Help with Color Management/Calibration

[DougSolis]

I have been using a Lenovo W700ds laptop, which has a built in rite/pantone Huey color calibration for a couple of years now. Every couple of weeks it asks for you to perform a color calibration which I do religiously. I have never printed any of my images; just post them on my website, up until last month. I had printed out at Bay Photo several large images which came back totally underexposed, and the colors seemed too warm as well. I thought it was a problem with the printing company but I happen to check my website on a friend’s computer and almost all my images are underexposed and the color seems too warm to boot. On a side note I also convert to profile sRGB for my website and email and RGB1998 for print as that was requested by the printing company.
I can make slight adjustments to the Huey calibration software such as Gamma 1.8, 2.20. 2.40 also a color temp adjustment of d50, d65,d75. I’m currently at the middle adjustments for both gamma and color.
Should my first step be to adjust the gamma to 2.40 to make the screen darker and change the color temp to d75 to make the screen cooler??
Thanks much for the help
The depressing part of this is I have to go back through all my images and adjust them to the new setting. Ugh! I just don’t want to have to do this several times.

[mistermonday]

Re: Help with Color Management/Calibration

Doug, welcome to RetouchPro.
I have not used the W700ds, however most laptop displays are not suitable for photo editing. Many can not be calibrated at all. Others have narrow viewing angles and change color and brightness as the viewing angle changes.
One thing about Photoshop is that the numbers never lie. I would recommend you download one of the many available test / calibration images - the ones that have all of the primary color swatches, plus grayscale gradients, color gradients, different objects including skin tones. Run you mouse over various targets and look at the numbers and assess whether what you see on your display corresponds to what the numbers read. Convert the image profile to what your printing company wants and have a print made, then compare it what you see on your monitor.
It is possible that the display calibration is off but you are more likely to find the display is not accurate for image editing.
Regards, Murray

[andrewrodney]

Re: Help with Color Management/Calibration

As I suggested to you on the other site (and for lurkers here), start here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...too_dark.shtml

[DougSolis]

Re: Help with Color Management/Calibration

Doug, welcome to RetouchPro.
I have not used the W700ds, however most laptop displays are not suitable for photo editing. Many can not be calibrated at all. Others have narrow viewing angles and change color and brightness as the viewing angle changes.
One thing about Photoshop is that the numbers never lie. I would recommend you download one of the many available test / calibration images - the ones that have all of the primary color swatches, plus grayscale gradients, color gradients, different objects including skin tones. Run you mouse over various targets and look at the numbers and assess whether what you see on your display corresponds to what the numbers read. Convert the image profile to what your printing company wants and have a print made, then compare it what you see on your monitor.
It is possible that the display calibration is off but you are more likely to find the display is not accurate for image editing.
Regards, Murray

Thanks much Murray. I will download one of the test images. I do hope your wrong about the laptop not being suitable. This model was specifically targeted to photoshop users and graphic designers. But it wouldn't be the first time I've fallen for marketing hype.

Thanks again.

[DougSolis]

Re: Help with Color Management/Calibration

As I suggested to you on the other site (and for lurkers here), start here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...too_dark.shtml

Andrew thanks very much for your reference in "Both" websites. I will dig in and do some reading. maybe I need to buy your book too......

[Craig Walters]

Re: Help with Color Management/Calibration

i find one of the best ways to test calibration is to print some images on a decent home printer. printers dont lie, vid cards and monitors do, especially on laptops. i agree with whomever said that laptops shld not be used for retouching and most graphic arts stuff. they are too unreliable where color is concerned.

and for those who dont want to trust a home printer, find a good print shop and send them some test images to print out. if you're only doing web postings of your images, then get a crosscheck from a second computer viewing the pics online.

and as for your other pics on the laptop, most likely they're going to be the same way but you shld be able to do some batch file processing in photoshop and fix most of them pretty easily.