Calibrating Computer Screen

[Bryan Gregson]

So I’m having a tab bit of an issue….

I was finally fed up working on my 13″ laptop monitor and recently attached a larger screen to it. Yea, I can finally see! BUT low and behold both monitors are completely different colors… like really different! As a rook-o, I actually knew about calibrating but never applied it. It’s one of those things that I overlooked, OK, I just plain forgot about it. Maybe this was a bad move all along as I don’t know what my stuff actually looks like on other screens… maybe its all whacked out, I dunno. As of now I just want to clear this issue up.

My question to y’all is how do I go about calibrating both screens? How do I know what screen is ‘correct color’? Should I be trying to match my camera and computer screens as well?

I know so many questions  🙂

All thoughts, comments and suggestions are encouraged

[Douglas Barnes]

Congrats on the new monitor Bryan. Did you go LCD or CRT? Are you printing at home as well? I any case just get yourself some calibration software (a must-have item) at Pictureline, perhaps something like this:  http://store.pictureline.com/x-rite-eye-one-display-2.html,  then keep it current. Works quite well and you can use it on several screens. Also, don’t pass up an opportunity to see your images on other people’s work spaces.

Regarding your question on another forum, Lacie, DVD, Lacie, Lacie.

Call me if you have more ???’s.

DB

[matt boutet]

I use a Spyder 2 Somethingorother USB calibration tool.

[john michael white]

I use the X Rite Eye One Display 2 and have been real happy with it.  Once you do it a couple of times, it is really simple to do the advanced calibration fairly quickly.   Other than just uploading your monitor profile from the calibration software into your photo processing software (and keeping this current), make sure the color work space matches in both camera and processing software… i.e. if you’re shooting in Adobe RGB in camera, make sure working colorspace in processing software is set to Adobe RGB.

As Doug mentioned, you can do this process on multiple computers, so the process is the same….you’re just “setting” each one to the same “standard”.

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/
Check out the far right column on color management

[Bryan Gregson]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I really appreciate it! The dual colors are driving me nuts so hopefully I can get this fixed very soon.

Doug – no I’m not printing and I don’t think I will be in the near future. It’s a bit too costly for me and my non-existent budget. If anything, I need to buy a decent lens. I thought you had the Lacie, thanks for confirming. As usual I’ll probably be giving ya a call… I’m full of questions as you well know ; ) thank you.

Matt – good to know about the print vs editing…. I’m one the one step at a time program ha ha

JMW – the link you provided has some great information… thanks!

[Ben Cochran]

This is a subject that can be very complicated, as there is so much involved with monitors, I will try to keep this simple though. The size of the monitor has no bearing on how well it will reproduce the colors, there are many other specs that determine this but the most important will be the total size of gamut that it will render. If your monitors do not cover the same gamut then they will never match up perfectly, you want to use the monitor with the widest gamut as your base line.

Just a little bit about monitor gamut: There are a lot of brands that now reproduce 92-95% of the RGB gamut at very affordable prices, most are actually manufactured by a very few manufacturers and then relabeled. Currently, a large amount of LCD users are using monitors that cover 75% of the RGB gamut and they are actually fine for most work. The problem is; a wider gamut image may look terrible on a narrower gamut monitor and a narrow gamut image may look terrible on a wider gamut monitor. The 92-95% gamut monitors have really come down in price and you can get them from the $600.00 range and up. The big plus about purchasing a 92-95% gamut is the fact that the user may never need to upgrade as the next level is mostly in the 125% range and one would only need that for high end fashion photography and graphic design. The newer Apple Cinema, Lacie 300 series, Samsung, LGE, NEC and so forth have very affordable monitors in the 92-95% range and are perfect for high quality professional work as well as amateur/recreational users. A 75% gamut works fine as well but a wider gamut sure does provide a lot more security as well as efficiency, when it comes time to color duplication and printing.

I second the Eye One 2 but remember that you may need to build 2 separate ICC profiles, one for each of your monitors.

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