Best Monitor Calibration Tool?
- Thread starter JustinB
- Start date
well there's a lot of software tools out there, including the monitor calibration wizard. However, to really calibrate a monitor properly and get some excellent colour accuracy, you'll need a hardware colorimeter really. Something like the Lacie Blue Eye Pro, or Gretag MacBeth pacakage, but they don't come cheap at about £200 - 250 
Soldato
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- 22 Sep 2005
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- Manchester
can you 'hire' those tools ?
Associate
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- 24 Jul 2006
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I have the spyder2 express, works great, cheap to - £50 does the job.
And its good to keep, as you will alwasy need to re-cal after windows re-install or overtime.
And its good to keep, as you will alwasy need to re-cal after windows re-install or overtime.
Cheers for the replys, i used to use the one in MCE but i only have pro installed now so cant use it. Also the one in nVidia graphics drivers isnt accurate.
I dont do much photo work so not really worth spending that sort of amount to get 100% accurate colours
Thanks
I dont do much photo work so not really worth spending that sort of amount to get 100% accurate colours
Thanks
I use the Adobe Gamma Monitor which came with PhotoShop.
I once read that a good way to calibrate the monitor to the printer (to ensure that what you see on the screen is the same as the print-out) was to create your artwork print it off at the highest level and then adjust your monitor so that the picture on your monitor and the print-out are the same.
Any views on that one?
I once read that a good way to calibrate the monitor to the printer (to ensure that what you see on the screen is the same as the print-out) was to create your artwork print it off at the highest level and then adjust your monitor so that the picture on your monitor and the print-out are the same.
Any views on that one?
Unless you are someone who relies on truly accurate colours for commercial or personal purposes, software calibration works fine. If your clientele sees your work on their own monitors, you might as well continue to use software calibration as there's no way of ensuring that your client's monitor is as accurately calibrated as yours*.
If you're printing your work out, then you can justify spending out on a hardware calibration unit. But then you need to go the whole hog and look into ICC profiles and suchlike.
Belly; good idea, but flawed in practice. Unless you can guarantee that what you've 'created' is 100% accurate in colour and your printer is 100% accurate at reproducing those colours, adjusting your monitor to match would be a waste of time.
*Unless you are dealing with skin tones - these really need to be accurate and hardware calibration is generally the only route.
If you're printing your work out, then you can justify spending out on a hardware calibration unit. But then you need to go the whole hog and look into ICC profiles and suchlike.
Belly; good idea, but flawed in practice. Unless you can guarantee that what you've 'created' is 100% accurate in colour and your printer is 100% accurate at reproducing those colours, adjusting your monitor to match would be a waste of time.
*Unless you are dealing with skin tones - these really need to be accurate and hardware calibration is generally the only route.
Belly said:
I've just bought a new printer and the images it's printing don't match the image on the screen.Could you talk me through how to calibrate using Adobe? I have looked in various setting menus and came across colour settings under the edit tab,this then gives you the option to change the monitor RGB to Adobe RGB (1998) and other options.I noticed that under my printer setting I also have the Adobe (1998) setting.
Am I barking up the right tree here or not?
I'm sat behind my CRT at the moment and pushing the buttons on my Dell monitor it shows 100% brightness. It's a while since I "Set-up" my own ICC using Adobe and each time I tweek it I always just follow my nose!
If after setting up your profile you save it eg, "Belly 27 Oct 06" it then loads on every start-up, you can check this in msconfig. As your computer starts up you should notice a visual change as the programs in the system tray start to load.
Any adjustments you need to make in the future would be made to the saved profile, eg Belly 27 Oct 06.
Adjusting the sliders in Adobe makes viewable differences as you go along, so I can't see your problem.
I haven't got my laptop (1600 x 1200) with me at the moment but I know I wasn't able to set it up as easily as my desktop with CRT. (Brightness and Contras settings just have an up and down arrow on one of the top row keys)
Hope this helps
If after setting up your profile you save it eg, "Belly 27 Oct 06" it then loads on every start-up, you can check this in msconfig. As your computer starts up you should notice a visual change as the programs in the system tray start to load.
Any adjustments you need to make in the future would be made to the saved profile, eg Belly 27 Oct 06.
Adjusting the sliders in Adobe makes viewable differences as you go along, so I can't see your problem.
I haven't got my laptop (1600 x 1200) with me at the moment but I know I wasn't able to set it up as easily as my desktop with CRT. (Brightness and Contras settings just have an up and down arrow on one of the top row keys)
Hope this helps
thaks for reply.
What I meant was on the first set up screen it askes you to set contrast to maximum,then adjust the brightness untill you are happy with the box it is showing.
You then do further adjustments and save the new setting.My point is that the contrast is still set to max,so if you then reduce the contrast (which you need to do as it looks awful) then you are not actually using that saved profile.
Hope you get my drift?
Also,how do I then use that profile setting in relation to the printer?
The printer offers 4 settings:
driver matching
ICM standard windows
ICM Adobe RGB 1998
none
(default is driver matching)
What I meant was on the first set up screen it askes you to set contrast to maximum,then adjust the brightness untill you are happy with the box it is showing.
You then do further adjustments and save the new setting.My point is that the contrast is still set to max,so if you then reduce the contrast (which you need to do as it looks awful) then you are not actually using that saved profile.
Hope you get my drift?
Also,how do I then use that profile setting in relation to the printer?
The printer offers 4 settings:
driver matching
ICM standard windows
ICM Adobe RGB 1998
none
(default is driver matching)
Yep, on checking my CRT monitor it is still set to 100% contrast, which I set separate from Adobe Gamma and after running through the wizard I had no need to adjust the contrast and as I said it still shows 100%.
You then have to follow the wizard, in my case on my CRT I adjusted the brightness button until the black box on the adobe gamma wizard was nearly black and the frame was bright white, if you toggle the button you should observe changes, then try and do as it asks...
next Phosphors......... I got this from my Dell manual
next, I un-ticked View single gamma only and did the three manual adjustments and my widows default is 2.20 (I think it is difficult to decide when the centre box fades into the patterned frame, but........)
next Hardware White Point again from the manual but I seem to remember it measured on my laptop.
next adjusted white point: Same as the hardware, maybe your manual states something different?
next, click before and after to view your changes and click finish.
That should do it you then save your profile.
For me setting the contrast to 100% has had no adverse affects, perhaps you should do it at 100 save it as Steve 1, then set your monitor's contrast to 95%, do the wizard and save as Steve 2 and so on?
Regarding your printer settings I really haven't got a clue, I do my artwork in PhotoShop CS (not CS2) and on print preview I have Color (Colour) Management, Source Space: Document Adobe RGB (1998) and under Print Space, I've selected Printer Color Management and it works for me.
I certainly get a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) on my CRT and Desktop and darker prints from my laptop I think this is because the CRT gives a better (brighter) picture than my laptop at 1600 x 1200.
You could start a thread in the photo section "How do I adjust my monitor for printing photos" ? There are a lot of good guys (RP Stewart etc)on that forum who have a better technical knowledge than a country boy like me.
There are many places on the WWW where you can find information about why your prints don't look the same as they do on your monitor, I've found this sight informative: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/
Hope this is of some help to you, hey keep smiling
You then have to follow the wizard, in my case on my CRT I adjusted the brightness button until the black box on the adobe gamma wizard was nearly black and the frame was bright white, if you toggle the button you should observe changes, then try and do as it asks...
next Phosphors......... I got this from my Dell manual
next, I un-ticked View single gamma only and did the three manual adjustments and my widows default is 2.20 (I think it is difficult to decide when the centre box fades into the patterned frame, but........)
next Hardware White Point again from the manual but I seem to remember it measured on my laptop.
next adjusted white point: Same as the hardware, maybe your manual states something different?
next, click before and after to view your changes and click finish.
That should do it you then save your profile.
For me setting the contrast to 100% has had no adverse affects, perhaps you should do it at 100 save it as Steve 1, then set your monitor's contrast to 95%, do the wizard and save as Steve 2 and so on?
Regarding your printer settings I really haven't got a clue, I do my artwork in PhotoShop CS (not CS2) and on print preview I have Color (Colour) Management, Source Space: Document Adobe RGB (1998) and under Print Space, I've selected Printer Color Management and it works for me.
I certainly get a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) on my CRT and Desktop and darker prints from my laptop I think this is because the CRT gives a better (brighter) picture than my laptop at 1600 x 1200.
You could start a thread in the photo section "How do I adjust my monitor for printing photos" ? There are a lot of good guys (RP Stewart etc)on that forum who have a better technical knowledge than a country boy like me.
There are many places on the WWW where you can find information about why your prints don't look the same as they do on your monitor, I've found this sight informative: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/
Hope this is of some help to you, hey keep smiling
