Calibration calibration

[Anthony]

I have learned alot about photo manipulation, from this site, from books and experimentation. With the techniques I have learned I become an excellent retoucher according to friends and clients. Even so, most of my frustration stems from the fact that I still fail to grasp the concept of calibration. I scan an image, it looks perfect on the screen, when I print it, its either a completely different color or grainy etc. So, needless to say, I waste alot of paper and time tweeking and tweeking. I have gone through the monitor calibration, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Are there any words of wisdom out there?

Anthony
Mac OSX
Photoshop7
Epson 2000P printer
Canon 5000F scanner

[gland]

Anthony if you had Windows I might be of some help. I'm totally clueless on a Mac system..

[Stephen M]

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#C

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#Cal

Calibration is only a small part, characterization or profiling is another aspect, among many.

You ideally have a custom profile describing the monitor and the printer. So edit in a independent safe neutral work space such as sRGB or Adobe RGB and then convert to the printer profile when printing.


Stephen Marsh.

[Anthony]

Thank you Stephen. Its been very helpful and I am still reading over the material.

Anthony

[cinderella]

Wondering if anyone has used either of the following two sites to calibrate their monitors. The first says it puts a cookie on your computer which I am very reluctant to do.

http://www.easyrgb.com/calibrate.php

The next has its own set of boxes for calibration . After I calibrate using them print on my moniter looks pale.

http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Gamma.htm

[Stephen M]

Cinderella, I looked at a few pages at the easyrgb site and at first blush I get the impression that this 'calibration' is a proprietary closed loop thing intended for this site only (but I could be wrong). I would not presume it to be used for other websites or image editing and only for viewing the sites content. But I could be wrong. I would also be very doubtful of any real accuracy and consistency between users/systems, but again I could be wrong. <g>

The link to the gamma page seems OK, but my fave page is this one:

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#Cal

Calibration and Characterization/Profiling has also come up recently in this thread here at RP:

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5932

Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh.

[cinderella]

Thanks Stephen, I read your suggestions , or rather I read the parts I understand and tried a few of those techniques. My eyes are actually sore from squinting at little boxes. And still no satisfaction.
I decided to recalibrate because my photos I took to WalMart last week to be printed on a Fuji Frontier were looking different than what I see on monitor. THen I recalled I went thru this exercise last fall and I had kept the profile I made. When I load that profile the photos in Photoshop now resemble what I just had printed. Hooray.
My monitor is old, my eyes are old. Hmmmmmmmm.

I found some useful info for printing on FujiFrontier here.

http://www.sbphotonews.com/File2Pri.htm