Monitors & Calibration

[judderman]

Hi All,

A very common problem we have in work is an image I create on my machine, when opened on a colleagues machine, will look over-saturated and too dark. When viewed on my machine however, it's perfect! It's driving me mad to see my work look like crap on another machine.

I have a Dell 2408 FPW. The other colleagues have 21 and 22in dell monitors, don't remember the exact model numbers.

Photoshop is set to use sRGB IEC61966. The monitor colour profile that I downloaded from Dell's website seemed to make no difference, so I just loaded in sRGB to it too.

My question is what should we be using in photoshop and for the colour profile for the actual monitor? Surely if I'm working with sRGB profiles loaded, the image should look reasonably similar on another dell monitor with a sRGB profile loaded? It doesn't - it looks quite different, very oversaturated, and too contrasty.

Is my monitor poor or are their monitors the weak link? I'd have thought with the biggest, most expensive monitor in the office mine wouldn't be the weak link! Frustrating :/

Cheers,

Judderman

[MegaPixel]

Welcome to one of the many frustrations that digital artists tend to face. As you have discovered, just about every monitor displays imagery a little differently. The only thing you can really control is how accurately your workstation is color calibrated. As a digital content creator, this is very important. I wouldn't even bother using colorspace presets, as you are still just guessing as to how your screen should look. Invest in some calibration equipment, such as the "SpyderPro", "HueyPro", etc... which will simplify the process of creating a custom and accurate color space specifically for your monitor. Then you can feel good about the content you create.

If Person A's monitor shows Person B's graphics a little differently, chances are, Person A is already used to seeing graphics displayed that way on a day to day basis. If the subject ever comes up and the Client asks why the color looks such a way, you can drop the whole "Well we use color calibrated systems to generate our content" bomb on them and hope that they get so confused that the question just goes away.... "Laughs"... Yes I know that's harsh, but seriously they will either have to calibrate their own systems or deal with it.

Now giving a client a badly colored Print (non-digital) is another story and the client will have every right to drill you on that one. Calibrating your system will also help your prints look much closer to what you see on your screen. Printers can be finicky in their own right and sometimes a specific method of image modification must be applied in order to make the print look just right, but as I mentioned earlier, this is one of the many frustrations we digital content creators have to deal with.

Pixel

[judderman]

Thanks for the reply Megapixel. I think the hardware calibration might be a good idea for us. Though would it be necessary to have an individual hardware unit for each monitor being used? Can't you just get one, calibrate them and move on to the next?

How do you feel about using those charts that you see on some websites that are used for calibrating? Worth a shot?

[rivoli]

Though would it be necessary to have an individual hardware unit for each monitor being used?

nope, you calibrate each monitor with the same device.

How do you feel about using those charts that you see on some websites that are used for calibrating? Worth a shot?

not really, if you really want to get consistent results through different monitors, hardware calibration is the way to go.

[grasshopper]

Do you know which system is best for callibrating dual monitors?

I have 2 dells both the same model but bought at different times. Both show differnt colours and as far as I am aware XP won't let me apply a different profile to each.

Would the software that comes with "SpyderPro" or "HueyPro", allow me to do this?

[tricky]

Do you know which system is best for callibrating dual monitors?

I have 2 dells both the same model but bought at different times. Both show differnt colours and as far as I am aware XP won't let me apply a different profile to each.

Would the software that comes with "SpyderPro" or "HueyPro", allow me to do this?

Mmm. We have dual monitor setups and as I recall, we had major problems trying to get one the same as the other. I think there may be some Microsoft download that allows you to have two profiles on one system, but by default, I think Windows only allows you to have one.

[dlparisi]

You can also try Wiziwyg which I used to use (I believe originally recommended by Chris Nichols). The company that provided it for free, Praxisoft, seems to have gone belly up but you can get it at http://en.kioskea.net/telecharger/te...nt-436-wiziwyg and probaly some other places on the net. It does a decent job of matching between multiple monitors, at least good enough to avoid surprises like your talking about. I wouldn't call it "calibrated" but at least everyone's looking at roughly the same colors. Try it and go for the hardware if you think you still need it (I went for the Pantone/Gretag-Macbeth Eye-One after a couple of years using Wiziwyg).

[grasshopper]

tricky, I think your right and If I remember thats why I gave up and settled for doing all colour and photoshop work on the same monitor.

Dlparisi, Thanks for the link I'll give it a go.

[glyph]

I used a Huey Pro to calibrate dual monitors with separate profiles - worked fine - though I could still see a small difference on neutral pale greys.
Since then I only bother with calibrating the main monitor.

[zoranm]

I've got a Spyder for monitor calibration and it works well. Whan I got it first I used Adobe Gamma to calibrate my monitor and than repeated with Spyder and I could see noticable improvement. You can calibrate in about 20 minutes. It creates only one profile for the primary monitor. I'm not sure though if it'd be able to create separate profiles if you have two video cards. Anyone?
In my case second monior is just that: place to dump all my windows, max or photoshop panels.

glyph: How do you choose which profile goes to which monitor?

Zoran

[pg1]

anyone got experience with these?
http://www.colormunki.com/
we purchased one the other day and I aint got a chance to use it yet
Just moved to a new workstation (my old one got fried when the air conditioning leaked a big puddle of water into it) and will calibrate with colourmunki next week
seems promising

[glyph]

I cant remember how you choose the profile!
I think there's an option when it knows there's two monitors attached and it already has one profile to: "add profile for the monitor I'm about to check"
but it was all done within the actual colour scanning process

[andrewjohn81]

for dual monitors:

the microsoft color tool is actually not bad. Only....it doesn't work for XP 64bit. That allows you to have 2 different profiles running at the same time on 2 different monitors.

My process here is to calibrate And apply the main monitor calibration. Then I move to the second monitor. i run the whole thing, but I don't actually apply the calibration. This gets it pretty close, but doesn't change the curves allowing to show the maximum colors at their closest levels. So don't expect the colors to be perfect. It should match the main monitor pretty closely though.
The biggest thing is to make sure it's the same model, And make sure that you set them to the same brightness level. (i'd suggest NOT the maximum your monitor can output, but a little below it.)

[ior=0]

@PG1
How did you get on with the ColourMunki?
Have you used it for collecting spot colour from say pantone chart or other physical (real-world) colour sources?
Is it a fire and forget solution (e.g. calibrate your monitor, scan a reference colour chart, bang the RGB into MAX and hey presto your CG wall is just the right shade of green the customer selected?)
I believe it have an integrated plug-in for Max2011 now, have you used that too?

Thanks!

[plastic_]

I used Spyder3 for a few years.
While it works great, it is also very annoying to keep track of all stuff, like converting between color spaces, assigning icc profiles to 3dsmax renders, etc.
I gave up on wide gamut and use sRGB now for everything. I got a Dell U2711 monitor with Adobe RGB color space, it can also be forced to the limited sRGB color space and that's what I did.
Everything else is just too annoying, for a little bit of color brilliance, that no one else will ever notice.