monitor calibration

[JohnMF]

what colour temprature is best for your monitor?

Ive had mine on 6500 for ages, but some photos i recently had developed dont match my screen and i was a bit disapointed. They looked sepia on my monitor but when i got them back from the lab they looked grey, they sepia was barely noticable

anyone know how to solve this?

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[Rob]

There's several issues to look at - the colour profile you're working in, the monitor itself, the printer calibration. It sounds like they don't match, but that's not necessarily due to your monitor colour temperature - it could equally be the printer.

Rob

[markc]

You can have them print a color chart and then calibrate your monitor to the output they give you. But if their printer isn't well set up, any images you work on for the web will look like crap on other people's monitors. Since you don't have control over the printer profile, I would get the monitor as caibrated as you can stand-alone, then have a color chart printed by several labs several times (different days). Find the one that is most consistant and closest to what you see on your monitor and then fine-tune your monitor to that printer. This will allow you to get an accurate preview on you monitor while still being "close enough" for web work. There are variations in everyone's monitor set-ups anyway. You just don't want to be way off in left field.

[JohnMF]

i used photobox.com to get them printed. they're meant to be quite good but im having my doubts. Most of the photos just seem murky, and b&w photos seem to have a slight blueish tint to them. I will have to try a few different places.

Is it possible to have your monitor professionally calibrated, rather than buying expensive kit?

[Rob]

i used photobox.com to get them printed. they're meant to be quite good but im having my doubts. Most of the photos just seem murky, and b&w photos seem to have a slight blueish tint to them. I will have to try a few different places.

Is it possible to have your monitor professionally calibrated, rather than buying expensive kit?

Not really AFAIK. There's the USB spyder thing, and there's adobe gamma, both are worth investigating. Try looking for some test charts on the internet and adjusting for it to look right - I use a combination of that and Gamma.

Rob

[JohnMF]

cheers rob. I've just had a go at using adobe gamma and i think it's made an improvement

[Mohain]

Is Adobe gamma any good for LCD monitors? I've got 3 monitors attached to 2 PCs and they all display differently

[Rob]

Display the same picture at the same resolution on all the monitors, press the auto-configure button on the monitor if it has one, othewise adjust manually, then re-calibrate. Sounds like the brightness/contrast vary between them and this can override gamma sometimes.

Rob