Monitor Calibration

[astral]

Most monitors have flaws, they may be too dark, too bright, or they may have a colour tint like green or blue.

All these problems can be easily fixed through Monitor Calibration Wizard.

It is an easy-to-use tool for calibrating the colours displayed by your monitor.

Having purchased a new notebook recently I have installed it

and thought a reminder to the forum might be a good idea.

[ThaidDown]

Many thanks for the link, as you say easy to use.

After set up, and comparing before and after, the differentiation between similar colours was greatly improved, thanks again..

[BangkokImages]

Because this post is in the photography section it might be good to go over what this program does for you, and what it doesn't.

In a traditional "profiling" or "calibration" package you have two things. A hardware colorimeter or spectrometer, and software. The software uses the hardware device to read what colors the colorimeter/spectrometer "sees" as it's placed directly on the screen, and then a series of brightness, contrast, and colors are put on the screen. The program knows these colors meet the selected standard (sRGB, Adobe98, ProPhoto, etc), and the colorimeter sees and records another set of colors, compares them to the standard, and then creates a "profile" which compensates for the difference between the standard and what the colorimeter/spectrometer sees. This profile is automatically loaded each time you boot your machine.

What this referenced small program does, is basically the same thing, but it's using your eyes as a reference to see the differences between a standard and what is displayed on your screen. The problem with this, is that learning how to accurately see color with any degree of accuracy is not something a normal human can do. I've been working with calibrated and profiled workstation displays for decades and I can't do it.

So.. what is this program good for? It can make your screen appear more accurate for games, general usage, and even images that you print yourself on your own printer. You can "eyeball" the color differences, it will build a profile that boots when you load the program.. and you can adjust this until what you see on your screen is close to what comes off your printer. Everyone is different and sees and/or accepts a different level of accuracy, but I'm sure this is fine for your casual user.

What it isn't good for is if you'll be posting your photos on the web and you desire for others to see the same colors you see.. or if you'll be sending your files out to a photolab for printing. Photolabs use standards, usually sRGB, and if you only adjust "by eye" their profile will probably be different and the differences can be from slight, to really heavy. It all depends. Which is the point, without a standard and a way to calibrate to that standard, you don't know where you are now, and what you're adjusting the image to. Of course it only matters if you output your images to web or lab, but it's good to understand the differences.

Color profiling/calibration is in fact a very complicated subject and photography forums are filled with such discussions (and their share of heated arguments). It doesn't need to be complicated if you understand a few basics, and not everyone needs to professionally generated profile. But when you do need one there is no substitute. With this in mind I wrote a small series of articles about monitors and color profiling which might answer questions you may have.

Monitor Basics

Gamuts, Color Profiling, and the Internet

[Tywais]

What it isn't good for is if you'll be posting your photos on the web and you desire for others to see the same colors you see..

I know I'm stating the obvious, but even if you have your color calibration perfect using something like a Spyder the majority of viewers of the web page will not be calibrated the same and not see the same colors as the corrected ones. This was not for you Bangkokimages as your knowledge in these matters is significant, just to clarify for others.

[BangkokImages]

What it isn't good for is if you'll be posting your photos on the web and you desire for others to see the same colors you see..

I know I'm stating the obvious, but even if you have your color calibration perfect using something like a Spyderthe majority of viewers of the web page will not be calibrated the same and not see the same colors as the corrected ones. This was not for you Bangkokimages as your knowledge in these matters is significant, just to clarify for others.

You are right in pointing this out. Let me expand on this a bit.

It is true, the greater majority of people viewing your images (on amatuer websites, on photography websites you can flip this stat around) will be viewing with uncalibrated montiors. Yet, there is more to it.

The web started out as sRGB (much of this is explained in my Gamuts, Color Profiling, and The Internet article) and remains so today with few changes. Computer monitors and video cards have always loosely aimed to provide a default sRGB output right from the assembly line. Some have been exceptional, most are significantly off.

Today, as monitors improve and video cards and operating systems improve, we are much closer to a goal of all being on the same page where color is concerned without having to profile.

Using a scale of 1-10, ten years ago an average computer probably achieved 3-4 out of 10 towards meeting an sRGB gamut. 10 years ago very few monitors supported more than 60% of the sRGB gamut and laptops significantly less.. so depending on where in the gamut you pulled your 60% you could be "kinda" on, or way off. Today, monitors almost routinely support 90-110% of the sRGB gamut, a huge improvement. And they've improved on the "factory calibration" so computers are now probably getting a 7-8 vs. the 3-4 from years past. Not bad, but not ideal either.

A Imac, many high end laptops, most of the new Ultrabooks, they're all pretty good where it comes to color.

What this means, is that if you can profile your monitor to sRGB and get less than 10% away from perfection, then you're putting out a good image 'most' people with modern equipment will interprety with roughly 70% accuracy. However, if you didn't profile your monitor as the one making the image, you might only get without 30% accuracy and the variance for the unprofiled viewer might only allow him to 50% vs. the 70% if you profiled.

Of course this is all about averages as we can't know for sure what any one monitor is doing other than our own.. but I hope I've explained this well enough so you can see the advantages of profiling your images for the web.

And then there are the online photolabs, Blurb and other picture book makers, and basically all the products you can order with your images. The printers and machines making these products are painstakingly calibrated on a regular basis which helps reduce returns for bad color. This doesn't count in Thailand.. the stories I could tell..

There is so much more to this topic.. for instance, even when you're calibrated to sRGB for the web, why do most people see a signifcant difference when viewing their image in Lightroom for instance, as compared to seeing it posted on someone else's site vs. their web browser? I tried to explain most of this in my two articles, but to summarize you have browser variations in what they can detect and display, different programs are 'color managed' and others aren't, you're often using 3-4 imaging programs in your workflow and often 1 or more of these programs aren't color managed. and then there's your video card and monitor...

Let's say you buy an expensive monitor that claims to meet 100% of the sRGB gamut. Most people would think this is cool, all they need. Yet, 99% of such monitors also throw our "out of gamut" casts in addition to 100% of the gamut (just like a cheap monitor only displaying 60% of the gamut can do) and you'll see these casts.. they'll make your image appear one way in a color managed application like Photoshop or Lightroom, and a very different way once uploaded to the web and viewed in browser. This is the part of color management which has been driving pros nuts for years, and it's why a big part of my business is profiling/calibrating for other pros, usually reporters and event photographers who need to upload a profiled image via the internet.

Thankfully, NEC and Eizo each has a really good solution, but you'll need to spend big to get there. Basically they have advanced circuitry internal to their monitors which effectively "clamp down" on your selected gamut to ensure no stray color casts escape. And by using an external LUT (look up table) they're taking video card variances out of the equation. These monitors are a godsend. Now, instead of maintaining 5 workstations which are each calibrated for one of the five gamuts I regularly use in my business, I only need one workstation because these monitors allow you to switch between 5+ gamuts (profiled gamuts) with the click of a mouse. Fantastic technology.

Back to this utility originally posted. If you're not making files to be used to make prints, and you're not posting images to the web where it matters how accurate you are, then this program will allow you to quickly and easily get a better looking picutre on your screen. But do understand it's limitations.