iMAC Monitor Calibration Question

Barry Nichols · February 21, 2008

Hello all,
I am trying to calibrate my monitor and have a question hopefully someone knows the answer to.
What I did:
1 - Ordered the Calibration prints from EZPrint.
2 - Downloaded the EZPrint icc profile.
3 - Calibrated my Apple Display with Pantone Huey Pro.
4 - Opened the .jpg of the EZPrint Monitor Calibration photo in CS3
5 - Changed my Proof Condition in CS3 to the EZPrint ICC profile.
6 - Compared what was on the screen with the print sent to me by EZPrints.

Issue - The printed proof looks different (better). The image on screen seems a little washed out. On the screen, the car has more reflection. The peoples skin a liitle less red/pink(?). The fruits and color tray colors are not as deep. The print just looks better.

Why? And what can I do next to correct this and get these two closer together.

KED · February 21, 2008

Can't wait to see an answer to this one!
I have been trying to get prints from EZ Prints to look like images on my calibrated Mac monitor for forever. For the time being, and contrary to some advice I've gotten from the helpful folks at SmugMug, I have set everything to AutoColor -- I've just gotten better results with that even though "technically" I should do better with True. I also never got much in the way of utility out of EZ Prints' calibration print. I find it difficult making a meaningful comparison of a glossy print with an image on the monitor.

Barry Nichols · February 21, 2008

Ahhhh! Okay, reading the SmugMug help pages I come across this:

If you’re interested in seeing how your photos look to the rest of the world, you can go to the Apple menu > Preferences > Displays > Color and choose sRGB (it was called TV before the OS X Tiger release).

So I try it and I think that everything on my monitor looks better in sRGB than the "correct" profile my Huey did. The huey makes everything look to "light" and "greenish" tinted. You see more shadow detail, but it's just not as rich in depth....to me.

Any help here? Calibration gurus? Bueller?

arodney · February 22, 2008

Barry Nichols wrote:

Ahhhh! Okay, reading the SmugMug help pages I come across this:

If you’re interested in seeing how your photos look to the rest of the world, you can go to the Apple menu > Preferences > Displays > Color and choose sRGB (it was called TV before the OS X Tiger release).

So I try it and I think that everything on my monitor looks better in sRGB than the "correct" profile my Huey did. The huey makes everything look to "light" and "greenish" tinted. You see more shadow detail, but it's just not as rich in depth....to me.

Any help here? Calibration gurus? Bueller?

That's absolutely incorrect! Setting the display to sRGB will not show you what the rest of the world is seeing (they are dreaming). Andy, you need to pull that nonsense.

The only way the world will see everything the same way (and correctly) is with profiled displays and applications that understand how to use the profiles so the RGB numbers are properly previewed (as we have in Photoshop).

The only way to get a print to preview correctly in relationship to the display is to have a profile of the print process and have users view the prints correctly (under the right illuminant and intensity) based on the printer profile and the display profile. Otherwise, if the print looked too dark, you could move the print closer to the light, that's NOT a solution.

It's called soft proofing, it requires profiles and proper setup of print viewing and proper setup of Photoshop (not some silliness about setting your display profile to the wrong setting, please!):

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200409_rodneycm.pdf

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200411_rodneycm.pdf

Barry Nichols · February 22, 2008

If you read what I did at the top of this post, I think I am softproofing. My problem is how do I get the photo printed by EZPrints to look like the image I am seeing on screen. I used the Huey to calibrate, softproofed with the correct ICC, and they look "similar", but the print looks better, richer, cleaner. I am not so sure that this "calibration" Huey is doing is right, because for whatever reason, my screen looks better with this sRGB setting.

arodney · February 22, 2008

Barry Nichols wrote:

If you read what I did at the top of this post, I think I am softproofing. My problem is how do I get the photo printed by EZPrints to look like the image I am seeing on screen. I used the Huey to calibrate, softproofed with the correct ICC, and they look "similar", but the print looks better, richer, cleaner. I am not so sure that this "calibration" Huey is doing is right, because for whatever reason, my screen looks better with this sRGB setting.

Soft proofing works when:

1. You have a good output profile that will be used to convert the data for printing (is this the case here?). Any editing you do based on the soft proof IS applied upon output with this profile.
2. You have a display profile that's based on calibration target values that take the print viewing conditions into account (White point and luminance).
3. You view the print with #2 in mind/
4. You setup the customize proof setup with the simulations on in full screen mode.

iMAC Monitor Calibration Question

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