times before posting my original plea (and as the new guy on this block, let me say this: I DO try to scour all existing threads for the answers to my questions before posting). So "understand" - clearly not. Am getting enlightened by this thread, though.
Ironically, with my dual core iMac I can't use Photoshop - I use Aperture. Net for me seems to be that soft proofing works OK, i.e., things match up pretty well. In any case you could check my posts on other fora and see that I'm not ready to have anyone print my output right now anyway.
Read? yes -- at least 5 times before posting my original plea (and as the new guy on this block, let me say this: I DO try to scour all existing threads for the answers to my questions before posting). So "understand" - clearly not. Am getting enlightened by this thread, though. Thanks.
Cool. Many don't know those pages exist. It's good to know that you've read it, and also that there are so many here willing to help.
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Sorry- MacPro's are Apple's towers. The OP was mainly asking about iMacs- the all in ones. The MacPros actually go up to 8-core 3 GHz... I just wish I could afford it :cry
Don't worry about it...most photo applications can't take full advantage of 8 cores (yet?) when editing a single image. The 4-core is the price/performance sweet spot right now. 8-cores pay for themselves if you are a video editor.
The calibration and profile know nothing about the screen attributes. They allow you to keep an unstable device in a consistent behavior so everytime you view the same set of numbers, they always appear the same color appearance and with the resulting profile, the colors should be correct based on what profile you ultimately use to soft proof your output.
http://www.takegreatpictures.com/HOME/Columns/Digital_Photography/Details/Color_Management_and_Display.fci
I don't like the fact the glossy screens show finger prints and potentially more relfections/flar than matt screens. But the calibration and profiling hardware/software don't know anything about the surface type.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
I'm curious how usefull you find this? All of the apps I use day in and day out have their own up-to-date check in them, that when I tested it out beat the iusethis.com based AppFresh. As I look at my dock right now, there's only three applications that aren't already covered by their own auto-up-todate check, and they're either ones that I don't want upated (a couple of corporate tools that I'm intentionally staying downlevel on because I want a working version) or are ones that are so old they're not being updated anyway (PSE 2.0 anyone?)
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Well, the one time I used it, I updated 18 aps that I have that were out of date, and it did it in minutes, and very easily. But: it got the latest version of SAFT, which is actually only compatible with Safari 3, not the Safari 2 that I use, so there you go. In the end, for SAFT, it caused me more work than if I had done the update myself.
I forget which apps it was that it updated, but I guess not all of my apps update automatically, so that was helpful. And although I don't imagine that I'll be doing this all THAT often, I do hate how apps always update at the worst possible time....when I want to use them.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I recently downloaded a demo of this software because it works with the Spyder2 hardware I already own. I have been calibrating the two LCDs hooked up to my Mac Pro for the past year with the Spyder software and the results have been OK, but not great.
Well, the leap to outstanding provided by the Coloreyes software was very welcome. The colors just popped off my screen, like what I expected but never obtained. Now it is a matter of budgeting for the new software.
Highly recommended.
M
Hi friends -
Sorry if this has been covered specifically but I have searched this forum, others and done general googling without much success and am finally at wits end
About six months ago I transitioned from a Windows desktop with CRT + Epson 2200 to a MacBook Pro + large Apple display + 2 new Epson printers, a 3800 and 7800. Then and now I have the Monoaco Optix XR calibration system.
Under the old regime, prints from the Sony/CRT to the Epson 2200 were perfect. I always printed in CS2 and let Photoshop handle color management using relative rendering intent and no blackpoint compensation.
Under the new regime I've tried everything....calibrating and re-calibrating both Mac displays, every possible combination of software or printer controlled color management in both Photoshop Cs2 and Lightroom. In all cases the prints, on both new printers are (identically) dark and muddy. The only way I can seem to get anything close to what I'm seeing on my "calibrated" monitor is to go into Lightroom's Develop module and dial up the exposure about 2 stops....and even then the colors shift all over the place. Having the printer control color management seems to give the prints a little more life, but they're still not right. Have tried tech support from all three hardware and software vendors to no avail. I'm using the paper profiles provided by Epson for both printers which others seem to think are very good.
Surely someone out there is running with this or a similar combination and is getting good results. If anyone could point me to a resource that might help me straighten this out I'd be grateful. I'd love to start printing again!
Bill
have you set the gamma to 2.2 instead of the Mac default of 1.8? That's important.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Calibrating with gamma @ 2.2, native white point (not sure how else to adjust white point on these Mac monitors). I found a string tonight over on photo.net where a couple of guys with similar woes suspect it's an Intel Mac / Adobe problem.......so, I grabbed my retired copy of Apple's Aperture and viola! The result wasn't perfect but the prints are an order of magnitude better than printing out of CS2 or Lightroom.
I'd be interested to know if anyone else on the forum have these hardware/software combos and are /aren't having issues (Intel Mac, Adobe software and an Epson 3800 or 7800 printer).
Bill
Have you checked for an updated driver from Epson?
Nikon D300
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8
Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
Nikon 50mm f/1.8D
[SIZE=-3]Mary Beth Glasmann Photography[/SIZE]
Monoaco Optix XR calibration system
Everything is up to date on the Printer
We also set up a new 7800, but have not been having print problems with that model.
Don't know if this helps, but you might try contacting Epson support.
Thanks - this all helps...I've been thinking I'm crazy. Interesting in that I'm having problems with both Lightroom and CS2 on both printers and don't use CS3. Some more indication I found over the weekend that Macs with Intel processors might have something to do with the problem (I let the trial of CS3 expire after encountering a host of other Mac/Intel bugs).
I have called Epson and they point the finger at Adobe; Adobe points the finger at Epson. Sounds like they're finally getting the message though. In the meantime I'll just wait and print out of Aperture or Nikon's Capture NX.
Perfect Pix
I have an iMac and have been using the EyeOne monitor calibration tool. I periodically use the latter, and it creates a profile that then resides in System Preferences. I also have EZ Prints' ICC profile in System Preferences. When I go into System Preferences and click on the monitor's most recently created profile and then on the EZ Prints profile, the display changes quite noticeably. What am I supposed to be doing to "marry" my monitor to the EZ Prints profile via the results of the EyeOne calibration exercise? Until I just went through the toggling exercise referenced above, I had assumed that that was taking place automatically somehow.
Adding to my confusion, when you click on a profile, you can then click on "Calibrate" to which takes you into a 10-step manual process. I just don't understand the interrelation between the EyeOne profile, the EZP profile, and the Apple calibration exercise.
__________________
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The EZPrints profile is for feeding to applications such as photoshop so that they can do what is known as "soft proofing", that is to say give you an impression of what the image would look like printed with that device/profile. This of course requires that your monitor be faithfully reproducing colors, which is the whole reason for the generated profile.
The calibration button is for folks that don't have a hardware profiler. It's usefull when you have a generic profile from the monitor manufacturer and want to balance the settings (brightness, contrast, color temp, etc) to what that profile is expecting. You should leave those settings where they were when you generated the profile.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
__________________
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Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
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Correct, it has everything to do with what their printers are capable of.
I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to ask.
The purpose of the profile is to say "these are the limits of this device." To put it in the most simplistic terms Think of your monitor as a single light bulb. The calibration process turns the bulb on to full power and measures how much light it generates. Say it's supposed to be a 1000 lumen bulb, but due to it's age and other environmental factors at full power it only generates 950 lumens. The calibration profile would record that information, then if a piece of software wanted to display say, 712 lumens of light, it would know to set the bulb to 75% power in order to compensate for the specifics of degradation on the bulb. If you didn't have the profile, and the software wanted 712 lumens, it would have wanted to put the bulb at 71.2% power. But because of the capabilities of that particular bulb, you would only have gotten 676 lumens worth of light... which would have seemed dark compared to what it was supposed to be.
That's a hugely gross over simplification... but the principal holds true. In your monitor it's more complex in 3 ways:
1. it's not just one "color" of light ("white" in my example) but actually 3 (for most monitors, red, green and blue) or 4 (for many printers, Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and blacK.)
2. since it's color and not intensity that's being measured, it has to account not only for the amount of light, but also the color distortion. (one monitor's "red" might be a few nanometers different in wave length than anothers.)
3. it needs to deal not only with the TOP of the curve, but also the bottom and a myriad of places in between. (the relationship of input, or requested brightness, and output, or delivered brightness, might not be a simple linear relationship like "output is 0.95 times input" so the profile needs to be able to map the whole curve from 0 to 100%
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
You work on your image, and then when you're pretty happy with it, and think it's ready to print, you go to View>Proof Setup>then choose the ezprints profile. Then go back up to View>Proof Colors, and PS will show you the image in approximately the same way that it will look when printed by ezprints. Andy must have a tutorial on that somewhere, I'll go look.
So yes, it has nothing to do with your monitor profile, which is what determines the look of your monitor.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
D'oh! so *that's* where that was. I spent ages searching dgrin for that text because I swore it was a post someone made here. (working from fuzzy memory) I should known it was a smugmug help page!
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Ironically, with my dual core iMac I can't use Photoshop - I use Aperture. Net for me seems to be that soft proofing works OK, i.e., things match up pretty well. In any case you could check my posts on other fora and see that I'm not ready to have anyone print my output right now anyway.
Thanks to you and to all!
__________________
www.browngreensports.com
http://browngreensports.smugmug.com
Cool. Many don't know those pages exist. It's good to know that you've read it, and also that there are so many here willing to help.
Good luck!
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