Monitor Calibration

[Patriot]

Maybe your eyes aren't use to the new colors yet. Also what lapy do you have? Most laptop monitors won't show the full range of colors. Have a 10bit monitor and a graphic card that output in 10bit would greatly help in the colors your see on your monitor.

 

[Alexr25]

Posting screen captures is not going to tell us anything about your monitor calibration. Calibration changes the RGB values that come out of your graphics card and sent to the monitor, screen captures come from the data that is fed into the graphics card before any calibration is applied.

 

[mmaria]

Everything is fine L. I have Colormunki Smile. Some laptops have very bright monitors with blue-ish tint to them. You just didn't use to calibrated monitor.
Typing on the phone and don't have time. Would say more.

 

[limr]

Maybe your eyes aren't use to the new colors yet. Also what lapy do you have? Most laptop monitors won't show the full range of colors. Have a 10bit monitor and a graphic card that output in 10bit would greatly help in the colors your see on your monitor.

I've got a Gateway NV76R. The only thing I can tell you about the graphics card is that it is an Intel HD Graphics 4000.

Posting screen captures is not going to tell us anything about your monitor calibration. Calibration changes the RGB values that come out of your graphics card and sent to the monitor, screen captures come from the data that is fed into the graphics card before any calibration is applied.

I suspected that. As I said, I didn't know if they would be useful but I threw them out there as a possible data point just to be able to provide any information I could.

This is one of the reasons I posted those other pictures and why I'm posting the ones below - to show edits I made before calibration and after to see how they look to other people.

This one was before calibration. I actually didn't edit the colors at all. And after the calibration, I opened the file and it felt a bit warm so I just adjusted the white balance and brought down the blue a hair.

1) Before 2) After
1) 2)

I also have a print of this image (obviously from before calibration). The print seems to be a tiny bit darker but faithful to the colors on the screen of the "before" image.

Any preference/comments on the colors of the two images?

It seems to be a small difference and it's hard to tell if it was the monitor or if I am just looking at it with different eyes. And really, after this "test" I think I'm just going to let it alone for a little bit because staring at the screen and trying to determine color shifts in images (not on the screen itself) is starting to do my head in.

 

[snowbear]

A quick glance at the closest boat and it looks like the after shot (right) is a bit cooler than the before shot. As far as the print being darker than the screen, that seems to be normal. When I took the digital photo class, one of the first things we did was make a test print, then adjust the screen brightness to match the paper. Most of us found 1/2 brightness was about right in this particular room.

 

[limr]

Does either one look better to your eyes? Or just slightly different?

I'm starting to suspect that despite the large difference in tone on the monitor, the color output in the applications that use color management aren't really very different. Based on prints of color images I've made, the change is mostly in brightness, not color.

On second thought, forget the question. I think the differences are small enough that it comes more down to preference than "wrong" vs "right" color. I see that the original version is warmer, but even on this ecru monitor, when I open it up in Corel or a photo viewer, it seems just fine. Not too warm. The second version is cooler but also looks fine - just different.

I think I'm trying to fix a problem that might not even exist.

In the meantime, if the calibration settings stay, perhaps I can live with this warmer-toned monitor because it is a bit easier on the eyes than the blue toned default screen. But if it keeps reverting, then so be it. In the next few months, I may be getting an external monitor and keyboard and when/if that day comes, perhaps the calibration tool will come in handy.

 

[snowbear]

I doubt that I'd notice the coolness if they weren't posted side-by-side. Part of it may be that the foreground is in shadow so it's going to look cooler, anyway.

 

[limr]

Thanks everyone for the feedback and the help! It is greatly appreciated.

 

[tirediron]

Posting screen captures is not going to tell us anything about your monitor calibration. Calibration changes the RGB values that come out of your graphics card and sent to the monitor, screen captures come from the data that is fed into the graphics card before any calibration is applied.

Okay, fair enough; I was not aware of that, but if so, then why, on a pixel-by-pixel comparison are values significantly different?

 

[The_Traveler]

This seems to be for Photoshop. I'll see about finding something similar for Corel..

?
these are jpegs and usable in any operating system or software

 

[limr]

This seems to be for Photoshop. I'll see about finding something similar for Corel..

?
these are jpegs and usable in any operating system or software

"I've found several free professional digital reference images and "how to" articles on the Web, but believe this famous PhotoDisc® Getty Images target with young girl, three baby faces and neutral grey ramp, are the best reference image test files available to visually evaluate and troubleshoot digital color on the monitor, Internet and printed media under Adobe® CS6 color Mac® OSX and Windows® XP Vista Windows 7 8 operating systems.

This expert Photoshop layout is extremely useful for quickly evaluating monitor profiles in Adobe® Photoshop®, including verifying printing profiles, color management settings in apps, Web browsers and desktop publishing work flows — the PhotoDisc Image (PDI) has easily become my creative studio's standard reference image."

Then I am misunderstanding, which is possible since that page was quite technical and confusing to me. Throughout the entire page, there were numerous references to instructions for Photoshop alone. Finally, at the end, was this:

"If you do not have Adobe Photoshop to test:

Simply 1) download the .zip, 2) extract the WhackedRGB.jpg file, and 3) drag its icon into an open Web browser window — and observe closely:

• fully color managed Web browsers (Source>MonitorRGB) will display Tagged WhackedRGB properly and "match" Photoshop (the Source RGB 'numbers', the colors, are being Converted to the monitor profile for a theoretical true-color display),
• unmanaged Web browsers will display the WhackedRGB image with a bizarre blue color cast (the Source RGB 'numbers' are being sent straight through to the monitor with no color adjustment),
• half color managed Web browsers (Source> sRGB) will look pretty good on an sRGB-compliant monitor, but will be slightly different than Photoshop — wide-gamut monitors will more than likely display PDI images with a strong red saturation.

Also apply the same theories in your other applications like Apple's Preview.app, Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Microsoft Word, and Adobe apps like InDesign, Illustrator, Premier, Bridge, and Lightroom. Windows-based apps, too."

This part is also a little confusing to me, since it still references Photoshop, and the instructions aren't exactly clear to someone who has never done this before.

 

[The_Traveler]

If you do not have photoshop, but you do have Corel (Paint Shop Pro?), then extract the jpeg from the zip file and open it in whatever software you have which is color managed. (generally not web browsers)