Monitor Calibration

[Cussy]

I'm finding very different results on different machines. I have a PC at home, one at work and 2 laptops - all very different. It's driving me mad as I spent a long time while away in Kosovo processing photos, only to transfer them to my home PC to find they all look dark.

Does anyone use any of the monitor calibration devices (Colorvision Spyder or Pantone Huey etc)? If so, which one should I invest in, if at all?
Rob

[triplefin]

Rob - I asked a very similar question when I first registered with DG and got some excellent answers. Not sure if the thread will still be around as so much on DG has changed since then, but worth trying a search.

[TimIngmire]

I don't have an answer Rob but all threads should still be present so as Jane as suggest do a quick search and let us know if it answers your questions.

Tim

[Cussy]

I had seen that thread, its more about colour management and profiles.

What I was wondering is whether anyone had bought hardware calibration devices and whether they found them useful. I've done a lot of searching and you can find loads, but for everyone saying XX is fantastic, there will be someone else saying it's rubbish. I trust my fellow green water underwater photographers....
Rob

[Thomas F]

I have used CalibrationAider (For Windows) 1.0.1 and find it to be quite good using a 19" lcd

[Cussy]

I think this is definitely worth a follow up.

I didn't buy a colour calibrator in the end and I've used software ones before. But a chance conversation at work with our photographic department and I was "leant" one to "try." It was an old Pantone/Colorvision PhotoCAL (it's a Spyder) and luckily enough works on Vista (but not the 64bit XP Pro on my works desktop). Very easy to use.

The end result is a properly calibrated monitor that is much darker than before. I can now see why my photos got comments about being dark!! I'll have a play with Lightroom tonight and post a before and after shot to show what difference it made.

TBH I was quite surpised how much it changed the output. I had my monitor calibrated using software, but it made a huge difference. It wasn't all perfect as it initially made my laptop extremely blue, but a recalibration seems to have sorted that out - although my small laptop gives quite a different brightness/contrast depending on what angle you view the screen at.
Rob

[ChristianG]

Rob,

Professional Graphics Studios, the really good ones anyway, will work in artificial light (only) at 5000 Kelvin and you won't find a light diffuser (which would change that temperature) anywhere near the joint.

Then all the monitors are colour matched, a relatively easy job because they're almost inevitably Macs, which is wh I can't, sorry, help you in your particular situation.

Here is something I wrote a very long time ago which might be of some little help in understanding colour

> I've just opened a pack and, if you want to split hairs they are a brownish
> colour, but then again they do look greyish as well.

Actually, very well said Steve.

It depends on the light conditions employed when you look at the
substrate and this is *especially* so with grey hues which are
notoriously difficult to achieve in the printing medium. Greys range
in spectrum from light browns to "true" greys, to light violets (note
the plurals) and I'm surprised that no-one has suggested that last hue
of grey.

Grey (as well as black and white, more correctly called achromatic
colours) are not strictly colours in the conventional sense of greens,
blues, yellows etc (chromatic colours), however the same rules apply
to them as chromatic colours during evaluation.

Since colour, chromatic or achromatic, is reflective the hue will look different:

if you are looking at it under conventional room lighting
if you are looking at it under conventional neon lighting
if you are looking at it under conventional daylight neon (about 5000
Kelvin) lighting
if you are looking at it under conventional sun light
if you are looking at it under conventional sun light in the shade
if you are looking at it under conventional sun light through white cloud
if you are looking at it under conventional sun light through grey cloud
if any of the above is filtered by any other of the above
if wearing those glasses which change colour in sunlight (even when
the evaluation is under artificial light)
if wearing those dinky contact lenses which change the colour of one's eyes
if your eyes have not been trained in the detection of hue
if your eyes are different to mine
etc., them's the more significant ones

Actually I should not even be using the word "hue" in this context
because, strictly speaking, it only applies to chromatic colours.
Strictly speaking I should have used "shade" but in my experience that
word can often lead to confusion.

I'd therefore suggest that most everyone who has ventured an opinion
is correct, depending on their own interpretation of "grey" and, most
importantly, the lighting conditions they were employing in making the evaluation.

Thus endeth the lesson, you can all wake up again now.

and

> what a "light" you are. And all that about some rubber bands (just
> showing my new acquired knowledge).

Everyone, as the guy said, has their odd minute of fame (notoriety?)
and this one was obviously mine.

> Could you shed your light on the following as well; when comparing my
> UK400 light against aa HID cannon, it is just plain nothing .
> However, when I looked at my glove in the light of this HID, it was
> blue! And i just seem to remember that those were black.

I dunno, except to say that one is considerably more powerful than the
other. Probably, and I'm guessing, HID's have a considerably colder
colour temperature thus making your black gloves look blue.

Now I know that colour temperature (remember those 5000 Kelvin
daylight neons?) has been mentioned on this list before. I
(mercifully) refrained from opening up that can of worms in my last
post and I won't do so to any extent in this one either. A quick
search under colour temperature on my favourite and bestest of all
time search engine Google revealed:

http://www.google.com/search?q=colour+temperature

for those of you, including videographers, still photogs and
illuminators of fings unnawata who might be interested in such arcane matters.

Of course, things change unnawata, as Smiffy alluded when answering
the video filter thread.

Very quickly: "warm" light contains more red, "cold" light more blue.
Thus the light we see underwater gets colder (and darker) the deeper
we descend. Its why I'm assuming/guessing that the HID sheds a cold
light, made the black gloves look blue. A warm light would, if
anything, make them look brown. Unfortunately, and because light
changes temperature underwater (by first losing the reds) we can only
every come up with a neutral artificial light in a specific part of
the water column, unless you are able to change the colour temperature
of your light source unnawata. Some can do this, for example
Hartenberger makes some fine strobes which can have an array of
filters clipped to the front of 'em ... swing one away, replace by another.

Of course if you are deep enough so that there is no daylight to
disturb the scene, the colour temperature of your artificial light
source should be +/-5000 Kelvin when your eyes should see everything
"naturally", as in clear sun light.

I'd better shut up now, before I get monstered. You can all wake up
again, again.

More importantly, my friend Charles Maurer wrote this.

Cheers,

Christian

[MartinJ]

Originally Posted by Cussy

I had seen that thread, its more about colour management and profiles.

What I was wondering is whether anyone had bought hardware calibration devices and whether they found them useful. I've done a lot of searching and you can find loads, but for everyone saying XX is fantastic, there will be someone else saying it's rubbish. I trust my fellow green water underwater photographers....
Rob

Rob,

I calibrate my monitor with an EyeOneDisplay 2 (Pantone Eye One Display 2 monitor profiling review) and have been really pleased with it. I found when I started out in digital photography (above water) that I could get really nice pics then when I printed them they were so dark. This did the trick. It will calibrate your monitor and get the brightness levels right and also allows you to measure ambient light to get the colour temp of your ambient lighting and levels about right...I found the combination of my room light and a lamp with a daylight bulb in worked for me. Now I get pics that are how I want them. Definitely worth going for.

I started out using the laptop screen but quickly but a second flat panel monitor I plug into the laptop for photo processing

Remember to let your monitor warm up for half an hour before calibrating and to calibrate regularly or if you change PC/graphics card/monitor etc

Hope this helps a bit

Martin

[Cussy]

Martin,
I just recently upgraded my PC, so as part of the upgrade I bought a Pantone Huey Pro. Excellent bit of kit and has done a fantastic job. I need to change it though so that my PC is constantly measuring ambient light levels - it's set to static at the moment.

I intend to write something about calibration for this site as TBH I was absolutely amazed what difference it makes. I've used the jpeg/manual adjustment methods that you can find on the web, but they only change contrast and don't adjust colours.

Rob

PS the one problem with laptops is the difference in contrast you get from viewing at different angles on some. I almost always end up looking slightly down on my screen which makes it look brighter. If you look directly at it it's much darker, with better contrast. So I only use my laptop if its on a trip.

[MartinJ]

Originally Posted by Cussy

Martin,
I just recently upgraded my PC, so as part of the upgrade I bought a Pantone Huey Pro. Excellent bit of kit and has done a fantastic job. I need to change it though so that my PC is constantly measuring ambient light levels - it's set to static at the moment.

I intend to write something about calibration for this site as TBH I was absolutely amazed what difference it makes. I've used the jpeg/manual adjustment methods that you can find on the web, but they only change contrast and don't adjust colours.

Rob

PS the one problem with laptops is the difference in contrast you get from viewing at different angles on some. I almost always end up looking slightly down on my screen which makes it look brighter. If you look directly at it it's much darker, with better contrast. So I only use my laptop if its on a trip.

Rob, yes I agree although to be honest with a decent monitor the colour adjustemnts should be quite minor. I know mine certainly is and the graph showing the colour adjustments is pretty straight.

The biggest bonus I found was it set up the display brightness correctly which improved my prints which must have been about half a stop out and looked far too dark.

Just make sure you dont have Adobe Gamma running..install CS2 and it dumps it in your startup folder!

Martin