Calibration Questions - Newbie

[ysbryd]

Hello,

Please could someone be patient with my ignorance and take a few moments to help me out with this? I recently had some of my artwork and photography printed through Photobox and the prints turned out dark and green-hued. A friend has the Spyder3 and is going to help me calibrate my monitor in the new year, so I've been doing some reading up on it and have a few questions:

Some tutorials say the monitor should be restored to the factory default setting before calibration. Is this the case? I've searched through the control panel options and can't work out how to do this on my Packard Bell laptop.

As I don't have a printer, what's the best way to make sure the calibration is correct before I go and re-edit all my work? Should I keep paying for test images from online printing places? Are some known to be much better than others? I've only ever used photobox.

Should I be creating all my work in Adobe RGB, and convert it to sRGB only for putting online? I've always worked in sRGB.

Since I plan to try selling high-quality prints of my work, but in realistic terms currently only share it online, will it be a problem if my monitor is calibrated but the majority of people have the same too-bright/blue tinted LCD screens that I currently do? That is, will the images look wrong to their biggest audience?

Any advice based on your own experience and dumbed down a little for me would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[Doug Nelson]

You might want to watch Andrew Rodney's "Color Management" show over on our rentals page.

[ysbryd]

Thanks, but my internet connection isn't good enough to watch.

[Pictus]

Best way to calibrate is using the spyder with Argyll+dispcalGUI http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...0&changemode=1

Anyway here some info:

Practical guidelines and references for digital photographers
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/WGuidelines.pdf

Color Spaces: Beyond Adobe RGB
http://www.naturephotographers.net/a.../mh1203-1.html

SRGB x Adobe RGB
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...obeRGB1998.htm

ProPhoto or ConPhoto?
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/qu...to+or+ConPhoto

Why are my prints too dark?
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...too_dark.shtml

Soft proofing (lots of good stuff there)
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...t-proofing.htm

Using Printer Profiles with Digital Labs
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/usi...r_profiles.htm

10-bit output
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/qu...Output+Support

[andrewrodney]

See:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdf...p_colspace.pdf

[kav]

Just a few things to note, in case you're using an LED screen they don't profile well. You want to get it to a point where your monitor white is a close brightness approximation of your print whites. I never liked Spyder very much. The unit to unit variation is considerable. They drift over time, and they are not really perfect in consistency from one profile to the next.

If your prints are dark relative to your display, it's set too bright. Maximum brightness should "never" be used as it's a moving target. Your maximum brightness today is different than it will be months later. Green hue on prints = monitor is biased toward magenta relative to your prints. Prints can vary anyway. If you're really picky it takes testing, but you should be able to get closer than you seem to be right now.

I mentioned the issues with spyder because in the past I've seen them unable to deliver even a definitively neutral greyscale. The human eye can't pick out a perfect grey, but it was noticeably off. I just ordered an i1 display pro recently as my DTP-94 broke (it was in need of replacement anyway). I will mention the results at a later time. If you do go to calibrate your display, remember to give it a half hour or so to warm up before doing so.