Monitor Calibration Tools

[Gianna'sPapa]

We're having some difficulty matching our printed photos to that which we see on our monitor. I'm looking for an external tool to calibrate our monitor. Does anyone have any experience or recommendations? Thanks in advance.

 

[VVFF]

We're having some difficulty matching our printed photos to that which we see on our monitor. I'm looking for an external tool to calibrate our monitor. Does anyone have any experience or recommendations? Thanks in advance.

First of all, what monitor do you have...it may not be worth investing in a expensive calibrator if your monitor is the weak link.

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

Its a new Dell Studio 17" laptop.

 

[GrillMouster]

From most expensive to least expensive, these are what i'd recommend:
Color Munki, Eye One Display 2 (my favorite), and Huey Pro
Check out the web for prices.

The Color Munki will also profile printers and projectors.

The monitor is only part of the problem. Are you printing themselves or sending to a lab? If a lab, which one? Are you converting your files to sRGB?

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

We are printing ourselves using an Epson R800 or Epson R1900 printer. My DW is the processor of the family. I do most of the shooting even though she has her own kit. She eventually gets it right but wastes photo paper which she is trying to prevent. It would be cheaper to outsource, but its her passion! I don't know if she converts to sRGB. She has Corel Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, primarily using Corel because she is most familiar with it.

 

[Groucho]

I use a Spyder2Express and am fairly happy with it. Laptop LCD screens tend to be not ideal for photography though, what with their very limited view angles and such, but you should be able to definitely get it better. I usually calibrate laptops that I use as well and see a pretty serious difference.

 

[seashoreCM]

Calibration of TV sets and monitors differs for differing amounts of room lighting. This is more critical when trying to match the monitor with photo prints, the latter's appearance of course varies with room lighting.

If you can always look at the laptop screen (or LCD monitor screen) from the same angle, then the calibration will appear more consistent. While the screen may appear bright and legible over a wide angle, once we use the word "calibration", LCD displays may change with just a five degree difference in viewing angle.

The following chart may be used to see how well shadows and highlights are reproduced by your monitor. Adjust brightness to bring out the steps to the left (shadow detail). Adjust contrast to bring out the steps to the right (highlight detail). Some back and forth is usually needed too. Adjusting something called "gamma" will increase the contrast of the steps to the right at the risk of burying the steps to the left, or vice versa.

If you do get all the steps to reproduce on your monitor, buried shadows and blown highlights still seen were probably that way in the picture as taken. Inkjet printers on average will reproduce the chart a lot better than (color) laser printers although you will still lose a few steps.

 

[VVFF]

Which studio laptop? IIRC the largest one came with a decent screen with wide gamut.

First things first make sure whoever is printing the pictures knows about color management profiles for the printer. If she's not using those, then that's the first step.