Display differences

[UKmitch86]

This is a real beginner question, but one I desperately need sorting. I'm looking to get images off the PC and printed by an external printer (i.e. not me at home, probably Costco).

I do my PPing in the following way; Canon 500D > RAW > Canon DPP on Asus LED-backlit laptop monitor, uncalibrated.

My issue is; whenever I upload images to cameralabs etc, the images look fine. They look exactly as they did on the Asus screen when I was tweaking them with DPP. Lately, I've taken to showing others some images (using other monitors, those at work, parents/friends house) and to my horror, the majority of the time the images are underexposed and over-saturated. They look poor. I imagine the majority I've put on cameralabs over the last year are similar when viewed by others.

Now I can quite easily correct the images - but that's not the root cause. I'm now concerned that if I go about editing my images in DPP on the Asus and send them to a printer, then they'll come back looking like they do on other monitors.

What can I do to ensure that the appearance on my laptop screen is the appearance of the printed final image?

Why is it that despite my monitor likely being under-saturated and over-bright, that I see others images/those on websites and they look absolutely fine?

[oldCarlos]

I had similar issues with my old monitor. When burned to disk & taken to be printed, they just weren't the same.
I recently bought a new monitor which was factory calibrated & pics were much more as they should be, but I also bought a `spyder` calibrator to keep it that way.
Don't forget that looking at pics on friends/family's uncalibrated screens obviously won't be `true` either.

[popo]

Welcome to the joys of colour management. There are lots of permutations of source and destinations, and depending on software settings and correction strategy they can vary a lot too.

Safest thing to do is get your monitor calibrated. I used one of the Spyder 3 devices. Next find out what colour profile the printers use, and see if you can get a profile for it and work to that. Otherwise the lowest common denominator is to work in sRGB colour space, and this would be the safe option for general output to print or screen.

[UKmitch86]

@oldCarlos
So this Spyder calibrator does what exactly? Can it tell me that the monitor is too bright/undersaturated? Will it tell me exactly how much to change the RGB and other sliders on the Asus colour correction software?

@popo
yes, it certainly is joyous... I'm struggling to visualise the chain of colour correction methods from screen to print - how and what must be calibrated? Is sRGB the benchmark for colour representation? I used to go to a camera club here in the south east but stopped a while back. They wanted competition entries in Adobe RGB - is this so the projector displayed the correct colours (because all submissions worked to the same profile?)

Is my thought-process correct - the printer has a colour profile (ICC???) which is set for sRGB colours. I edit my images on an sRGB calibrated monitor - hey presto, printed colours match screen. Correct?

[popo]

The Spyder screen calibrator tells you to set some values where possible, then it runs and generates a profile for the monitor under those settings. The settings are passed to the operating system/video driver and they correct the image on screen.

sRGB is the "safe" set of colour gamut. You don't calibrate your monitor to it, but can can for example set your monitor to only show the colour range of sRGB even if it is capable of showing more. AdobeRGB is a bigger gamut and can show more colours. Note here we're talking about an absolute colour space, not a relative representation.

Anyway, once you're calibrated you can work in any colourspace you like. But at the output, you need to save it in sRGB. If you went outside that, then you will suffer some colour loss when you convert it.

Oh, and while all this calibrates colour, I still find the relative perceived "brightness" of screen and print to be different. So you may still want to do some smaller test prints to see what the difference is before you do anything really expensive.

[UKmitch86]

Okay, my quick 1hr crash course in colour calibration has led me to believe that the Datacolour Spyder 4 Express is the gadget that's required.

I see what you mean popo about brightness - it's to do with the source of light by the looks of things - monitors are back-lit and prints are reflectively-lit.

Thanks for the help, I'll see what ICM profile a couple of printers are using.

[oldCarlos]

I went for the Spyder 4 pro & before commencing colour calibration, it asks you to stand it in front of your monitor to check ambient light. (you can actually leave it plugged in all the time if you want & it will keep the light/viewing level fairly even) It then asks you to place it on screen to set monitor brightness to within certain limits on a `slider`, then away it goes. It takes around 10 mins in total.

[UKmitch86]

Is there anywhere on the highstreet that sells these for a competitive price? Would be good to make the most of the bank holiday.

[oldCarlos]

Not sure which high street stores stock it tbh, I guess you'd have to check out your area. I got it from WEX with the free spyder-cube. Interstingly it's gone up £10 this past month too.

[UKmitch86]

I went out this afternoon and picked up a Datacolor Spyder 4 Pro.

Having just done the tests, it appears the monitor had a very noticeable blue cast. Logically, that could be reason that I've seen my images on other screens and they've appeared oversaturated. The blue cast made them appear colder to me during editing and I've gone and cranked up the saturation to compensate. Like a couple of others in reviews, I appear to have a slight yellow-ish tint now which I'll get used to apparently.

The software also said I had '62% sRGB' - anyone knows what that means?

Regarding the brightness levels, I've knocked it down to 75%. I couldn't see the results and I don't think the new colour profile makes brightness changes.

I just need to get a few prints done now after I've been round and tweaked some images!

Anyone use Canon DPP with a calibrated monitor? I've set the preferences to the below screenshot. Popo - am I set up for the best chances of successful printing?

[popo]

The 62% sRGB doesn't sound good, if it means what I think it does your monitor doesn't have a very good colour range at all.

Anyway, for the rest, to be honest it's beyond me as I never put theory into practice with calibrating display to print, since I rarely do print. I'll leave that to the more experienced.

[oldCarlos]

I got 99% when I ran it first time.

Something I was told to do was, Remove Adobe Gamma from your startup programs, Reboot, then run the Spyder calibration routine.
Otherwise you can end up with a thing called double-profiling, which can cause all sorts of issues.

Mentioned on here (top of the page) http://www.photo-i.co.uk/reviews-2/hard ... -review/6/

[UKmitch86]

The 62% sRGB doesn't sound good, if it means what I think it does your monitor doesn't have a very good colour range at all.

Not so worried now I've calibrated the external monitor;





AdobeRGB is still only 79% on the Iiyama, but the 99% sRGB makes me feel better!

Remove Adobe Gamma from your startup programs

I have an allergy to Adobe programs! I don't even have their PDF reader installed. Bloatware, the lot of it.