Can Someone Confirm My Color Settings?

[TerribleWone]

Hey guys I have been trying to avoid buying a spyder3 as I want to have the money to pick up a new lens. For the most part I have not had many issues with printing since I have done a pretty decent job doing my own color profiling on my editing machine. I realize that my images will look different on many others LCDs but I would like to double check the issue I am having on my laptop is specific to its screen and not the photo. I specifically talking about what I would describe to be the color temperature of the screen. I noticed that in some of my photos the color cast has a slight blue to it on my laptop (not profiled) when on my PC the photos look spot on white balance wise.

I have arranged these images in order of what I feel is best to worst color cast. The top one looks perfect on both the PC and the Laptop, while the lower two look great on the PC but appear to be a bit more blue on the LP.

Just out of quick interest, any opinions on contrast? When reprofiling my PC I upped the contrast on the screen to prevent me from pushing my pictures with hard contrast. I did this since when they were printed they came out with more contrast than my screen. I then made several prints and continued to lower the contrast until it matched my prints. At this point I have my PC looking pretty close to what i seen on the OLD screens on a Ipad or Itouch.

Anyways The top shot looks good on my PC and the lower one looks way too overdone as it was edited on the lap top.

Anyways any comments as to what looks proper would be excellent. I am just trying to insure my web images look proper before I go about editing anymore.

 

[Josh66]

Anyways The top shot looks good on my PC and the lower one looks way too overdone as it was edited on the lap top.

I concur. All three of the upper ones looked good to me as well.

Really, the only one that didn't look good was the very last one.

 

[TerribleWone]

Thank-you so very much! For me color profiling is like a hot girl buying jeans always unsure if her but looks just right in them. I am in the process of editing some photos for a blog and was terrified of color management issues. While I know I can trust my work for prints, web proofing is something completely new to me!

The funny part for me is that all the photos I edited pre calibration look way over done in contrast and color as they were edited on a poor screen. I artificially boosted the photos to make up for the lack of screen performance it seems.

 

[Garbz]

White balance is a strange beast too which on all accounts shouldn't make a difference to your final result if your environment is right. Your eyes naturally adjust colour balance to the light sources in the environment. This is why when you take off sunnies with a blue tinge the world looks yellow for a few minutes. This is your eyes adjusting to whitebalance.

Calibrating the white balance between screens becomes important if you have no control over room lighting or if you have two screens side by side. If you have control over your room lighting then your screen should be set to "native" white balance, and your lights dimmed to 70lx or below (pretty damn dark). The screen becomes the dominating light source in the room and your eyes will adjust to it.

If you have sunlight or windows facing outside sky try and calibrate your screen to around 5500k or 6500k (D55 or D65 is the close approximation on some programs).

If you have fluros in the room then unscrew them, take them to whoever bought them and smack them over the head with it.


If you ever get stuck or aren't sure pick an image you KNOW will have a neutral grey in it. Then use the dropper tool to find out what the colour really is. Or the flip way is use the dropper tool to select the grey point for a white balance adjustment. Don't freak out because a sudden change will look un-natural. If you're staring at a bluish picture, it suddenly switching to neutral grey will instantly look too orange for a moment.

Trust the numbers, and adjust your screen / the environment to match.

 

[TerribleWone]

Can anyone else chime in?

 

[Wesche]

Im not a pro at this, but i dont like the last one, and the first one seems kinda flat. Love second and third one

 

[TerribleWone]

Well that makes me feel a lot better. I know the last one looks odd, it was pushed to hard in both contrast and color since it was done on the lap top. I am surprised you find the first one flat as i find it has more color and contrast than 2 and 3. Thanks for the props on 2&3 though! They are the style of photo I love taking, 1/40th pans. Not sure at this point to pick up the spyder2 for my screen...