laptop monitor callibration?

Hello,

Just wondering if anyone on this board can help me. I just received my order of the MacBook Pro and the brightness of the screen is just brilliant. I am in love. But I was wondering how I would go about callibrating my monitor? Is there a program anyone can recommend? Is it even possible to achieve callibration on a laptop? I just want to make sure my photos are as true on my screen as in real life. This is my first Mac, so I apologize if this topic has been covered before.

Thanks in advance,
marygrace

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smiling at [grace.smugmug.com]

Download SuperCal from MacUpdate.com http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/8142

This will get far better results than the built in calibration utility that you find in the system preferences.

But the best thing to do is to buy a GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display 2.
Easy to use hardware calibration.
I calibrate my PowerBook with the following settings an get great results.
Native Whitepoint, Gamma 2.2, Luminance 90 candela/m2.

Andreas

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http://www.pixels.nu

I have a related question, and am kind of a newbie.

I've tried the supercal, and tried it, but not with the greatest success..

I had a Kodak gray card from long ago, and have scanned it, and shot it digitally in daylight, and under lights(flash turned off)

Its interesting to see the different colors of the files and hold the gray card next to them.

the color of the gray card viewed on my powerbook is most close to the original when looking at the file shot with warm lights.

As a painter, with a good eye for color, how do I adjust the monitor so it matches the gray card? I will mostly be shooting my own artwork indoors, so can compare to the original art most times.

I have CS2 photoshop. Is what I want called a color profile? I just need to know what area of the help section in photoshop to research, or what topic to learn about in a book.

I used to do this(adjusting the color) by trial and error when I had a PC, and could get pretty good results after a while.

Because images I'm posting to the web look dull when viewed on other peoples (pcs) , and I will soon need to be getting prints of a current painting..

I know web color and print color are two diffent areas..

For now, I'm just saving my originals untouched of course, and doing the temporary edited versions as best I can.

Thanks

Kymmus, best is to buy a color profile tool like Eye One (Gretag MacBeth). Believe me, it will be worthwhile...

Maybe the poor quality of the Powerbook screen is also a problem.

I'm sure you are right, I'm just having a money and time squeeze now due to work overload. Suddenly my film camera and digital cameras that have the manual controls stopped working, and due to their age, the repair costs are probably more than getting a new one;

the time squeeze.. I found the right chapter in a book on digital photography,last night, and I need some quiet time to read and absorb the concepts..

There is a lot to learn relative to color profiling and color spaces. You move your images from the color translation space in your camera to the one on your computer, with the monitor calibrated a certain way, then you move the image either onto the web, or to your printers color space, or to a professional lab. It is really important to keep all the moves intact. Unfortunately there is not a "simple" way to do this. For instance, if your images have an embedded color space of Adobe RGB(1998) and you compress your images with JPEG and upload them to a web site that only handles sRGB, you images will look flat and dull!

I don't know about your lalptop monitor, but it has been very hard to calibrate laptop monitors for years. Perhaps with the brighter backlights you can achieve better calibration. There is an inexpensive colorimeter for automatic color profiling of you monitor from Gretag called "Huey". Might be a good thing.

There are several good books on this issue. Real World Color Management by Bruce Frazer is a really good reference. It will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about this subject.

--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}

thanks for that title. Will search it out.

the one I was lent is an older one, but I imagine the basic information and concepts haven't changed.

(Photoshop 6 Artistry, mastering the digital image by Barry Haynes, Wendy Crumpler)

in System preferences has been overhauled and is a lot better than it used to be.

Try that first since it's free!
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Cheers,
Joe

So I've tried the built in utility on my 6 mo. old powerbook - and I suppose the profile I created looks ok - but it's so difficult to tell. I haven't tried printing out any images yet, and I also haven't sent any images to a lab to have them printed there(new to digital photography). I guess doing either one of those things will be the true test.

Also - the utility includes lots of Nikon srgb profiles and things like that (I have a nikon d70s - and I assume these profiles were added when I installed nikon's software)
Should I try any of these nikon profiles? trial and error?

Does anyone have experience using a calibration device like a huey on a powerbook monitor? I have the newest generation pbook that has the 17-inch TFT widescreen display with 1680x1050 resolution.
Any thoughts?

Thank you, all.

I'll investigate and relay back what works for me.

--
smiling at [grace.smugmug.com]

The huey works on a 15" PB.
The 17 should be no problem.
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Sid

thanks - I'll add the huey to the wish list!

Dear all,

OK, let's say we have found our own way of calibration. I guess most of us here are asking this question to print or post the photos. And we are using Mac.

What kind of setting do you use for the exporting? I heard so many things about sRGB, aRGB, and so on.

I am testing Lightroom, iPhoto, and Photoshop Element 3.0.

Could anyone advise me with this?

Regards,

JH Kim

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FZ20, Sunpak 383. Please help me to learn more. Thanks.

The built in utility is fine, but works best if you have a trained eye. An Eye One or similar better.

Using either, the rule is to set White Point to D50 (5000 K) if the room is illuminated by artifical light or D65 (6500 K) if illumination is daylight. Having said that I have found that Eye One seems to give best results at D55. Gamma should be 1.8 for Mac, I have found this is always best. When using the Colour Sync utility where you set colour/illumination by merging the Apple logo squink heavily, this is most important.

Gretag Macbeth recommend setting LCD screens to a brightness of 140 candellas sq meter. Older laptop screens top out at 100. There's not much you can do about it but in practice it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Whenever possible set camera colour space to Adobe RGB.

everything must be 'color space aware' = color managed, or the results one gets are pure chance.

input devices like cameras and scanners have their native color space and and must tag files they create with a color profile.

working display devices like a computer monitor have a native color space. after proper hardware aided calibration and profiling, their color behaviour is described in a color profile. it is important that this profile is custom made and is not a generic profile, in the worst case for a different device. colors would be totally wrong.

color space aware software like adobe photoshop will adjust the display of an image according to the monitor profile and the profile attached to an image.

non color space aware software, most of the software and web browsers for windows os, will most likely assume that the color space of an image is srgb. srgb is the default for non color managed windows os systems.

since srgb is a relatively small color space, certain colors will be clipped when comming from a bigger color space like adobe rgb.

my suggestions for people outputting images to the web: make sure your images are always tagged with the right color profile. if the color profile is different than srgb, convert the image to srgb prior to outputting it to the web.

general settings for the computer, that make color management easy: use a gamma of 2.2 (windows os default), use a white point of 6500 kelvin (windows os default). if your monitor is profiled properly that way, getting colors right should be quite easy. on an lcd, it might be necessary to use whatever its native white point is.

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Streusel

Some pictures taken with a Fujifilm S3Pro
http://www.nagabyte.com/s3pro/muenchen/