Color Management: Need help! Colour issues between monitors.

[Laraedits]

Hi Everyone, I'm new here and if anyone can help with with this HUGE problem I'm having I will be eternally grateful.

I retouch for a number of different photographers. Up until this point I have been using their office space and computers, but now things are changing and I will soon be working from home.
In preparation I went out and bought an Eizo Colour Edge Monitor and an i1 to calibrate it with.

I retouched a wedding from home and sent one image of to the local (semi) pro lab just to test. The print had a hideous pink/red cast. Completely unacceptable.
I then looked at the file on the photographers system - (it's an apple cinema display, calibrated, but out of date. I've never had any colour complaints from it before) and I could see the pink cast on their screen. Tried it also on an iMac, in PS, pink cast.

I came back home and checked my settings and calibration. The image looks fine (no cast) on both my new setup with Eizo and my calibrated laptop (it is slightly pinker on my laptop).. BUT only in Lightroom and Photoshop. When I open the image in a web browser, I can see the pink colour cast.

What the hell am I doing wrong? Surely the print should look more like what I see in PS than in the web browser as the browser is not colour managed.

The image has been exported from Lightroom as an sRGB as that is all that the local lab can print.

I can't rely on soft proofing because I work for a number of different photographers and they send their work to different places to be printed - also I work predominantly in Lightroom.

I need to be able to trust the colours I see on my screen 100%. Any ideas??

Thanks in advance!

[madclark]

I had purchased a calibration system for my work computer (PC) to match my home computer (Macintosh) setup and thought I was going crazy when the work machine just looked off. I finally wrote the company and they confirmed the hardware of the system I was using just wrong. A certain run of them simply didn't work correctly on PCs and so they sent me a new one.

Point of the story is, just because your monitor seems right to you with the calibration done to it, there may be something off that you're simply not aware of. Have you tried the monitor on other machines? Have you updated the I1 to the latest software? Have you Googled to see if others with your same setup report any issues? Have you contacted X-rite? Have you reinstalled the software and/or deleted the preferences? Have you attempted to borrow and use a different calibration tool to see if you get the same results (is it the monitor or the calibration tool?)? Have you tried your I1 on another system to compare the results?

I think there's quite a few more things you can do that will help you diagnose the problem.

Good luck!

[John Wheeler]

Madclark has some good inputs that I have not thought about before.

You did not mention to many details about you system or workflow so a little difficult to debug. More details would help e.g.

Mac vs PC; version of OS; are all these tests with the same sRGB tagged image file or are other color spaces involved and/or Raw files at some point.

Without more details here are some generic things to consider.

- Are you using V2 or V4 of ICC profiles. Some versions of Mac OS do not work properly with V4 ICC profiles. Most color profiling software gives you a choice of what version to create. You might want to back-off to version 2 ICC profiles and see if that helps.
- For all the viewing situations mentioned are you using the same format file (e.g. JPEG), is the file tagged with the same ICC profile; are you viewing using the embedded color profile or a different working color space, are you using the same rendering intent in all cases, using same white points?

As part of the debugging I would make sure to match as many of the variables as possible.

Good luck, hope this is helpful

[Optimofoto]

I guess your on ICC version 2 since you have a CG series Eizo and (of course) hardware calibrate it through ColorNavigator!??!
V4(I first wrote V2, that was of course a typo) ICC does not work properly with Mac OS at all, and should be avoided for the time being.

When you get a color cast in the magenta range its most often the result of a problem with the gamma correction when soft calibrating. So again, did you calibrate your monitor using the ColorNavigator or by using the X-rite software?

What i1dongle do you own?? If its the i1Display I would have it checked or compared to another unit. Pref the i1Profiler (i1Pro) or the ColorMunki Photo(great value/$)

JR

[Laraedits]

Thanks for the replies.
Yes I am hardware calibrating through Colour Nav. On a PC running Windows 7.
It has a Raedon Graphics card that I don't know a great deal about.

My Calibrator is an i1 2.

The images are tagged sRGB. I'm viewing mostly in Lightroom.

The monitor itself must have a green/blue cast (not obvious, greys look grey to me) in order for me to be getting a red/magenta print.


Then again.. I can see the image looking red in web browsers (and strangely in the windows icon of the image?!!) so.. this has to be a colour space issue. Right??

Thanks in advance!

[Optimofoto]

There are known issues with certain i1Display 2 dongles.
That could be the reason.

Feel free to send me a copy of your image and I will double check whether its your monitor/profiler unit or not.

Mail adress should be in my profile...
(at least I thought it was; post(@)optimofoto.com

[andrewrodney]

Originally Posted by Optimofoto

There are known issues with certain i1Display 2 dongles.

Issues? Can you explain? Dongle?

FWIW, by tomorrow, there will be another option in terms of hardware which may make some of this moot.

[Optimofoto]

In Europe, the word dongle is not only used for an electronic device that must be attached to a computer in order to use protected computer software, but also connectable hardware as well... I wont use slang again, sorry.

There have been cases where users have had problems with the i1Display2 unit, which have resulted in a strong/moderate magenta or greenish color cast. To my knowledge, whenever this have happened the unit have been replaced, as damaged. I know of 30+ cases so I assumed that there might be a production error involved...

[John Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Laraedits

The images are tagged sRGB. I'm viewing mostly in Lightroom.Thanks in advance!

Hi Laruaedits

If your file is tagged sRGB (worth a double check) as you have indicated and that is the same exact file that you are viewing with Lightroom, same as what you printed with, and same file you used to view on other apparently calibrated systems at your work, it is hard for me to see how this is anything other than a problem in your system.

With Lightroom itself being the unlikely culprit that would leave:
- Monitor calibration/profiling
- Windows OS software
- Your graphics card

I would take Optimofoto up on their offer for help to help narrow down the issue.

All the Windows OS software display calibration loader should be turned off automatically by your profiling software (i.e. take over your system). There is a link at the bottom of this web page that tells you how to check and see if the Windows display calibration loader is turned off.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...ement-settings

Hope that helps eliminate some of the areas of issue.

Originally Posted by Laraedits

The monitor itself must have a green/blue cast (not obvious, greys look grey to me) in order for me to be getting a red/magenta print.

Not necessarily. How the ICC profiles map is not always just a simple color shift as you indicated.

Originally Posted by Laraedits

Then again.. I can see the image looking red in web browsers (and strangely in the windows icon of the image?!!) so.. this has to be a colour space issue. Right??Thanks in advance!

That's a clue to an issue yet it does not necessarily mean that it is a colour space issue as in being double color managed with two color space conversions. When you are looking at a color image that is not being color managed, all bets are off so trying to draw hard conclusions is difficult. It certainly points to an issue with you own system and not external to your system. The classic double conversion that is written up all the time is having PS manage colors when printing to your local printer and the local printer driver is doing the color space conversion again. That is certainly not the case for you issue.

I could certainly try and second guess what is going on yet that could send you down the wrong path. It will all make sense once the root cause issue is tracked down. Just don't assume it is a colour space issue.

Originally Posted by Optimofoto

Feel free to send me a copy of your image and I will double check whether its your monitor/profiler unit or not.

Great offer. If I were you Lauraedits, I would take it. Let us know how it goes for you or if you have more questions. Good luck.

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Originally Posted by andrewrodney

FWIW, by tomorrow, there will be another option in terms of hardware which may make some of this moot.

That would be great Andrew! Sounds like a leak of insider information. Anything else you would like to share?

[Optimofoto]

The third generation i1display was released today.
I think users will find the software included easy to use and with a similar UI to the colormunki photo unit.
This new unit comes in two versions names colormunki Display and i1display pro.
Visit xrite.com to see more

[andrewrodney]

The entry level software with the Munki name has an entirely new UI. The Pro software uses a UI that’s taken from the newer, high end i1Profile software.

[Chaz Photos]

I use PS so not sure about Lightroom BUT you say you export it as sRGB but I know in PS you can just assign sRGB and you can convert to sRGB then save and you get the right results this last way.
Not know if that is of any help.