dot gain vs gamma

[KR1156]

hey, what do you guys set your monitor's to at your place? 1.8 or 2.2 gamma?

i'm trying to figure something out.

if gamma represents midtones only, not white & k points, on a monitor, and 1.8 means lighter, less contrsty mids, and 2.2 means darker more contrasty mids.....which is a better representation of the printed piece. only reason why i would think 2.2 is more fair, is because of dot gain. wouldn't heavier mids on screen better match dot gain on a printed piece?

[Damo77]

The days of setting your screen to match your prints is long gone. The relationship between screen midtones and print midtones is completely irrelevant in these enlightened days of colour management and profiling.

As I understand it, the reason Macs used to be set to 1.8 was that it closely matched the dot gain of the Mac laser printer of the day. So you can see how your question is more than a decade out of date.

Use 2.2 (because that's what everybody is using) and utilise correct profiles for printing.

[TommyO]

Today's standard for a CRT is a gamma of 2.2 , simply because it provides a more uniform representation of our eyes' perception of color. The older 1.8 standard was used during the days of monochrome/b&w only printing, as it did provide a more consistent duplication of the standard Apple Laser Writer printer.

By definition, Gamma does not represent "mid-tones". It is a non-linear scale by which we represent a color space by perceived brightness. Since our eyes and brain behave much differently than other devices, we need to spread things out a bit. The most relevant example today is in camera's. The basic CCD chip sees light very linearly; one photon is one photon. However, our eyes have a lot of trouble seeing differences in dark areas. So, we spread that area out (making it non-linear) so allow our eyes to see more. This starts producing a non-linear output, thus a gamma corrected output.

But, your thinking on "wouldn't heavier mids on screen better match dot gain on a printed piece?" may be correct... if you are speaking about black & white printing or laser printing. Again, that is why a 1.8 gamma was used way back when. Most people just don't worry about b&w's these days. But, with the popularity of black & white prints gaining ground, maybe they should. It may also depend on whether you are using a true black ink (as in higher end printers), or just mixing colors to approximate black (as in lower end ink jets). Hopefully, a correctly profiled printer will compensate either way. So, back to what Damo77 said, it may be "irrelevant in these enlightened days of colour management and profiling". Afterall, we really weren't color profiling back then; we were simply using the gamma setting to throw in a little more black in those mid-tones.

[KR1156]

i've gone with 100 brightness, 5500white, and L* gamma....and it's pretty consistent all around with our fuji. fuji might be a percent more yellow on the mid's and quaters. but then again that could be the fuji's profiling. i'm just trying to find a good all around setting for consistency.

thanks

[Damo77]

Originally Posted by KR1156

fuji might be a percent more yellow on the mid's and quaters. but then again that could be the fuji's profiling.

Yes, definitely a printer profile issue, rather than a monitor one.

[TommyO]

It still sounds like you are trying to match your monitor to your prints, which we normally don't do. You could simply create another printer profile for b&w printing and the particular paper you use.

[KR1156]

no definitely not matching my monitor to the printer, it's always the other way around!

i trust my monitors color most.

i'm just trying to figure out which gamma setting is giving me more consistency in what i see printed. whether it be offset, digital, in-house etc.

[pixelzombie]

try a calibration at 6500K using a white luminance of 120, black luminance of .2 and contrast ration of 600:1