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Calibrate Monitor if Not Printing???
Tom Potter
Registered Users Posts: 226 Major grins
Hey All,
I've done some reading on monitor calibration. Every piece I've read discusses calibrating one's monitor so that that person's printer best matches what is on the monitor. So, although this may seem like a silly question, I learned a LONG time ago to NEVER make assumptions, about any thing or any one. So, here goes:
If I am NOT going to make prints myself, on my printer, but rather, will have SmugMug handle all my client's printing needs, is there any need for ME to calibrate MY monitor?
Thank you very much for your input.
Tom
Colorado
I've done some reading on monitor calibration. Every piece I've read discusses calibrating one's monitor so that that person's printer best matches what is on the monitor. So, although this may seem like a silly question, I learned a LONG time ago to NEVER make assumptions, about any thing or any one. So, here goes:
If I am NOT going to make prints myself, on my printer, but rather, will have SmugMug handle all my client's printing needs, is there any need for ME to calibrate MY monitor?
Thank you very much for your input.
Tom
Colorado
Tom Potter
www.tompotterphotography.com
Email: tom@tompotterphotography.com
Landscape, Nature Photographic Prints For Sale
Focusing On Colorado
www.tompotterphotography.com
Email: tom@tompotterphotography.com
Landscape, Nature Photographic Prints For Sale
Focusing On Colorado
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Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
OK - That makes perfect sense. Which leads me to a follow-up. Say I calibrate my monitor with one of those hardware items, such as the Huey. Would I need to calibrate it every now and the, or, if I do not make any adjustments, will there ever be a need to calibrate it again. If so, how would the colors on my monitor "magically" change if I do not make further adjustments to it? Just curious.
Thx,
Tom
www.tompotterphotography.com
Email: tom@tompotterphotography.com
Landscape, Nature Photographic Prints For Sale
Focusing On Colorado
Displays are unstable devices. You should calibrate them at least once a month. That's really the role of calibration (placing a device into a desired, ideal and consistent state). Then you profile. The profile defines device behavior for ICC aware applications.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Displays are fundamentally analog devices and will change with the weather. Changes in temperature, pressure and humidity among other things can change how your monitor displays color. More so with a CRT than an LCD, but both will drift over time. I keep track of how much my monitor shifts from one calibration to the next so I know how often I need to calibrate.
Excellent info - Thanks to all for your great help. Guess I'm puttin' a monitor calibrator at the top of my Christmas list!
Thx,
Tom
www.tompotterphotography.com
Email: tom@tompotterphotography.com
Landscape, Nature Photographic Prints For Sale
Focusing On Colorado
Just a quick followup. Ya know the calibration print offered by SmugMug? Would that be essentially useless, then?...or, is it much more that it would simply not be nearly as good a tool as a monitor calibrator?
thx,
Tom
www.tompotterphotography.com
Email: tom@tompotterphotography.com
Landscape, Nature Photographic Prints For Sale
Focusing On Colorado
Yup, totally useless! The idea of mucking around with the totally crude controls on a display, to match a print is really outdated, pretty piss-poor color management. It certainly doesn't work in versions of Photoshop since version 5 that began using the display profile for previews along with working space profiles to define the document and output profiles for soft proofing. So that's what, 1998? Its amazing people still try to do this.
If they supplied a print, a file and an ICC profile of the process, that be far more useful. And of course, that profile would need to be honored by the user when sending data output ready to the lab, something that isn't followed here either. This has been discussed in the past. Its pretty half baked color management.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Cool man - Thanks Andrew! :O)
www.tompotterphotography.com
Email: tom@tompotterphotography.com
Landscape, Nature Photographic Prints For Sale
Focusing On Colorado
I just bought my monitor calibrator -- i1display 2. I calibrated my monitor using the easy way since my monitor doesn't have a seperate RGB setting. Its an older Sony LCD monitor.
After calibrating I edited a few photos and previewed them with the ICC profile I have downloaded from smug. They matched up well and I sent it off to print.
But.....when I received my prints they seemed ok, but still were alittle darker/washed out. The color saturation was dull somewhat.
How can this happen and what can be done to correct this. I so want to be able to print out what I'm seeing on my monitor, but feel I'm lacking a step in the process and the knowledge to figure it out.
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
It happens because the profile you used to soft proof really has no relationship to how the document was printed. A "flaw" in this half baked ICC workflow.
Since you can't use this profile to convert the original to the output color space, nor select the desired rendering intent, nor post edit after conversion, and because we have no idea if the lab used this profile (or something else), its a bogus workflow in terms of color management. Now matching print to display requires a controlled viewing Light source and you'd ideally set the display luminance to match this. So, if the final print appears a bit too dim, you'd either raise the intensity of the light source if possible (or move it closer), or lower the display luminance to result in a match.
This doesn't sound like what you're describing however. It sounds like you have a far larger disconnect between print and what you initially saw. Based on a pretty flawed color management workflow on the print side, I'd suspect this is the issue.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Thank you for responding to my question. Oh my....now what do I do now?
From what I gather from reading your answer to my question -- the best thing is to print my own photos. Set up the ICC profile to my printer. Does that sound right to you?
I thought maybe it was my editing skills were off, but I don't think they look that bad
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
In doing my own printing there are three issues I run into.
1. Brightness. This is usually an issue of not matching the monitor calibration to the room lighting. It doesn't really have anything to do with either soft proofing or the printer profile.
2. Contrast. Prints have less dynamic range than screens do. It takes some practice both to see and to fix these issues in Photoshop, but I haven't found that it requires a terribly accurate soft proof profile. Once I have it sorted, I find that my print can usually go from one printer to another without trouble.
3. Gamut. If significant parts your image is outside the printer color gamut, bad things can happen during the color space conversion. These issues are very specific to a particular profile and even profiles for different papers on the same printer will can cause noticable differeces.
In my experience, if you are printing on smugmug (or any online service) you can get the brightness and contrast right, or at least close enough using the nominal profile provided. However pushing the limits of the printer gamut with any kind of real control requires that you print on your own printer or with an expert local printer.
I think I'm the only one who gets this "look" of haze on the photos that are printed :cry
I just opened up my photo I printed in CS3 and then went to softproof it only this time I clicked on the Simulate Paper Color just for the heck of it and my photo on the screen looked just like I get them when they are printed. Wonder why that happened. My understanding is that when soft proofing you don't check that box to soft proof. Am I wrong?
I do think my problem is in the brightness and contrast. Now to over come it. I didn't do a room lighting calibration. That wasn't part of the "easy" set up. Maybe its time for a new monitor so I can do the advanced set up. Do you think that is necessary? I did my calibration with one light on off to my side. All other lights were off. Was I wrong in doing that?
This is really starting to bug me, but driving me to correct what ever issue I'm doing wrong.
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
You are not the only one who gets hazy prints. Typically prints which look hazy compared to the screen because the black of the ink is not as black as the screen. However if your screen is very bright, then the blacks may be a closer match because the screen white is so much brighter.
Try this: create a pure white document in Photoshop (or any managed application). Then, under your standard room lighting hold a sheet white paper (preferably the paper you are printing on, but any paper will give you the idea). How does the white on the screen compare to the white of the paper? Remember that the print can never get any whiter or brighter than the paper is. If your screen is much brighter than the paper (the usual situation) is it any surprise that your prints look duller than they do on your monitor? Once you get the whites sorted out (if you choose to), you can then play the same game with the blacks.
You have two choices if you want a good match on the whites: either adjust your lighting or adjust your screen (or some of both). Each has its merits. Personally, I calibrate my screen brightness down a few notches from what it is capable of. I am not at home at the moment, but I think it is somewhere in the 90-100 lumens range. That is still brighter than the lighting at my desk, but it does give me a more somewhat more realistic view and I find I do a better job of adjusting my images because of it.
All of this will give you a better sense of how what you see on screen compares to what you will see in print. However that, by itself, won't give you better prints. The fundamental problem is that your original capture has a higher dynamic range than the printer can reproduce. With some images, the automatic dynamic range adjustment you get from the printer profile looks good enough. With others, not so much. It is at this point that the science of printing ends and the art begins.
I just looked at what I can change my monitor to and I have this:
Backlight -- which is set to 75
Contrast -- 62
Brightness -- 56
Color User Settings is set at User settings. I'm assuming that is because it is running off the calibrations from my i1. It also has different settings that can be set--
---9300K
---6500k
---sRGB
---USER
---l Adjust
Gamma 1, 2, 3 and it is set on Gamma 3
Sharpness -- 10 which is middle of the scale provided
Some or most of this may be unimportant, but I'm thinking by the information you provided I'm to play with my Brightness. Since my white box in my CS3 is way whiter then the paper I held up to it I need to turn it down some. Do I turn it down to get close to the paper? I would think so, but that will make my screen awful dark.
Wasn't my i1 suppose to take care of all this stuff? Or do I need to do the advanced settings to get it to properly adjust my monitor.
I noticed that when I turn on my monitor it does a shift in color. For a second it starts out as bright and what it use to look like then flashes onto the calibrated look. Is this normal?
I thank you for taking time to help me with this.
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
If you use the advanced mode, i1 lets you set a calibration target luminance and color temperature. Then it will help you get all your monitor settings right. If you have an LCD, the recommended calibration brightness is something like 140 lumens which is way to bright. I'd target somewhere between 90 and 110 (whatever you can tolerate).
As for matching the brightness of your monitor to your room lighting, you need to find balance which works for you. I'd start by improving the lighting in you work area (Ott lights are good and not too expensive) before you tune the monitor luminance and temperature. In the end, I decided to let my monitor run a bit brighter than my room lights and I just try to stay aware of that when processing
First off, few modern LCD's can hit that low a luminance without really altering the LUT's which is to be avoided. Out of the box, they can easily hit 250-300 cd/m2. Getting such units down to 140/150 isn't even possible in some instances.
Next, the luminance should match the viewing conditions of the print near the display. The entire idea is to get a visual match. You need some light box (something like a GTI box or Solux setup). The former has a digital dimmer on some units which maintains CCT color temp and the reason such controls are provided IS to effect a visual match with the display. Solux, not so easy, you can't dim them but you can move them closer or farther from the print. You can either raise the luminance of the viewing conditions or raise and lower (within reason) the display. And since its damn difficult to get LCD's as low as the older CRTs (where that 90cd/m2 was about right in a dark room), you have to play with both display and viewing conditions.
You can not have too low ambient light around the workstation! Lower is better. Any ambient light striking the display affects perception of black. So ideally you're in a very dark environment with a print viewing booth that is flagged as much as possible to keep stray light from the display.
CCT (correlated color temp) of the display should again be set to produce good print to screen matching. Bad news is two fold. First, most ICC output profiles assume a D50 viewing condition. 2nd, altering most LCDs color temp buys you nothing because this is simply a color look up table in 8-bit in the graphic card. Much better, more expensive systems (Eizo, NEC SepectraView) have high bit, internal LUTs in the panel, you can do some adjustments here without resulting banding. But unlike CRT's where you have physical electronic controls, on an LCD, the only physical controls you can affect are the backlight intensity (and good luck figuring out just which control on the display does this. Might be called "backlight" might be called "brightness").
Unless you have an LCD like those mentioned above, best thing is to set your calibration software to native white point and native TRC gamma, let the resulting ICC profile do the compensation in ICC aware applications like Photoshop (using 21 bit precision). Set luminance as low as you can without introducing issues with the backlight such that additional compensation is happening in the 8-bit LUTs. Some displays simply will not let you go any lower and your software will, if well written, report this (you ask for 120cd/m2, it reports after lowering the OSD backlight control, you hit 140cs/m2). That being the case, and assuming the print to screen matching is such that the display looks too bright, you simply have to raise the luminesce of the print viewing area (booth).
The OTT light is nothing at all special! Its using a Fluorescent Lightsource which is spiky and can cause issues (like all Fluorescent lights) with some media. Its not at all as claimed a full spectrum light source. Easy to measure and plot if you have the tools. The only true, full spectrum lighting that is appropriate is Solux MR16 bulbs (or that fantastic light source that's 93 million miles from your display <g>). That said, there are lots of Fluorescent booths (like GTI) used through out the industry. But ideal they are not in terms of the spectrum.
Getting the display to be "hazy" to match the print is as simply as using the Simulate Black Ink/Paper White in Photoshop's soft proof setup. The entire idea here is to simulate the prints contrast ratio on a device that's vastly larger (print=maybe 300:1, Displays= easily 800:1 or more). This option, sometimes referred to as the "make my image look like crap" button is given this name because as you toggle it on, you see the dynamic range change radically. Its useful to setup an action to do this so you can toggle it on and off without viewing the update. Your visual system will adjust easily to the new soft proof however, you really need to work in full screen mode (not palettes or dialogs) because the white of those items do not undergo the white simulation you see on the image. Your visual system always adjusts to the brightest/whitest item in view, you can't ignore this.
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Just holding up a print in room light, and comparing to the monitor is a waste of time for myself. The print always looks dark and low contrast ( the room light where my monitor is IS dim), but the same print examined under sunlight, may look quite glorious.
I think many folks do not fully grasp the importance of a print evaluating station with proper lighting. Having watched Marc Muench and Michael Reichman at their work stations, I am a complete believer in the importance of proper print evaluating stations. Not as sexy as a new camera or lens, but necessary for fine print evaluations.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Yep...the button that makes your photos look like crap....well when that is clicked on that is how my photos printed in True after editing on a calibrated monitor. Printing in Auto doesn't give that look. Its that look I want to be able to edit out. When I compaired my True print (calibrated) and the Auto print it was done under the OTT light.
I will try to recalibrate my monitor in the Advanced mode with all drapes closed, lights off except for my OTT light which I have. I will place it to the side of my work area which is a computer hutch so the light will not be shinning on the monitor.
Wish me luck...I'm determinded to get this right
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
Color Temp:
Target - Native
Current - 5600K
Gamma:
Target - Native
Current - ---- (Just got dashed lines - nothing registered)
Lumiance:
Target - Not Defined
Current - 116.3 cd/m2
Minimum 0.5 cd/m2
Ambient Light:
Color Temp - 5100K
Illumiance - 0 Lux
Ran it a second time, but didn't know if I should. I was having a hard time with the Contrast reading. I was told to turn it all the way up and I did so, but when it ran its check it took 1/2 hr. or more and never changed so I stopped it. Does it usually take that long or did I make a mistake and stop it to soon?
With the second run I changed my monitor myself to Gamma 2 and left the Contrast turned up. I also did a Lumiance test. My readings were:
Color Temp:
Target - Native
Current 5600K
Gamma:
Target - Native
Current -
( again nothing registered)
Lumiance:
Target - Not defined
Current - 130.3 cd/m2
Minimum - 0.6 cd/m2
Ambient Light:
Color Temp - 4100K
Illumiance - 3 Lux
Do any of these look right or is my monitor way off? I've left it on the second calibration, but I'm not going to edit anything till I know if this is ok or way off. I did pull up a photo to see how it looks and it looked more saturated which surprised me. I know why...my contrast is still turned up to 100. Not good. Now I'm really confused.
I hope I haven't bored you yet with my problem and someone is still willing to help me out. Again.....I thank you for your time.
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
What monitor are you using?
Bill
Hi Bill....I thought I was forgotten
I'm using a Sony - Model # SDM-HS75. My Sony is connected to my new Dell computer right now. I was looking at the Dell Ultra Sharp 2408WFP, but if I could keep this monitor longer I would like to do that. I just need to know how to calibrate it with my i1.
Thanks Bill for responding.
www.Dogdotsphotography.com