Just purchased Eye-One Display 2 calibration system...

[jkentphoto11]

and it's totally freaking me out! Once I calibrated my laptop, everything looks quite a bit different. So much so that I'm questioning if the calibration is right. Primarily anything that had a blue/gray tint now has more of a brown tint. Not sure if that makes any sense at all, but when I looked through images I had edited and exported from Lightroom before I calibrated, most of my black and white images now look sepia tone. What I thought was a clean, well done bw conversion doesn't look anything like that! Anyone else experienced this? I guess the only way to know if the screen is calibrated right would be to order prints, which I will definitely do soon!

[Bruce A]

I have it, but have only calibrated my desktop LCD monitor and apart from the fact that I can't get my ambient lighting quite right, it seems to do the job okay. Once I can get another copy of PS CS5 for my notebook I'll try it on that. Also make sure you check your images at all angles on your screen. I learnt that lesson not long ago when I thought I had blackened the background properly though others could see wrinkles in my backdrop.

[Doug Pardee]

The reason one calibrates is because one suspects that the current settings are wrong, and as a result photos are being edited incorrectly. So this doesn't surprise me.

But... but... but... laptops are notoriously difficult to calibrate properly. Most of them have cheap TN LCD displays that just can't do a proper job of reproducing color and tone properly, no matter how they're adjusted and calibrated. I once had an inexpensive desktop LCD monitor that was impossible to calibrate, so I've seen this first-hand.

Try this. Take one of your photos into Lightroom, and convert it to B&W. The result should be canonical black, white, and gray, with no tinting. (The tone curve could still be off, but that's not of interest here.) If you've got tinting, try working with the screen controls on your laptop to get the image closer to B&W. Then recalibrate without adjusting the screen controls. That's what I had to do to get that cheap desktop monitor to be marginally calibrated.

[jkentphoto11]

Thanks for all of the information...I'm also having a problem with my computer not saving the calibration as my default profile, but that's another story.

When my computer is calibrated, everything just looks too warm. I know it's going to be warmer, because laptop screens are set at 5000 K, but this looks WAY too warm. When I look at other people's pictures, websites, everything is just too warm. And this is at 6500 K. I'm just worried that I'm editing everything at the wrong temperature/calibration. I order my prints from a pro lab so it will be a few days until I get them back to check. This such a pain!!! I

[JFSanders]

Jessica, yes it is a pain. But not as painful as printing a photo only to realize the monitor has done you a disservice. As was said laptops are notoriously poor performers even when calibrated. That said if your laptop has a IPS monitor it will give better color rendering than a standard TN screen. The true solution at this juncture in monitor development is to use a secondary monitor set up in the proper location with the correct ambient light to work in. Dell makes a monitor that is IPS and suitable for calibration at about 450 dollars. The Dell ultrasharp U2410

Jim

[Tzetsin]

Might I ask why you think you need to calibrate?

I ask this because of an experience that I recently had myself. Just about every print I tried to make was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay off in color. I took them to two different labs in my town, both labs printed the same whacked out color.

I tried EVERYTHING to get my colors to match, but they were so far off that I honestly didnt know what to do next.

The labs I was taking my images to arn't professional labs by any means, so one day I asked if i could go behind the counter and watch them run it through their computer. I was thinking they were doing some kind of edit to them before printing them or something. As she was going through the motions this warning came up in a flash and she just X'd out of it right fast, but I'm an extremely fast reader and I'd caught it. "Warning color space mismatch, this may cause color error" I stopped her and said waaaaaaaaaait a minute. back that up... she says "oh dont worry about that, its not a problem. It comes up all the time..." of course....

My images are all saved in prophoto rgb. they were printing them in SRGB. Suffice to say, with my monitors uncorrected, and my Images now printed in the CORRECT color space, they look fantastic.

So if your colors are all wrong in print, this is something you might want to enquire about.

[jkentphoto11]

Originally Posted by Tzetsin

Might I ask why you think you need to calibrate?

I ask this because of an experience that I recently had myself. Just about every print I tried to make was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay off in color. I took them to two different labs in my town, both labs printed the same whacked out color.

I tried EVERYTHING to get my colors to match, but they were so far off that I honestly didnt know what to do next.

The labs I was taking my images to arn't professional labs by any means, so one day I asked if i could go behind the counter and watch them run it through their computer. I was thinking they were doing some kind of edit to them before printing them or something. As she was going through the motions this warning came up in a flash and she just X'd out of it right fast, but I'm an extremely fast reader and I'd caught it. "Warning color space mismatch, this may cause color error" I stopped her and said waaaaaaaaaait a minute. back that up... she says "oh dont worry about that, its not a problem. It comes up all the time..." of course....

My images are all saved in prophoto rgb. they were printing them in SRGB. Suffice to say, with my monitors uncorrected, and my Images now printed in the CORRECT color space, they look fantastic.

So if your colors are all wrong in print, this is something you might want to enquire about.

I ordered some prints before I calibrated my screen and they weren't completely off, client probably wouldn't have even noticed but I certainly did. A little warmer than I intended, not quite as bright, and the greens always seemed a bit saturated. If I spend hours working on these pictures, I want them to print exactly the way I edit them. It's just frustrating because now the calibrated screen just looks off. My eyes and brain are going nuts at this point! lol

[jkentphoto11]

Jim, I have a nearly brand new laptop, but I am thinking I definitely should get an LCD monitor or a desktop for editing. I just like the flexibility of being able to edit on a laptop.

[JFSanders]

I use a laptop to edit as it is more comfortable for me in my workspace. But I do use the Dell monitor. I set it up to place the image on the Dell and the tools and other stuff on the laptop monitor. Works like a charm. As a bonus the Dell I bought came nearly perfect out of the box as far as calibration was concerned. I also shoot some in prophotoRGB and edit in the same when shot that way but always always save into sRGB if I am sending them out for printing as most labs use that color space. The ones I print at home are usually saved into aRGB and printed out on the Epson R-1800. Gives me deep rich blacks and great colors.

Jim