calibrating monitors

[Ollie]

Love the Chaffinch Kerry that's a great shot and the colours of both of them look fine to me, I'm on a laptop by the way not that it makes much difference, but if my laptop displays the colours about right there's a good chance most people will see them as they are meant to be, so I would say as others have suggested if you are happy with them that's all that matters.
Roger

[Kerry]

Originally Posted by nightshade

Monitor Calibration and Profiling

Kerry this link works as does thePC World link

Thanks Nightshade. I have just tried the PC World link again and it works fine this time. I shall book mark both and have a read.

Kerry

[Kerry]

Originally Posted by Ollie

Love the Chaffinch Kerry that's a great shot and the colours of both of them look fine to me, I'm on a laptop by the way not that it makes much difference, but if my laptop displays the colours about right there's a good chance most people will see them as they are meant to be, so I would say as others have suggested if you are happy with them that's all that matters.
Roger

Thanks Ollie for checking. I was pleased with the Chaffinch as they are hard to get close to and I only have a 70-300mm lens.

Kerry

[WestLothian]

I have a problem with my monitors that goes beyond the Gamma and Kelvin settings. I have installed Powerstrip 3.73 which is very good for calibrating most monitors. I also use the test facilities at The Gamma adjustment page

The trouble concerns a new Dell laptop which has an excellent 1920x1200 display that has the ability to discern different low contrast grey levels very close to black. If I use elements 5.0 or Bibble to get a picture "just-right" on the laptop (which is carefully calibrated to 2.0 for Mac/PC web browsers), it will seem dark when reviewed on a 1600x1200 Sony with the same Powerstrip 3.73 adjusted gamma settings.

I have done checks on a large number of office displays (crt & lcd) and it seems that the Dell screen is just not representative and is finer than the average. It is probably worth checking how images look on a standard monitor to be sure that others see the same thing.

[peterjclarke]

Kerry, I've has a quick look at both images, the Chaffinch and the Bluetit and both seem fine to me. I calibrate my Sony Trinitron regularly using a Gretag MacBeth One eye Display 2. It really depends on what you wish to do with your images. If you just like making photographs for the web and printing the odd one off for friends and family the Adobe Gamma is fine. It's trickey but not too hard. Make sure you uncheck the box 'single view only' and you have Red, Green and Blue boxes to work with. Then screw up your eyes and adjust the sliders so that the centre box appears the same as the outside box. Hardware calibration devices like the Gretag and the Spyder 2 Pro are pretty expensive and really only for the very serious recreational photographer or professional. Also the colour profiles used 'in camera' and in photoshop are different. sRGB being the default and Adobe 1998 RBG being the professional standard with a much wider colour space.

[themightyzog]

I think it is well worth calibrating your monitor, especially if it is a CRT one. It took me sometime to understand how to do it effectively- and I have devoted much of my web site to passing on this information. Just using my big gamma image makes adjustment so much easier.

Good luck!

[GerryNick2]

Until recently I have always had my monitor calibrated at regular intervals by a company specialising in Colour Management and Digital Imaging. I used them as at the time the hardware used was very expensive and it was a cheaper option to pay someone else than purchase the hardware myself.

I noticed over the last few weeks that prints were not comparing too well with the images displayed on the monitor, usually a good indication it is time to get the screen re-calibrated.

Given that the price of colorimeters has come down considerably in the last year or so I thought I would take the plunge and purchase one and do my own calibration. Having researched the subject I plumped for the Pantone Huey. It arrived this morning so thought I would set it up and give it a go, expecting to have a few headaches. I was pleasantly surprised the whole operation from setting up the hardware to completing the calibration took approx.10 minutes. The results are very impressive, printed off a few images and they are an extremely close match to the screen images.

If anyone is considering calibrating their monitor I can certainly recommend the Pantone Huey Pro.

Gerry