Moniter Calibration

[Matty P]

Hi all,

I am looking for a easy way to calibrate your computer moniters making them identical in brightness, contrast and colour.

I find that when I am processing my images, it is difficult to know exactly how it would look and a properly calibrated moniter.

Any advice on how to properly calibrate a computer moniter would be greatly appreciated. :thumbsup:

[dannat]

if you have PS it has a tool to do it i thinks

[leon]

The Photo Shop Astronomy book, by R.Scott Ireland explains it very well using Adobe Gamma, which is located in your Control Panel of Windows XP, if you have it that is.

That is how I did mine and It certainly is different, now to calibrate the new Printer, which is also explained.

Leon

PS forgot to mention, if you don't have that book, the Adobe Gamma program in windows also explains it step by step, just click on control panel and click on Adobe Gamma, and away you go.

[Omaroo]

Matty - unless you have consistent ambience in your room lighting, don't worry about it too much. Proper monitor calibration is ideally set up in conditions where the surrounding light temperature is set to 5,000 deg kelvin - such as that which you get in a light booth at a photographic studio or ad agency. Without consistent room lighting your are venturing into a world of frustration. I worked for years in these places and calibration was a time-consuming and constant process. Of course, no one here is going to go to this extent because you aren't looking for perfect skin tones on press for a high-quality glossy magazine ad campaign.

We also have LCD monitors these days, not CRT so much any more. LCD panels are not really that great for their calibration ability unless you go for the far more expensive models. Given that, as Leon says, use the tools that Photoshop's Adobe Gamma provides if really want to, but you really need a hardware calibration device to physically measure your monitor's colour output if you want to match it to a printers.

Here's a good little explanation: http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibration.htm

[leon]

Chris what you say is true, but after reading the Photo Shop book by Scott Ireland, it got me thinking, what is my monitor actually showing me, so I started to follow the instructions in his book.

It took some reading and lots of time, my settings on the monitor was miles out of whack, and the photo shop profiles were running on something I had never heard of.
I adjusted, every thing as described, and i have to say there is a hell of a difference.

My Printer died a couple of days prior to this book arriving, and so I bought a new one, It is of good quality and dedicated only to printing, not having all the add on's like scanner, copier etc.

It too was profiled with the monitor settings, and I have to say the image I printed today as a test is certainly very close to what I see on the monitor.

So I suppose at least some calibration is better than none.

Leon

[Omaroo]

Ooh! Absolutely Leon :) Don't get me wrong - some (what you did) is way better than accepting it all as it is. Matty just seemed to want "identical" colour performance from two monitors, but will need hardware to get that result. I suppose it depends on your definition of "identical". In our game, it means just that, and it's not easy to do.

[leon]

Yes Chris, agreed. matching two monitors for an identical image would probably be near impossible with out some dedicated gadgets to do the job.

Just out of interest I use a very large Mitsubishi CRT monitor which I bought new not so long ago, and have to say it sends out a pretty good colour arrangement, "for the lack of an other word".

Leon

[Matty P]

Thanks for the advice and help guys,

I just installed Adobe Gamma on both computers and adjusted the moniter settings so that they both have close to the same values.

This will really help when I am processing my images. :thumbsup:

[leon]

It will Matty, then up the track you maybe able to fine tune and I'm sure the results will be worth it.

Leon

[Hagar]

Matt, I went out and bought a monitor calibrator $160 well spent . Spyder2Express. Just hang it over the monitor install some software and wait while it does it's stuff. It made one hell of a difference to my monitors.