Adjust Monitor

I don't have a really great monitor or printer, but I would like to print the best looking photos I can without spending a lot of money. Most photos I print turn out to be a lot darker than they appear on screen. If I brighten up my monitor, will that also brighten up the photo? I've never changed any of the settings in Control Panel, Settings, Advanced, etc. Should I add a color profile? Thanks, Jeannine

Jeannine, the goal in color management is to get a monitor that looks like your print. Lightening or brightening the monitor will work exactly opposite of what you would expect. Your prints will look even darker compared to the monitor.

The solution is to darken the monitor by cutting back the brightness if it is an LCD or the Contrast if it is a CRT. That will reduce the White Luminance Brightness (brightest white on the screen). Then if the monitor is too dark, the prints whould match the darkness of the monitor and you can edit what you see on the monitor and expect that the edit will carry through to the print and they will still be the same.

However, your colors may still not match, because that requires that you use a color managed workflow including printer profiles and have a device to calibrate and profile your printer--one which lets you calibrated and target a designated white luminance point during the calibration. About $200 will get you a decent calibrator. Then you need to use printer profiles made for the specific printer/paper/ink combination you are using to get a close match to the monitor, which as I said is the goal.

It would help if you would post the type of camera, editing program, printer and paper that you are printing on, but still you wont have good results because the first step needs to be to get your monitor calibrated and profiled.

Bob

Jeannine G said:

I don't have a really great monitor or printer, but I would like to
print the best looking photos I can without spending a lot of money.
Most photos I print turn out to be a lot darker than they appear on
screen. If I brighten up my monitor, will that also brighten up the
photo? I've never changed any of the settings in Control Panel,
Settings, Advanced, etc. Should I add a color profile? Thanks,
Jeannine

Click to expand...

--
Bob

I have been using a Canon point and shoot (G3) but am planning to buy a Canon dSLR, probably the 40d. I have Photoshop CS3 (but I am very much a beginner). My printer is a HP Photosmart 7760; the paper is usually HP premium glossy photo paper. I choose the paper profile when I print.

Even if I bought a new printer, I would still need to buy a program for $200 which would calibrate my monitor?

Thanks so much. Jeannine

Hi. The quick answer is yes, but it is not only a program. It is a device which will attach to your usb port and then goes on your screen. This device, in conjunction with the program, will perform all the measurements do the calibration which will create a profile to use. This is a must for truley accurate color management and will be money well spent. Although there are a few out there, I recommend the Eye-One 2 display.

Jeannine G said:

I have been using a Canon point and shoot (G3) but am planning to buy
a Canon dSLR, probably the 40d. I have Photoshop CS3 (but I am very
much a beginner). My printer is a HP Photosmart 7760; the paper is
usually HP premium glossy photo paper. I choose the paper profile
when I print.

Even if I bought a new printer, I would still need to buy a program
for $200 which would calibrate my monitor?

Thanks so much. Jeannine

Click to expand...

Jeannine, I agree with the other poster about Eye One Display 2 and yes also, it is a must to get proper color management. Check out http://www.chromix.com for the Eye One Display 2.

Photoshop is a great program, but a very large learning curve. It is well worth learning it though, so buy books on Photohshop and work your way through it.

I dont know if your camera shoots in RAW-I thought I picked one up in the store one day and played with it and it did take in RAW but could be wrong. In any case "Bridge" and "Adobe Camera Raw" which come with Photoshop do an excellent job in converting and editing and cataloging your files, so you should get a book on that part of Photohshop. Best one around if it is still in print--author recently died, is "Real World Camera Raw" by Bruce Fraser. I got mine at Barnes and Noble, but I suspect that it is still available at Amazon if not at Barnes and Noble.

Finally, when you say that you are applying the printer profile for your paper, are you applying it in your printer driver or applying it through photoshop which is the proper way to do it. It should be applied in Photoshop and then in the printer driver, Color Management should be turned off, but maybe you are doing that anyway.

Anyway, first thing is to get yourself a monitor calibrator.

Bob

Jeannine G said:

I have been using a Canon point and shoot (G3) but am planning to buy
a Canon dSLR, probably the 40d. I have Photoshop CS3 (but I am very
much a beginner). My printer is a HP Photosmart 7760; the paper is
usually HP premium glossy photo paper. I choose the paper profile
when I print.

Even if I bought a new printer, I would still need to buy a program
for $200 which would calibrate my monitor?

Thanks so much. Jeannine

Click to expand...

--
Bob

There are means to make your monitor match your prints without hardware calibration BUT you could never export your images to others with confidence unless your monitor is calibrated as you would have no common point of reference.

Even the paper manufacturer's profiles, used in Photoshop, are a considerable advance on none in mapping the colour performance of different papers. When using profiles in Photoshop, as others have stated here, you need to set your printer to make no adjustments itself - or you get 'double profiling which is much worse than no profile at all. It is such a common mistake that it is worth repeating again here.

With free programmes like Grey Balancer to linearise the printer's behaviour, you can use Power Strip to adjust your monitor to a print, and save several 'profiles' therein to suit assorted papers and printer and viewing lighting.

But the latter approach has no reference to the outside world or other machines. That really requires the calibration device to solve. If you wanted your images printed commercially, you could assume their screens were calibrated - although you often hear of widely different results from out-printers.

Cheers, Tony.

Aren't these methods more tedious and unreliable? Any time you rely on visual interpretation to calibrate you can run into many issues. I realize that you are using visual to look over prints , but I never believed that relying on your visual input only would ever give a true match. Of course my opinion and $2.00 might get you a good cup of coffee.

tony brown said:

There are means to make your monitor match your prints without
hardware calibration BUT you could never export your images to others
with confidence unless your monitor is calibrated as you would have
no common point of reference.

Even the paper manufacturer's profiles, used in Photoshop, are a
considerable advance on none in mapping the colour performance of
different papers. When using profiles in Photoshop, as others have
stated here, you need to set your printer to make no adjustments
itself - or you get 'double profiling which is much worse than no
profile at all. It is such a common mistake that it is worth
repeating again here.

With free programmes like Grey Balancer to linearise the printer's
behaviour, you can use Power Strip to adjust your monitor to a print,
and save several 'profiles' therein to suit assorted papers and
printer and viewing lighting.

But the latter approach has no reference to the outside world or
other machines. That really requires the calibration device to solve.
If you wanted your images printed commercially, you could assume
their screens were calibrated - although you often hear of widely
different results from out-printers.

Cheers, Tony.

Click to expand...

Mjs said:

Aren't these methods more tedious and unreliable? Any time you rely
on visual interpretation to calibrate you can run into many issues. I
realize that you are using visual to look over prints , but I never
believed that relying on your visual input only would ever give a
true match. Of course my opinion and $2.00 might get you a good cup
of coffee.

Click to expand...

Quite so, but to quote the OP's opening remarks:-

'I don't have a really great monitor or printer, but I would like to print the best looking photos I can without spending a lot of money. ...... Thanks, Jeannine'

I have thus assumed she doesn't want to have to buy calibration hardware.

If not then I have made the wrong assumptions. I do use calibration with an Eye1 Display2, Grey Balancer, colour profiles (factory - not custom) and still find I need different results depending on the lighting especially for my pigment prints. So I added Power Strip to fine tune the monitor and am very pleased with the extra flexibility it gives me but switch it off when outputting to others.

I find Power Strip so useful for printing that I can tune it as inks age (I use my two printers quite intermittently and inks do have expiry dates) and for different lighting in the places I compete in. So much so, indeed, that if I had to do without everything but one, I would dump my calibrator and retain Power Strip.

The above is ONLY for printing and would not do for exporting images to others and there is no need for me to dump anything at all.

Just my take, not an instruction!

Cheers, Tony.

Ok...I see your point. I just have seen a lot of people state that calibration devices such as the eye-one display 2 are absolutely no better than the free software you can download which is not even close to true. If her monitor is that bad then I agree with you 100%. I just know that my photo's showed their true color...or should I say color cast, when I finally calibrated my monitor.

My fault..sorry about that

Mike

tony brown said:

Mjs said:

Aren't these methods more tedious and unreliable? Any time you rely
on visual interpretation to calibrate you can run into many issues. I
realize that you are using visual to look over prints , but I never
believed that relying on your visual input only would ever give a
true match. Of course my opinion and $2.00 might get you a good cup
of coffee.

Click to expand...

Quite so, but to quote the OP's opening remarks:-

'I don't have a really great monitor or printer, but I would like to
print the best looking photos I can without spending a lot of money.
...... Thanks, Jeannine'

I have thus assumed she doesn't want to have to buy calibration
hardware.

If not then I have made the wrong assumptions. I do use calibration
with an Eye1 Display2, Grey Balancer, colour profiles (factory - not
custom) and still find I need different results depending on the
lighting especially for my pigment prints. So I added Power Strip to
fine tune the monitor and am very pleased with the extra flexibility
it gives me but switch it off when outputting to others.

I find Power Strip so useful for printing that I can tune it as inks
age (I use my two printers quite intermittently and inks do have
expiry dates) and for different lighting in the places I compete in.
So much so, indeed, that if I had to do without everything but one, I
would dump my calibrator and retain Power Strip.

The above is ONLY for printing and would not do for exporting images
to others and there is no need for me to dump anything at all.

Just my take, not an instruction!

Cheers, Tony.

Click to expand...

Let me amend my original post just a little. I assume my monitor is not particularly good because I did NOT pay a couple thousand for it. It came with my Dell system and is a 20inch LCD; the system is just 1.5 years old. I can (but have not) make adjustments to it through Control Panel. There are millions of digital camera owners who probably don't even have as good a monitor as I. Are most people just not very discerning with their printed results? I know that's an impossible question to answer, but the point is: Everybody has a camera, everybody prints, is everybody (or most) happy? Will I really see the difference after I calibrate?

Jeannine G said:

Will I
really see the difference after I calibrate?

Click to expand...

Unless the monitor was correct when supplied, has not aged and you have not adjusted it, it might still be accurate - but I doubt it. Among other things LCD monitors are normally setup much too bright for accurate print comparison.

You will read throughout this forum that a calibrated monitor is the first step to accurate colour printing as you need a start point. Unfortunately, it is not everything and profiles (custom or otherwise) will be needed.

Why not try to borrow someone else's calibration hardware to give it a try.

Whether you see a difference depends on how it is at the moment. If you are currently printing as the screen shows, why bother. The main advantage of a good setup is less waste ink, paper, time and frustration. It also depends a bit on how fussy you are about the accuracy of your results. Only you can judge.

Cheers, Tony.

It all comes down to what you want. To work with true color management does start with a calibrated monitor. Changing the moniitor in any way will NOT effect how your prints look, only how they look on your screen. There is no such thing as 100% "what you see is what you get", but you can get very close. Some of this depends on the quality of the monitor, but it also needs to be calibrated. With a calibrated monitor you can look at a photo and come close to knowing how it will print (yes, there are paper profiles and other items involved to this which can be talked about later or you can search for these). You can then edit your photo more to your liking and know that the prints you get will at least be a close representation of what you wanted the photo to look like.

Will you see a difference? I cannot answer that, but I know I did. Before I calibrated years ago, I was posting photos that had a strong purple color cast to them. My monitor showed them to be right on, but people on this forum pointed the color cast out to me. I did not buy it, but bought a calibration device. Well...turns out everyone was right (Imagine that). As I mentioned, calibration will not change your prints. It will just render your monitor as color accurate as possible and when completed it will create a custom monitor profile that will load each time you start up. Chances are you would end up having 100% contrast and very low brightness and you will need to either choose a color temp preset of 6500 K or adjust the RGB readings on your monitor.. The device will basically sit on your screen as you set these items. It will guide you and let you know when you have the correct setting. It will then go on its own and read many colors at different brightness levels. When done it will create your custom profile.

As I said earlier, it all comes down to what you want. If/when you move to a dslr, you will most likely do more editing and would probably want accurate colors when doing so.

As mentioned by another poster...see if someone has a spyder or eye-one device to try out.

This was a very generic explanation that the experts on this forum could correct. Just trying to give you a general idea of what happens. There is more to total color management than just monitor calibration, but this is all you were asking about.

Good luck to you on what ever you decide.

Mike

Jeannine G said:

Let me amend my original post just a little. I assume my monitor is
not particularly good because I did NOT pay a couple thousand for it.
It came with my Dell system and is a 20inch LCD; the system is just
1.5 years old. I can (but have not) make adjustments to it through
Control Panel. There are millions of digital camera owners who
probably don't even have as good a monitor as I. Are most people
just not very discerning with their printed results? I know that's
an impossible question to answer, but the point is: Everybody has a
camera, everybody prints, is everybody (or most) happy? Will I
really see the difference after I calibrate?

Click to expand...

Hi there, I'm still trying to figure this out as well........

so if I have a monitor that is not calibrated (but it's how I want my prints to look like) do I calibrate my printer?? Wouldn't I leave the monitor as it is if I like the results on screen?

Marie17 said:

Hi there, I'm still trying to figure this out as well........
so if I have a monitor that is not calibrated (but it's how I want my
prints to look like) do I calibrate my printer?? Wouldn't I leave the
monitor as it is if I like the results on screen?

Click to expand...

Marie, the problem is that even if the results look great on-screen, if your display isn't calibrated then the results may not look the same when they are printed out. This is true even if the printer is perfectly calibrated and profiled. In order to get consistent results, it is necessary to have both the display and the printer properly calibrated and profiled. Having just one (i.e., either the display or the printer, but not both) calibrated & profiled isn't enough. Sometimes you may get "lucky" and get a match, but in general this isn't guaranteed.

Simply put, all of these output devices have their own notion of color. The purpose of calibration is to bring them to a known standard, and the purpose of profiling is to describe the behavior of these devices so that colors can be translated correctly from one to the other.

--
Eric Chan
http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/photos/
http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html

I just got back from the store with Pantone Huey. The salesman said his customers like it very much and the cost was less than $100. Nobody here has recommended it. Before I break open the box, does anybody have an opinion. (P.S. - Is it ok to ask about a specific product?)
Thanks, Jeannine

It is definately ok to ask about a specific product. Although I have no idea about the huey good or bad. You may want to do a search. Keep on asking questions and a little secret for you...pay close attention to whatever Eric Chan has to say ;-)

Jeannine G said:

I just got back from the store with Pantone Huey. The salesman said
his customers like it very much and the cost was less than $100.
Nobody here has recommended it. Before I break open the box, does
anybody have an opinion. (P.S. - Is it ok to ask about a specific
product?)
Thanks, Jeannine

Click to expand...

Marie -

I am not nearly experienced enough to jump in on Eric's post, but I would like to ask something. When you say it is how you want your prints to look, does this include any print to screen matches? As Eric states, just because it looks good on your screen does not mean it will print good. Read my earlier post about my purple color cast on my photos. Prior to my calibration my prints looked great to me on my screen. I had not printed anything so I did not have anything to compare to. Well...I posted a couple of photos on this site and had many members right back to tell me there was a strong purple cast to my pictures. My monitor did not show this so I really was hesitant. Well..I ended up getting a device and doing a calibration only to find out that everyone was correct. What looked fine on my monitor prior to calibration was not color correct. I now saw the purple color cast that everyone talked about. Had I printed them I am sure it would have shown up there as well.

Moral of the story...just because it looks good on your monitor does not mean it is color correct (lack of correct terminology).

Eric Chan said:

Marie17 said:

Hi there, I'm still trying to figure this out as well........
so if I have a monitor that is not calibrated (but it's how I want my
prints to look like) do I calibrate my printer?? Wouldn't I leave the
monitor as it is if I like the results on screen?

Click to expand...

Marie, the problem is that even if the results look great on-screen,
if your display isn't calibrated then the results may not look the
same when they are printed out. This is true even if the printer is
perfectly calibrated and profiled. In order to get consistent
results, it is necessary to have both the display and the printer
properly calibrated and profiled. Having just one (i.e., either the
display or the printer, but not both) calibrated & profiled isn't
enough. Sometimes you may get "lucky" and get a match, but in general
this isn't guaranteed.

Simply put, all of these output devices have their own notion of
color. The purpose of calibration is to bring them to a known
standard, and the purpose of profiling is to describe the behavior of
these devices so that colors can be translated correctly from one to
the other.

--
Eric Chan
http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/photos/
http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/index.html

Click to expand...

Negative with the Huey, or any other calibrator which does not let you target and acquire a designated user input White Luminance Value. At the moment, the only show on the market that will do this is either the xRite/Gretag Eye One Display 2 or the Colorvision Spyder2PRO (only the PRO version)--Both are around $200. If you cannot properly adjust your Whte Luminance Value, you will have continual problems with the complaint that your prints are too dark.

Bob

Jeannine G said:

I just got back from the store with Pantone Huey. The salesman said
his customers like it very much and the cost was less than $100.
Nobody here has recommended it. Before I break open the box, does
anybody have an opinion. (P.S. - Is it ok to ask about a specific
product?)
Thanks, Jeannine

Click to expand...

--
Bob

Hi Jeannine

Most (read: all) monitors are from factory set much to bright for photo and color critical work. Light intensity is measured in cd/m2 (pronounsed candela). Many monitors have 300-400 cd/m2 in brightness, because most people thing, that more brightness must mean a better monitor - wrong! Photo editing is done at 80-120 cd/m2. Lower your brightness/backlight and you will instantly get closer to the luminosity of your print.

What you really need to do, if you are serious about your images, is color calibrating your monitor, so what you see is real - ahh did you say color calibration, that sounds difficult and way to expensive...

Ok that is a trick, it is not. Taking a monitor calibration unit like the colorvision spyder2express is $55 at B&H Photo, and it is an excellent start, if you are not into spending big bucks.

I have just published an easy to read - no prior knodledge needed - ebook about color management. It is 6 easy read pages, that in plain words will explain to you, what color calibration is, and how you can do it. The ebook is a free download from my website at http://www.klausbjarner.com

Kind regards
Klaus

Klaus, only problem is that the Spyder2Express will not permit you to target and acquire a requested White Luminance setting. Only the PRO model will let you do that, and thus the one problem that she is having and that most people with LCDs seem to have would not be taken care of by the Express model.

Bob

Mr Bjarner said:

Hi Jeannine

Most (read: all) monitors are from factory set much to bright for
photo and color critical work. Light intensity is measured in cd/m2
(pronounsed candela). Many monitors have 300-400 cd/m2 in brightness,
because most people thing, that more brightness must mean a better
monitor - wrong! Photo editing is done at 80-120 cd/m2. Lower your
brightness/backlight and you will instantly get closer to the
luminosity of your print.

What you really need to do, if you are serious about your images, is
color calibrating your monitor, so what you see is real - ahh did you
say color calibration, that sounds difficult and way to expensive...

Ok that is a trick, it is not. Taking a monitor calibration unit like
the colorvision spyder2express is $55 at B&H Photo, and it is an
excellent start, if you are not into spending big bucks.

I have just published an easy to read - no prior knodledge needed -
ebook about color management. It is 6 easy read pages, that in plain
words will explain to you, what color calibration is, and how you can
do it. The ebook is a free download from my website at
http://www.klausbjarner.com

Kind regards
Klaus

Click to expand...

--
Bob