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

[Garbz]

In reality unless you had a wide gamut display and you completely ignored colour management very little will change. Not much that you can detect simply by looking through your photos anyway. Compare them side by side (don't know how you would achieve this) and you may see quite a remarkable difference but without a reference of sorts to start with your eyes are none the wiser.

 

[Josh66]

Compare them side by side (don't know how you would achieve this) and you may see quite a remarkable difference but without a reference of sorts to start with your eyes are none the wiser.

I can't think of a way to do that either. The closest I can come up with is to switch the profile back and forth from the old one to the new one.

OH - actually, I just did think of a way to display two color profiles at the same time.

In GIMP you can specify which color profile you want it to use. Open the picture in your standard picture viewing program and it will use the system default color profile (which should be the new, calibrated one). Then, open the same picture in GIMP, and tell it to use the old profile. I'm sure Photoshop can do that as well...

 

[unpopular]

In reality unless you had a wide gamut display and you completely ignored colour management very little will change. Not much that you can detect simply by looking through your photos anyway. Compare them side by side (don't know how you would achieve this) and you may see quite a remarkable difference but without a reference of sorts to start with your eyes are none the wiser.

Well. I could use my old profile in one account, and the new profile in another account at the system level, or I could soft proof using the old display profile.

In fact, I have accidentally edited images on my wife's uncalibrated account on this computer using this display only to find the image was very badly blue-cast in order to compensate for the more incorrect display profile she was using (on a mac, all displays are profiled).

So yes, there may be a significant difference, even on a not-so-wide gamut display.

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Just so everyone knows, I do feel I have a pretty good handle on color management in general, but conversion from different device spaces gets complicated.

 

[Garbz]

Open the picture in your standard picture viewing program and it will use the system default color profile (which should be the new, calibrated one). Then, open the same picture in GIMP, and tell it to use the old profile.

Well. I could use my old profile in one account, and the new profile in another account at the system level, or I could soft proof using the old display profile.

This only compares the generated colour profile and would not show differences from your calibrator correcting for colour drift, white balance, or incorrect tonal curve. These settings are applied at the video card level, or in a hardware lookup table in the monitor if it has one.

In fact, I have accidentally edited images on my wife's uncalibrated account on this computer using this display only to find the image was very badly blue-cast in order to compensate for the more incorrect display profile she was using (on a mac, all displays are profiled).

There's many things changed by calibration but this sounds like one of white balance which isn't necessarily a calibration issue and should have been correctable without it. Your eyes will adjust their white balance to the brightest thing in the room which is why it's important to either make sure your monitor is it, or that your monitor is in some way matched to the environment rather than blindly setting 6500k. Your issues could likely have been solved by dimming the lights, or by using one of those silly little white balance adjustment programs.

Typical problems calibrators solve is issues of over/under saturation or tonal range.

 

[unpopular]

The Apple eyeball calibration tool does more than just white balance, it's an attempt to do full LUT calibration without a probe.

It's still pretty silly, i'll admit, and a pain in the rear that often does more harm than good. But it's not just setting white balance.