Screen calibration night of hell
So my old monitor was a Compaq TFT8030 and I used it for all my photo editing. It had a 300:1 contrast ration and 250cd/m2 brightness. That translates to not a very good monitor for viewing or editing pictures. I did have it calibrated though so I still found that prints were reasonable close to the viewed image.
However, I wanted a better display that more accurately displayed the colour range of my images and after having take a hunt round I settled on the Samsung SyncMaster 244T. Top of the range stuff and a pressie from Lin for having bust a gut on the software.
It arrived yesterday, and so started an evening of hell trying to calibrate it.
I plugged it in, booted the PC and connected the calibration tool. Went through all the calibration process and then opened up a picture on the Web. Very nice. I opened one of my photos in Photoshop. AAARRRRGGGGGG. The colour was all wrong. The only way it would look right was to enable proofing or discard the profiles. Also, IE looked a little odd.
Obviously the profile was out, which can happen with a new monitor. So I profiled it again. Same results.
I then did this dance about 5 times without ever getting nearer a solution. So I went to bed, and had bad dreams about having bought a pile of cr*p.
This morning I went to the Samsung website and looked up the monitor information. It has a feature called MagicColor which is supposed to help make the colour look very good. I read a little further and found that the MagicColor facility makes all of the colours more vibrant and works dynamically depending on what the image is displaying, thus making woodland scenes more green and skin more natural. So here we have the culprit, a monitor that thinks it’s so smart it dynamically changes the colour profile being used depending on the image. Wonderful.
Solution, turn the damn MagiColor off and recalibrate. And that folks was it. I now have a fully calibrated spot on monitor and the images I see on screen match perfect the images I print. Colour Workflow Profile Heaven!!
To go with this post is a colour image of Lynx which of course you won’t get the true benefit of unless you too have a calibrated monitor.
However, I wanted a better display that more accurately displayed the colour range of my images and after having take a hunt round I settled on the Samsung SyncMaster 244T. Top of the range stuff and a pressie from Lin for having bust a gut on the software.
It arrived yesterday, and so started an evening of hell trying to calibrate it.
I plugged it in, booted the PC and connected the calibration tool. Went through all the calibration process and then opened up a picture on the Web. Very nice. I opened one of my photos in Photoshop. AAARRRRGGGGGG. The colour was all wrong. The only way it would look right was to enable proofing or discard the profiles. Also, IE looked a little odd.
Obviously the profile was out, which can happen with a new monitor. So I profiled it again. Same results.
I then did this dance about 5 times without ever getting nearer a solution. So I went to bed, and had bad dreams about having bought a pile of cr*p.
This morning I went to the Samsung website and looked up the monitor information. It has a feature called MagicColor which is supposed to help make the colour look very good. I read a little further and found that the MagicColor facility makes all of the colours more vibrant and works dynamically depending on what the image is displaying, thus making woodland scenes more green and skin more natural. So here we have the culprit, a monitor that thinks it’s so smart it dynamically changes the colour profile being used depending on the image. Wonderful.
Solution, turn the damn MagiColor off and recalibrate. And that folks was it. I now have a fully calibrated spot on monitor and the images I see on screen match perfect the images I print. Colour Workflow Profile Heaven!!
To go with this post is a colour image of Lynx which of course you won’t get the true benefit of unless you too have a calibrated monitor.
posted by Richard at 5:40 PM
1 Comments:
the picture @ the ebd was worth reading the whole thing
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