What's going to happen to my images when I calibrate my monitor?

[unpopular]

I don't have a calibration tool yet, and I am unsure I will since I plan to make gum prints for most of them - but if I did, won't my images all look different? Is there a way to match what I see now using the old monitor's profile?

 

[tirediron]

...Is there a way to match what I see now using the old monitor's profile?

I'm not sure I understand; why would you want to do that? The idea of calibrating your monitor is to ensure that the colours it displays are correct, that is your whites are white, reds are red, etc. In my experience, most LCD monitors straight out of the box tend to be rather on the cold side.

 

[unpopular]

yes, but if the old images looked right on the first profile, won't they look wrong on the new profile having my monitor since been calibrated to a standard; and I've edited them on the pre-existing faulty profile?

 

[Rephargotohp]

Depends how off you monitor is, But they will look different. If you could save your current profile you may be able to softproof with it

 

[unpopular]

If I could soft proof, then couldn't I assign the previous profile without conversion, and then convert it back to the working profile? Does that make sense?

 

[Josh66]

Maybe. It depends on how far off the profile you're using now is. It might not be that bad. I've had some monitors that were pretty close on the factory settings, and others that were painful to look at, they were so bad.

Anyway, just save the profile you're using now and you should be able to switch back to it any time you want. If only just to do a quick before & after to see how far off the stuff you already edited is.

(LOL - too slow. This was in response to post #3.)

 

[unpopular]

Yeah. I've been eyeballing it using teh squinty-eyed-stripy-image method. I think it's pretty close. I am debating if I want/need a calibrator. They used to be so horridly expensive, I never really thought about them.

 

[SCraig]

Take a look around Here or Here. There might be some info you can use.

 

[table1349]

It comes down to this. Do you want to see the true images as captured on a calibrated monitor, or do you want to see the images as you perceive them to be on the un-calibrated one. If you have processed your images on an uncalibrated monitor then they will in all likely hood be further from the true image that was captured. Hopefully if you processed the images you still have unprocessed original files to work from.

 

[unpopular]

Yeah, I still do have the originals.

But it really seems to me that I should be able to get them to look almost exactly as they did before without a lot of backwards editing. This is precisely what printer color management is doing. You don't calibrate the output device to the monitor, you calibrate the file to the output device via the working profile as it appears on the profile which is calibrated to a known standard. I have all the pieces to the puzzle, it's just a matter of putting it together.

 

[table1349]

Which means you are excepting someone elses know standard. I calibrate my own monitor and create my own profiles for my printers for the paper that I will be printing on. That is where the ColorMunki comes in. If you want accuracy you use a spectrophotometer and have complete control of all aspects. If not use a colorimeter. They are cheaper.

 

[unpopular]

Of course I'd make my own custom profiles through and through, that's all beside the point. I am not sure what that has to do with anything.

What I want is to use the previous profile to compensate the change of the current, properly calibrated profile.

 

[unpopular]

Just to update, I got the answer I need:

Adobe Forums: Rendering previous images in a new CMS workflow

 

[matthewo]

is your monitor connected using DVI or VGA?

still the best thing to do is get your monitor as perfect as you can now, and just start fresh with new photos(and edit existing photos as good as you can to your newly configured monitor). you always want to have as close to perfect display when editing. you cannot worry about people who have worse then standard view equipment. you need to worry about a high end studio or photo printing place that more then likely has very close to perfect equipment.

also if you can get access or know a profession printer/producer then get them to check out one of your better images with lots of colors to see if your monitor is setup correctly.

 

[unpopular]

I am on a macboo pro using the built in monitor. I am pretty sure it's DVI.

And yes, I am calibrating my monitor using the built-in eyeball calibration tools that comes with OS X. And honestly, I'm not all that worried about color management at all, since I plan to print using gum dichromate.