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A Cry For Help
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Hi all, Hopefully somebody might be able to help me out. Posted e few images recently and just by chance today was on PI using another PC and the images look totally different, over saturated and a lot darker. This was not the case a while back. I had to do a system restore on my laptop recently if this has anything to do with it. I googled monitor calibration and was totally out of my level when it came to monitor temperature and colour settings. If anybody has any tips they would be appreciated.
Stephen.
I’m in a similar situation at the moment and its driving me nuts. I currently have a Macbook which is hooked up to a 22″ external display, but the differences between the two screens is huge. The external display in comparision to the Macbook display is a lot more saturated. This being the case I sometimes spend quite a bit of time editing the images in Photoshop/Lightroom on my external display, only to find out when I view them on the Macbook display they are not as saturated as I would like and look flat. Dear knows what they look like on other peoples displays.
I’ve tried following online tutorials for monitor calibration and spent quite some time fiddling with the monitor settings and the computers colour profiles but I can never get them close to each other. Of course when I come in and look at the photos on my work computer they look totally different again… think at this stage I’m just going to have to put away a few quid to invest in a Spyder 2 Express to do the hard work for me!
Sorry, that was no help to you but at least you know you are not alone :)
Your best bet for monitor calibration, especially if you want to do it properly is buy a dongle (small device) for it. There is a side by side product review on monitor calibrators in this months ‘Digital Camera’ on page 124, and an article on it the page before. The cheapest one (The best buy) will set you back 100 pounds sterling.
Also, if you know any graphic designers they may have one you can borrow, every company I have worked for (I’m a web developer and I work with designers) has had a few knocking around.
EDIT : The one the recomended was the ‘Pantone Huey Pro’ their website is at http://www.pantone.com and it has the added advantage that it will during set intervals read the ambient light level in your room and adjust your monitor accordingly.
Your better getting the proper calibration gear try here
http://www.barkerphotographic.ie/index.htm or here
http://www.sheldonphoto.com/
they are a site sponsor so will probably do you a good dealCathal
Thanks all for the advice and the links, will check them out tomorrow.
Stephen.
From what little I know on the subject, laptops are more difficult if not impossible to calibrate because generally the screens are not to the same quality as a desktop monitor and more importantly, monitor calibration will be affected by environmental light, and if you are moving around using the lappy then obviously the environmental lighting will change.
This whole subject drives me ape, because when I look at my shots on line on different screens they look different each time.
There are a couple of people on the forum who are pretty knowledgeable on this subject so hopefully one of them will pass on some more helpful information.. :wink:
actually monitor calibration has nothing to do with ambient light. when you calibrate a screen or a printer or a scanner, what you are trying to do is make them preform to an international colour standard, ICC.
the colours may look different under different lighting conditions, but that has nothing to do with calibration.
but robbie is right laptop screens are generally not as good as decent desktop one, but not because they are any different in quality, its more to do with the control you have on them and the backlighting system.
also lots of modern laptops have this auto brightness based on the ambient light. i have see sooooo many pros with this thing still turned on, which means they are not seeing the right colours. its one thing to just turn off as soon as you get the laptop
That’s interesting Steve. I’ve just had a quick look at the User Manual for the Pantone Huey and that has a function where the device can adjust your monitor based on room lighting. Is that the same thing you’re talking about here?
I need to buy myself one of these things myself to at least have some kind of consistency in what I see on screen.
robbie
i wouldnt get the pantone one
go for the spyder or the eye one system
the brightness of your screen will affect how the colours are shown on screen. you need the brightness of the screen to be consistent
Cheers Steve..I might wait for the show in Croke Park and pick one of them up there.
I’ll probably be in Croker before I’m in Malahide, and I’d assume he’ll have a stand..then again, you’re probably right..I have zero patience and restraint..I’ll want it yesterday onceI decide..hehe!!
Jody wrote:
BF, is the second PC where the pics look bad running Windows Vista?
At this stage Jody I have viewed them on both 98, XP and Vista and its the same caper on all of them.
Thanks all for comments, good helpful discussion. What I have done is got myself the loan of a monitor cable and connected up the Laptop to another monitor and there is no comparison between the two, while the images on the Laptop look OK they are saturated to s*** on the external monitor, mainly the greens and are a lot darker.
I will check out this auto brightness based on the ambient light to see if that has any thing to do with it.
Thanks again,
Stephen..
Big Fella wrote:
Jody wrote:
BF, is the second PC where the pics look bad running Windows Vista?
At this stage Jody I have viewed them on both 98, XP and Vista and its the same caper on all of them.
Ah, that is strange. I have the same problem, but only on a Vista Machine. What I was told was that Vista can borrow RAM from your video RAM if its running hard programs (like Photoshop say), and this can cause the problem
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