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Monitor Calibration – Gamma Settings
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Hi There,
I have taken on a job to document artworks digitally for a colour catalogue. Everything on the camera side is going fine so far but I am a bit concerned about the post production side of things. My main concern is the settings on my monitor and its calibration. I currently work under Gamma 2.2 and 6500k, but I am concerned that the printers will have there equipment set to different standards. I cannot contact the printers about this because the client has not selected one yet. Can anyone advise me on what settings I should have my monitor at. My monitor is a Dell U2410 monitor that I calibrate with Spyder 3 Elite. Also there are colour settings presets on the monitor(Adobe RGB, sRGB, Standard etc.), should I set this to the colour space I have set on my camera (Adobe RGB) or leave it to the calibrator to set this. If anyone can be of help I will be very grateful.
Kevin
In Europe, 6500K is the most common setting for photography and graphics with Gamma 2.2.
Some would argue that if you are not working on a professional display (e.g. Eizo etc.) then you might be better off just leaving the display at its native white point instead of forcing it to 6500K. You will find most of them are quite close to this anyway and your eyes will adjust to the difference.The most important thing is that you are calibrating your screen (as you are) and that you set the correct level of brightness (usually between 90-120 cd/m2). Whatever you do don’t set the screen to Adobe RGB or anything like that. Use your custom display profile.
Only the files should be in something like Adobe RGB – quite orthogonal to the display profile settings. The colour setting in your camera only affects the Jpegs it produces and not RAW. If you want your Raw files to go into Adobe RGB specfically you would need to set that in the workflow options in your RAW converter. If you use Lightroom it actually uses ProPhoto 16 bit internally and you can export files in whatever you want (typically Adobe RGB TIFF 8-bit to go to a publisher but it can vary depending in what they ask for)
The print profiles will be set by the designer/printer – you normally don’t need to do that (and you shouldn’t even try)
Thank’s for the insightful info. This is most helpful.
Kind regards
Kevin
Hi Tony. I calibrated my monitor to the settings you recommended but the brightness seems very low. At 120 cd/m2 the brightness is only 11% brightness, is this the norm. It seems very dull.
Kevin
HI Kevin,
It might seem strange to you at first but this almost uncomfortably dim level is a better representation of how the photograph would be on print. If you put it much higher than this you may end up editing your images in a way that makes them darker thus your prints will look too dark when you get them.
You may need to subdue the light in your working environment a little to cope with the more correct display brightness level. The problem with a lot of non-professional screens is they are glossy and to avoid reflections people turn up the backlight. They are an ergonomic disaster compared to matte displays. Some of these ultra-bright glossy displays don’t represent colour as well at the dimmer setting but there’s nothing you can do about that.
On professional displays 120 cd/m2 is even a bit too bright. On the EIZOs that I use, I set it at the recommended brightness 80 cd/m2 and these displays are even able to render accurate colour at this low setting I don’t think you need to go this low unless you are doing printing professionally.
Hope this helps!
Tony
second that Tony….
when I bought my first iMac, my first question of the apple experts was can the display be calibrated accurately… oh yes was the answer
oh no! was the result… the display can only be calibrated to with 1/2 -> 1 ev of correct, and the cd/m2 cannot be adjusted low enough without a plugin which affects color rendering… very disappointed I was especially as I print exclusively in mono… (its fine for web intended images)
the only fault I have had with apple since 1994….. (touching wood vigorously now!!)
JB
I’m guessing that the plug-in you are referring to is ‘Shades’. The newer imacs don’t seem to suffer from the super bright issue. I have profiled quite a few of the older monitors and Shades was the only workable, if not perfect solution. Another issue that would crop up as a result – If you set the brightness to 0, the next time you restarted the machine, the brightness would jump back to full again. You have to set it to around 10% when profiling and then activate ‘Shades’.
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