How do i know if my monitor can be calibrated?


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godzilla60

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Nov 25, 2005
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Hi everyone...

wanna find out how do i know if my monitor can be calibrated with tools like spyder3? Am using a LCD monitor Samsung Syncmaster 920nw currently...dun wanna spend $$ to get a calibrator only to find out my monitor can't be calibrated....:embrass:

thanks...
 

You need to be able to adjust the basic settings of the monitor, minimum would be: brightness and contrast. Better if you can also adjust the colour temperature (measured in K [Kelvin]) and the three basic colours (Red, Green, Blue) as well.
 

You need to be able to adjust the basic settings of the monitor, minimum would be: brightness and contrast. Better if you can also adjust the colour temperature (measured in K [Kelvin]) and the three basic colours (Red, Green, Blue) as well.

mmm... i can adjust brightness, contrast, three basic colors.....but color temperature, they only let me select warm, cool, natural or custom....surprisingly custom cannot change (or i dun know how...)....but i realised that the driver comes with an ICC profile which can be selected from vista for my monitor

are these sufficient?
 

mmm... i can adjust brightness, contrast, three basic colors.....but color temperature, they only let me select warm, cool, natural or custom....surprisingly custom cannot change (or i dun know how...)....but i realised that the driver comes with an ICC profile which can be selected from vista for my monitor

are these sufficient?

If your vista has the ICC profile for you to use it be fine in most cases. On top of that...quite a number of monitors I know has got some quite detailed calibration tools that they give you along with the monitor you buy.

In the first place, how serious are your colour accuracy need? Are you just a casual home user, a serious hobbist and make lots of print copies and do semi-pro work?, A professional photographer and/or graphic designer that need the accuracy for media reproduction work with suppliers ..ie..commercial printers, banner makers..etc. I personally find it a waste of money for people in the first category to spend money on getting one of those calibration sotfware/hardware spyder thingy. But if you are one of those really hardcore who are really into it and have it have one ...and you have been shooting photos for at least a year or more then maybe you do. But don't get it just because you keep hearing people talk about it here and get too carried away with it. To really make full use of such expensive calibration tools it is not just about the tool, a good monitor is needed so that it perfromance is always consistent ( if not you going to be calibrating alot of times) and you have to ensure the proper lighting in your room is archieve and it can not change too much. The ambient lighting can also effect howyour eyes see colours on your monitor. So if you want to talk about being anally accurate perfectionist... well I say go get one.

But for most of us in the graphic design and advertising...colour accuracy and the way to get it is not all hitech but some black magic and guess work too. Many a time even if you have accurately map out your home system to show you the same accurate colours you shot IS the same colour you see on your PC...you can never be sure if the supplier you send it out for reproduction will be printing or producing the image in the same accurate colour you see. If that was really so, alot of graphic designers will not be tearing their hair out sometime over colour separation and proofing. Also, there will always be a need to compromise on the colour depending on what media it ends up. You PC screem will always show you the best and widest colour range but for example when you sent it out for 4 colour printing alot of those pop colours will not come out well. Some colours will seem more wash out. That is becasue difference mediums has difference ways of illuminating that photo to your eye.

Also another thing... you sure you have a great sense of colour? Not everyone's sense of looking at colour is the same. There are very slight variations too. So think about it. Do you really need to be that particular when the most conventional ways of calibrating with tools that comes with your monitor or some online free calibration tool will more then be enough for you?

If someone keeps telling you that you really need one.. well if you got it and don't like it..sell it to him at the same price you pay for it for infecting you with the BBB virus heheheh...
 

All monitors can be calibrated, because the calibration profile is controlled and applied at the operating system level. The question is to what extent can the monitor be calibrated. However, as to how much the calibration will improve the colour from your monitor depends on the colour gamut that your monitor is capable of displaying.

Also, what Sammy888 said about printers and external parties is correct. Just because you calibrate does not mean that they do so, or that their calibration is consistent with yours (although to a large extent, if they did calibrate properly, the colours you see should be in the same ballpark as what they see). Even between different monitors, the colours may still look different after calibration because each monitor's colour gamut is different.

But if you can afford to do so, do calibrate your monitor. I think at the very least, it gives you confidence that you are not the source of the problem when there is a dispute over the output you are producing. Also, when other people who also calibrate their monitors see your photos, they should be able to see more or less the same colours that you intended.
 

I second the words of sammy888 and plato. After trying some free tools I got already quite good results in terms of profiling. For the average shooter that's enough. The average photolab will use their own correction settings anyway and the efforts you put into the colour adjustments might be wasted to a certain extend. I had such an experience: the "standard improvements" done by the print lab (despite my request not to do any adjustments) have ruined everything. So profiling is ok but for serious work you need to have full control over the whole chain / process flow.
If you have already an ICC profile for your monitor then use this and check with some of the online calibration pages for reference. There are charts that you can download to compare for yourself. The ICC profile is fine but brightness and contrast need manual adjustment, though. If you feel ok with that then go ahead. If you happen to have friends who own a profiling device then you can try for yourself and see how far off you are with the standard ICC profile.
Based on what you describe you can give it a try with hardware profiling tools. Read the manual carefully.
 

If your vista has the ICC profile for you to use it be fine in most cases. On top of that...quite a number of monitors I know has got some quite detailed calibration tools that they give you along with the monitor you buy.

In the first place, how serious are your colour accuracy need? Are you just a casual home user, a serious hobbist and make lots of print copies and do semi-pro work?, A professional photographer and/or graphic designer that need the accuracy for media reproduction work with suppliers ..ie..commercial printers, banner makers..etc. I personally find it a waste of money for people in the first category to spend money on getting one of those calibration sotfware/hardware spyder thingy. But if you are one of those really hardcore who are really into it and have it have one ...and you have been shooting photos for at least a year or more then maybe you do. But don't get it just because you keep hearing people talk about it here and get too carried away with it. To really make full use of such expensive calibration tools it is not just about the tool, a good monitor is needed so that it perfromance is always consistent ( if not you going to be calibrating alot of times) and you have to ensure the proper lighting in your room is archieve and it can not change too much. The ambient lighting can also effect howyour eyes see colours on your monitor. So if you want to talk about being anally accurate perfectionist... well I say go get one.

But for most of us in the graphic design and advertising...colour accuracy and the way to get it is not all hitech but some black magic and guess work too. Many a time even if you have accurately map out your home system to show you the same accurate colours you shot IS the same colour you see on your PC...you can never be sure if the supplier you send it out for reproduction will be printing or producing the image in the same accurate colour you see. If that was really so, alot of graphic designers will not be tearing their hair out sometime over colour separation and proofing. Also, there will always be a need to compromise on the colour depending on what media it ends up. You PC screem will always show you the best and widest colour range but for example when you sent it out for 4 colour printing alot of those pop colours will not come out well. Some colours will seem more wash out. That is becasue difference mediums has difference ways of illuminating that photo to your eye.

Also another thing... you sure you have a great sense of colour? Not everyone's sense of looking at colour is the same. There are very slight variations too. So think about it. Do you really need to be that particular when the most conventional ways of calibrating with tools that comes with your monitor or some online free calibration tool will more then be enough for you?

If someone keeps telling you that you really need one.. well if you got it and don't like it..sell it to him at the same price you pay for it for infecting you with the BBB virus heheheh...

haha....wow...that is one HUGE chunk of advice. :thumbsup:

I am not buying it to be a hobbyist...haha. U gotta be a rich hobbyist to just buy for hobby. I am planning to go into semi-pro work and need color accuracy (but not the perfectionist type). Simply said, I need black to be black, etc...

The reason why i am thinking of getting it is because sometimes I see it on my screen as good but when printing at home, the colors are a bit different (black becomes brown), the pic turns out darker, etc... so am concerned whether my monitor is sufficiently calibrated to ensure that the pic displays 99% the same on all sufficiently calibrated monitors.

I may print out my pics on media but that I will leave to the printer as long as my pic display well on their monitor, i expect 99% same image...so the onus is on them to calibrate their printer and media.....(i guess that's how it works?)

So...what do you suggest for my needs?
 

All monitors can be calibrated, because the calibration profile is controlled and applied at the operating system level. The question is to what extent can the monitor be calibrated. However, as to how much the calibration will improve the colour from your monitor depends on the colour gamut that your monitor is capable of displaying.

Also, what Sammy888 said about printers and external parties is correct. Just because you calibrate does not mean that they do so, or that their calibration is consistent with yours (although to a large extent, if they did calibrate properly, the colours you see should be in the same ballpark as what they see). Even between different monitors, the colours may still look different after calibration because each monitor's colour gamut is different.

But if you can afford to do so, do calibrate your monitor. I think at the very least, it gives you confidence that you are not the source of the problem when there is a dispute over the output you are producing. Also, when other people who also calibrate their monitors see your photos, they should be able to see more or less the same colours that you intended.

woo...that summarises my concern and intention to get the monitor calibrator....but the question is ... what type suits me?
 

I second the words of sammy888 and plato. After trying some free tools I got already quite good results in terms of profiling. For the average shooter that's enough. The average photolab will use their own correction settings anyway and the efforts you put into the colour adjustments might be wasted to a certain extend. I had such an experience: the "standard improvements" done by the print lab (despite my request not to do any adjustments) have ruined everything. So profiling is ok but for serious work you need to have full control over the whole chain / process flow.
If you have already an ICC profile for your monitor then use this and check with some of the online calibration pages for reference. There are charts that you can download to compare for yourself. The ICC profile is fine but brightness and contrast need manual adjustment, though. If you feel ok with that then go ahead. If you happen to have friends who own a profiling device then you can try for yourself and see how far off you are with the standard ICC profile.
Based on what you describe you can give it a try with hardware profiling tools. Read the manual carefully.

mmmm... any examples of such pages? I will like to keep cost low if possible too....ah hahaha
 

mmmm... any examples of such pages? I will like to keep cost low if possible too....ah hahaha

If you want to save money you need to put in a bit more time for reading :)
Useful links
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/calibrating.htm
http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=296149

As software tool I have used Monitor Calibration Wizard: http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp
 

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