Editing on a calibrated monitor

[KmH]

And here is the knuckleball:
Not all electronic displays are the same display technology.

Most of us that edit photographs using a color managed workflow use an IPS-C type display that has very broad color accurate viewing angles.
Most of average computer/laptop user has a TN type display that has severely limited accurate color viewing angles.
If the ambient light falling on a calibrated display has changed since it's last calibration, it's no longer a calibrated display.

 

[Watchful]

You calibrate a monitor to accurately reflect the colors of an image as it will be when printed to eliminate any surprises.

 

[table1349]

No, you calibrate a monitor to accurately reflect the true colors recorded in the image. You calibrate a printer to accurately reproduce in print the true colors recorded in the image.

 

[Ysarex]

The photo is tagged sRGB as it should be. What we're seeing is a closer match to the top of the two photos you posted earlier. The discrepancy in the bottom photo still looks to me more substantial than I'd expect from just display calibration.

Joe

 

[KmH]

You calibrate a monitor to accurately reflect the colors of an image as it will be when printed to eliminate any surprises.

Calibrating a display is only half the process of making sure a print will look anything like what you see on your display.
The second half of the process is to soft proof in your editing application using the ICC profile of the machine that will be making the print.

 

[Watchful]

You calibrate a monitor to accurately reflect the colors of an image as it will be when printed to eliminate any surprises.

Calibrating a display is only half the process of making sure a print will look anything like what you see on your display.
The second half of the process is to soft proof in your editing application using the ICC profile of the machine that will be making the print.

Naturally. The question was about calibrating a monitor, not calibrating a press.
The press should be calibrated in the color space the original file is saved in to reproduce the intended colors.
Xrite has good software for that step.
Its a matter of print, scan, analyze, and calibrate.

 

[Ysarex]

You calibrate a monitor to accurately reflect the colors of an image as it will be when printed to eliminate any surprises.

Calibrating a display is only half the process of making sure a print will look anything like what you see on your display.
The second half of the process is to soft proof in your editing application using the ICC profile of the machine that will be making the print.

Naturally. The question was about calibrating a monitor, not calibrating a press.
The press should be calibrated in the color space the original file is saved in to reproduce the intended colors.
Xrite has good software for that step.
Its a matter of print, scan, analyze, and calibrate.

Presses are not calibrated to or in a device independent color space or any color space. A press and paper combination are profiled and a device dependent profile is created. Monitors are both calibrated and profiled.

Joe

 

[GHK]

What good does a color calibrated monitor do if no one else has one?

You calibrate a monitor for yourself so that you will see the colours in the digital file accurately displayed on the monitor.
If someone else wants to view your files on their monitor and it isn't properly calibrated, they won't see the colour from the image correctly, and that's their fault. Look after your own monitor properly for your own reasons (expansion below may be almost hidden).

There is more to monitor management than just calibration however.
No matter how well a monitor is calibrated it will still not be able to display as wide a range of tones (forget about colour here) as can be recorded in a digital image file, and it is up to you to compensate for this. A digital image can represent up to 256 tones, ranging from 0 up to 255 (which can be read off in the Info Palette, which I strongly recommend you to have open at all times, and to refer to it continually). Your monitor CANNOT display all of these tones. Monitors differ slightly, but the range is usually from about 20 to 250. You won't go far wrong if you just adopt these figures, although it is not at all difficult to determine the precise characteristics of your own monitor. Taking the given figures, it means that, at the darker end of the range all tones from 0 to 19 in the image file will appear the same tone, basically BLACK on the monitor. Similarly, all image file tones from 251 to 255 will be undistinguishable from WHITE. This is clearly undesirable and the aim should be to adjust the tones in the image file so that the very darkest are re-rendered to value 20, and the very lightest (excluding specular reflections) to value 250. This can be done using a RAW file, or in Photoshop, by placing colour pickers at both the darkest and lightest points of the image and then using Curves to reset the values of those points to 20 and 250 respectively. The procedure will not only achieve the stated aim of avoiding large areas of full black and full white, but will also ensure that the full range of available monitor tones will be covered.
I will not go any further into the precise details and further ramifications of the above procedure, but I would be willing to do so if anyone is genuinely interested.
GHK

 

[table1349]

If you are interested a good tutorial on the entire subject: Making fine prints in your digital darkroom: Getting started