Editing pictures, should I trust my laptop monitor?

[Ffirecracker]

Hi, I'm very green at editing photos to send for printing. I have a bunch of wedding pics I want to edit, and on the computer they look a bit washed out, so I have been adding clarity, sunlight, played with contrast levels etc, to make them more appealing.

However I had heard somewhere that you have to be careful when editing as all computer monitors can show different results. So I plugged my laptop into my HDTV using a HDMI cable, and the photos look totally different on my TV, so now I don't know what to do.

Should I trust one more than the other? If so, which one, and how close the the final product that image would be? Cuz I edited them to look good on my laptop, but they didn't look good on my TV. I don't want to send them for printing thinking my editing made them look great when in fact they look worse.

Any help appreciated.

Rachel

 

[BuZzZeRkEr]

Nope! Don't trust it.....most professionals use something like this
Datacolor Spyder3Express (S3E100)

I would also run a test print from the lab your going to have them printed at because finding a good lab is like finding a monitor you have calibrated.

 

[Provo]

Monitors have ICC profiles (color calibration International Color Consortium) which usually you can get them from the manufacturer sometimes they are burried within the site.

A good resource for learning about ICC profiles can be found here
INTERNATIONAL COLOR CONSORTIUM
If you cannot find your monitors ICC profile another method is to purchase a hardware/software color calibration tool Spyder or Eye-one


Example I have an Acer monitor
So I will go to Acers website and look for my monitor per say

Then I will download the driver because in this case the ICC profile comes in the zip file with the driver

Then using Winzip or Winrar or your even the windows self extractor
you will see the icc profiles

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[IgsEMT]

Officially, Don't trust it.
Many labs will do color correction for you, MPIX, ALkit, Classic Color, just to name a few.
However, as was mentioned you can play around with color profiles. You might get close to what you'll see in print but be very careful when going from program to program to monitor to camera to printer - if either one is in different ICC profile, your image will be messed up.

 

[Big Mike]

To calibrate your monitor properly, you really need a calibration device...and you need to use it on a regular basis.

Loading the manufacturer's profile is better than nothing, but it's not ideal.

You can calibrate a laptop monitor...but it's still unlikely to be as good as using a stationary monitor where you have a consistent viewing angle.

Check this out Spyder3Express - Datacolor - Global Leader in Color Management Solutions

 

[Brian L]

If you can't afford a calibration device right now calibrate by eye. You can get pretty close with just the eye. If you have windows 7 there have a great calibration to get your monitor close.

 

[Ffirecracker]

Thanks everybody, I guess I won't do any editing.. color- or brightness-wise anyway.