LCD Monitor Color Calibration

[Mike_N]

Hi,

I am looking for some advice. I have a new Dell twenty something inch wide screen HD monitor. I am using an nVIDIA 5200 series video card. My question is... Where can I find good directions or what do I need to do to the monitor / video card so that the colors are true to life? I went through the procedures that are supplied with the video card software. I also went on line and tried different calibration directions. With different sets of calibration instructions, I am getting different results. Here is the problem I am facing. What is on the review screen on my D90 is not the same as what I am seeing on my monitor. Also I have another computer (mac) that has an LCD screen. The colors on it are more true to life then this one. I am wondering has anyone else run into this problem? If so what did you do to correct it? It seems like the "reds" are a bit to strong, everyone in the pictures I take has a bit of a sunburn :-). I have tried to tone that down. When I do something else changes..

Any help would be appreciated.

[Doug Pardee]

You need to buy a hardware calibrator. A few people are satisfied with making adjustments by eye on quality monitors, but the path to success for just about everyone involves a hardware calibrator.

In general, the less expensive the LCD monitor, the more expensive the calibrator will need to be to get good results. The inexpensive calibrators tend to have a lot of trouble with inexpensive TN-type LCD monitors.

Hardware calibration involves three separate parts:

1. Adjusting the monitor controls to get the monitor somewhat close to the desired results. For inexpensive TN-type LCD monitors this is often impossible and resetting to factory settings may be the best approach.
2. Creating LUT (color lookup tables) that will be loaded into your video card when your computer starts up. These will modify the output from the video card to be close to the desired results.
3. Creating an ICM profile file that tells any profile-aware software how your adjusted monitor behaves with the video card and its LUT, so that the software can make the final tweaks.

[sk66]

I agree with harware calibration being your best choice. An inexpensive one like the Spyder (basic) is probably good enough....LCD's only (generally) have basic adjustments available.

The other issue is probably the software you are using to view the images (if RAW format). You'll probably need to set up a "camera profile" in you default settings/preferences.

[kirbinster]

I used a spyer2 on mh HP 22" LCD with great results.

[GaardCeteru]

I have a somewhat similar problem: photos look great on my camera's LCD, then I move them into my computer and they look dark and skintones look burned, I fixed it but then came the printing part (wich was the reason my monitor was calibrated that way in the first place) and the photos came out only slightly dark but my other prints (my homeworks for university.. Im a graphic design student) came out really dark.

So now I guess im stuck pretty much it the same problem you have; any advice?

(Im new here so forgive me if I'm supposed to open a new thread or it's not the right place to post this)

[Swisstony10]

I suspect that the issue you're having with the images on your computer not looking as nice as they do when you view them on the camera could be down to your camera showing you a compressed-to-tiny Jepg which is embedded withing the RAW image file. I know some cameras do that, although I don't know if they all do it - it'd make sense if they did though.

As for calibration - I'm using a Spyder 2, and for the amount it cost, I'm pretty pleased. I use it to calibrate a 19" Iiyama CRT monitor (which is about to be replaced with an Iiyama LCD), with great results, and I just used it to calibrate the LCD screen on my lappy, and that also made a noticeable (and pleasing) difference. I'd thought that the monitor on the new lappy was pretty good for colour tones and balance and stuff, but now I realise how far off I was.

Russ.

[LoveDSLR]

This is the Color Management part of Digital Imaging.

First, you need to calibrate the screen to a known standard. The most accurate way is to use a hardware calibrator (colorimeter). The same apply to printers and scanners.

For the camera, you need to take a photo of the MacBeth color chart and white & black objects, grayscale/card etc. Then adjust it in post processing against the known color values of the real things. The result will be the adjustments needed for your camera.

The Gretag Macbeth ColorMunki Photo is becoming popular because it is a monitor/printer calibrator combo.

BTW, I use Datacolor Spyder 3 Elite for monitor and PrintFIX Pro for printers.

[WVCoalMiner]

Pssssst you can buy the spyder basic from Amazon for $59 and google spyder pro and download the pro version software which uses the exact same hardware. Just thought I would tell you.

[sk66]

And here's the suck part of calibration....
Every other web viewer out there without a calibrated screen is NOT seeing your images the way they were meant to be seen... And you are not seeing their pictures correctly either.

That's what makes me question giving advice on color/exposure issues in the critique forums.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by WVCoalMiner

Pssssst you can buy the spyder basic from Amazon for $59 and google spyder pro and download the pro version software which uses the exact same hardware. Just thought I would tell you.

The hardware is NOT the same. I'm not even sure the software will work with it as the hardware identifies itself as a spyder basic.

The spyder 3 pro can be upgraded to spyder3 elite.