OT-ever calibrate your monitor?

[rone]

I thought I did a decent job adjusting my monitor until I recently did this using the info here:http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

The range of tones is greatly increased, photos that once looked flat now pop. I have Photoshop Elements, so I used adobe gamma and iterated until the test images at the above site (and a few that it links to) looked right.

I have little experience with other methods of doing this, no doubt the other methods work as well. There is only one hitch for me though, the method seems to work well on my administrator account, but sometimes I have to load the profile using "run as:" on my limited account. Does anybody have experience making this work on limited accounts?

[billfitzmaurice]

It's about as OT as you can get. I'd be asking on a photography forum.

[philiparcario]

I thought I did a decent job adjusting my monitor until I recently did this using the info here:http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

The range of tones is greatly increased, photos that once looked flat now pop. I have Photoshop Elements, so I used adobe gamma and iterated until the test images at the above site (and a few that it links to) looked right.

I have little experience with other methods of doing this, no doubt the other methods work as well. There is only one hitch for me though, the method seems to work well on my administrator account, but sometimes I have to load the profile using "run as:" on my limited account. Does anybody have experience making this work on limited accounts?

i am on a mac mini apple forum

http://www.123macmini.com/forums/index.php

we have some photo guys maybe they can help

[brianpowers27]

I use the SPyder system at home. It does a great job. I can "develop" my digital prints, send them out for printing and get them back as I saw them on my monitor... Nice.

It works fine in Vista, even on the limited accounts.

[biff]

Over the last few days I took an employee to task over his edits on a job, then another employee questioned my edit on a shoot prior to placing the order with a lab. From my altitudinous equestrian position I opined that they were nuts, blind, etc. and we Spydered all the monitors at 4 workstations and pulled up an image from the network and none matched. So we swapped inputs and the difference did not completely swap! Doing what you did is probably as close as can be done to getting your output to match your visualization. We are ordering a print and file from each of our main lab vendors and establishing a profile on each station for them so we can do as you have , in = out.

Previous, somewhat animated conversations with lab personnel have resulted in a communal laugh as they found that no two monitors in their lab matched each other also. The upside of digital photography is that it allows variability in curves, color, saturation and much more. The downside is that it allows variablity in curves, color, saturation and much more,

As Andy says - we look at pictures, not numbers. It is amazing how the two, audio and photo, have analogs. In the off season we are also doing room treatments (Grey paint, uniform lighting with high CRIs, aligning monior viewing angles, etc.). The zone sytem has ten stops, each doubling the exposure value - 10 octaves, each doubling the frequency - even the running debates over objective versus subjective viewing, being in both circles is actually fairly humorous...

[brianpowers27]

Color matching is not easy. At best one could hope to calibrate and use the appropriate color spaces.. download the appropriate color cal files from the vendor and view as printed. There are still variables in the equation but things get very close.

Even with camera raw, the lower stops don't have the information that the higher stops do. This causes me to deliberately overexpose a stop and then bump down.

Without calibration, editing photos for color/brightness/contrast on your PC is a waste of time.

The whole concept of 10 octaves/stops is about right. There is no such thing as an honest photograph, because it isn't real life. No two people could see the world from the same perspective anyway. Is there an uncolored speaker? We are all working through a dogma of choices/compromises to use the instruments to tell a story.

[rone]

It's about as OT as you can get.

I have found that people who share one hobby often share others.

It is not difficult to imagine that color profiles would vary from monitor to monitor and also as the monitor ages. I don't have the worlds best monitor (ACER) but I noticed a difference, even if gamma changes a lot based on viewing position. The difference was dramatic enough that I am mentioning it here for those who haven't tried this. We all take snapshots. No sense in not looking at them at their best. Besides, it kinda has something to do with home theater monitors as well, although that's a stretch

The whole reason I got interested in this last weekend was that I have some pictures that do not reproduce well. I now know that prints only have half the tonal range of even a cheap monitor, so that is to be expected to some extent. Perhaps if it were printed on transparency and backlit?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9171790@N07/

[brianpowers27]

I now know that prints only have half the tonal range of even a cheap monitor
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9171790@N07/

The CMYK gamut represents almost every situation where printing is involved.


As soon as an active light source becomes available, the possibilities increase.

[shawn_a]

Only every month. I use this fun little device called the ColorMunki to get my monitor and printer matched up. It takes about an hour to do the whole job but I know once it's done that what I see on my screen is going to match the finished job at the print shop almost perfectly. I've not tried the online stuff because I've had such good luck with the 'munki.

shawn