Color Calibrating my Canon and labtop monitor

[cgennoe]

Hey there!

I just read the color management page on wikipedia to get an understanding of color calibrating different devices. I'd like to go ahead and color calibrate my Canon EOS 30D with my HP labtop.

A program is needed, yes? Is it Adobe CMM? Are these programs free to download?

If you can send along the info i'll need I really appreciate it. As well, feel free to send a link to the step by step instructions too.

Thanks for reading!

Colin:greenpbl:

 

[Katier]

You don't really calibrate the camera to the screen.

Your actually calibrating the screen to get it so the screen shows more or less what will be seen on a print. It's not 100% accurate due to a screen being transmitted light and print being reflective but it does help a lot in ensuring prints don't have any glaring errors before you print them. You might still find you have to adjust it after print but it would be much closer than if it wasn't calibrated.

Once the screen is calibrated it works with ANY camera.

Oh and to do it properly you need something like colourvision spyder. These use a sensor/camera to detect the colour being transmitted by the screen and then adjusting it.

 

[AUZambo]

Is this what a labtop is?

 

[JerryPH]

ROFL! What a great shot!

 

[roadkill]

LMFAO!

 

[Garbz]

Hahhaha Nice.

The camera is an input device. These are typically calibrated using colour charts against something else calibrated. If you have nothing calibrated then you can't calibrate something against it if you can understand what I mean.

Basically to calibrate a camera you use something like a gretag mcbeth colour chart, photograph it under known light conditions, compare it on a calibrated monitor to the chart and then work with that. Fortunately you can skip all this because cameras don't drift and are very well calibrated out of the box.

The output devices are the ones that need calibrating, and fortunately again printers don't drift much with time, and even if they do they are basically reset when you put fresh ink in, so they come out pretty much as accurate as you will get out of the box if you download the right colour profiles for them.

That only leaves the screen, which can drift wildly, and can even change colours depending on viewing angles for most of the cheaper screens. If colours are an issue it's the screen you should be worried about as the photographer.

Fortunately calibrating a screen is as easy as buying a calibration unit which measures the colour of the screen and adjusts it till it's right. Unfortunately these units start at $100 for the crap ones.

 

[Stilltime]

Is this what a labtop is?

Actually, that would be a goldentop.

 

[chrisburke]

Is this what a labtop is?

i was thinking of posting the same thing

1.
labtop 278 up, 25 down
A word that inexperienced college freshmen (most often girls) call their new laptops.
College Freshman: I just got my new labtop, it's awesome!
Experienced Geek: Laptop.
College Freshman: Yeah, that's what I said! Labtop!

 

[AlexColeman]

You need to calibrate your monitor to prints, regardless of K-9s.