Monitor Settings For Accurate Image Editing/Printing

[decado]

I've been having the problem of pictures that look very bright and colorful on my monitor looking dark and not so colorful on my Pixma MP620 printed 8x10's. It's somewhat difficult to guess how bright I need to make the picture so that it looks good on the paper. Is there some kind of screen setting program or website with test images and tutorial on how to get the most neutral picture on your monitor for accurate image editing and printing?

Edit: I can print great looking 8x10's by the way, I just have to ballpark where I think the image settings will print out fine, but I don't want to waste that ink and paper.

 

[mtfd635]

There are several photo websites with tutorials, apps you can download free, and gadgets you can buy for 150$ and up (up up up)
your printer should have come with a program or details on loading the color profile, and fairly recent (8yrs?) monitors should have a setting to use another devices profile.
It would take me forever to walk u thru on here. Check printer instructions for Color Profile, or google printer profile photo print or similar
photonet and several other sites have what u need.
Common problem btw
monitors often need 'calibration' often - weekly, monthly, but that's more CRT than LCD.
a chore, but part of the game!

 

[aerialphoto]

What mtfd635 said. Google "monitor calibration". There are methods of "eyeballing" it, but you can't beat investing in a calibration tool - even a <$100 is better than nothing. For example the Huey Pantone costs just a little more than the typical full change of ink on a lot of printers.

Without profiling your paper and printer you're only covering half the problem but you'll be a ton closer than you are now.

 

[Garbz]

Without profiling your printer you're only covering 95% of the problem is more likely. Inkjet ink is a constant. Assuming you use only the manufacturer recommend inks and the manufacturer recommended paper then the inkjet's colour profile won't drift.

Profiling a printer is expensive, but often this is only needed if you're using after market inks. Otherwise the profiles that come with the printer driver will be very damn close to right.

Unfortunately there's no easy way to set your monitor without some kind of calibration tool and software. There are visual tools as mentioned however these will only show if you have a a neutral colour, and correct gamma at one point and will not allow you to make sure that the screen follows the correct gamma tone curve, or that the colours are consistent along this curve.

The very least you can do is work though Contrast - Lagom LCD test this page starting with your brightness and contrast settings and then consider investing in a colour calibration utility like they aforementioned Huey, the Spyder 3 Pro, or an X-Rite i1 Display 2 (which is what I use).

 

[decado]

I am printing with Canon Easy Photo EX using sRGB ICC profile, and I'm profiling my paper (canon pro platinum). My only problem really is with my Nvidia settings and my monitor settings.

 

[Garbz]

Quick correction there, you're sending sRGB ICC profile data to the printer driver. The actual driver will then select a colour profile based on your printer and the settings you selected. It's just fine to do it this way, but you're not actually printing using the sRGB profile, since it's technically impossible to reproduce that profile using cyan magenta and yellow

It is your monitor settings and nvidia settings that ultimately will be overridden by a hardware calibration tool. These tools write a colour profile which details the primaries chromaticity and white balance of your screen (less important for many screens), and will also write a video card output Look-Up Table, so that when a colour is expected on the screen the video card driver sends a different output to correct for any monitor imperfections.

 

[DennyCrane]

Grab a DVD that's THX (Star Wars movies for example), pop it in your computer and in the menu, click on the THX symbol, select video and you'll go to a monitor calibration program. It's not perfect, but it'll get you very close. Lucas included this so what you see is exactly what he filmed.

 

[Garbz]

That is a nasty idea. Motion video standards do in no way compare to computer graphics. The DVD before it's displayed goes through all sorts of algorithms on the computer to make it look good. Anyone who has had to battle with windows media player outputting the 16-235bits for one movie and 0-255bits for another can attest to that. Ever wondered why PowerDVD's output looks completely different to WinDVD's?

Monitor calibration utilities displayed in web browsers as pictures are not perfect, but the DVD option is likely to do far more harm than good.