Color management?

I have prints made by a well-known online photo printing service. Sometimes the prints are good and sometimes the brightness is off and occasionally the colors are off - a couple of times way off. I finally replaced my old monitor with a good LCD. Now I need to calibrate it.

I've been trying to read up on monitor calibration but still I only have a murky notion of how color calibration will solve my hit-or-miss uncalibrated effort. I do understand the concept of soft proofing, (I think.)

I have tentatively selected the Xrite Eye-One Display 2, $230 at B&H.

Is this my best choice? Is this all I will need or is additional hardware or software needed? Is there a better choice without getting outrageously expensive?

Buck, The Eye-1 and Xrite software are excellent, and should do a good job calibrating your monitor. However, there is one issue that seems to befuddle people: The prints are much darker than the display. My inderstanding is that LCD's are inherently brighter and more contrasty than CRT's. So the 'luminance' of the screen should be set to match your 'paper white'.

Here's a Thread from the LF Forum that discusses this.

Also, since the brightness/contrast and color appear to change due to viewing angle, be sure that you view the screen head-on.

EDIT: You might want to hop over to the Chromix website. They have a ton of info there about color management, and offer tools for sale, including the Eye-1

Regards,

-PB

Thanks for the link, Preston.

I was aware of the viewing angle problem with LCD monitors. My new monitor, an HP LP2465, is pretty good in this respect. The CRT it replaced was dark with its brightness at the highest setting. The new LCD is much brighter, even with the brightness set to 50 on a scale of 0-100.

What does your lab say about the variations, Buck? Are they blaming you entirely, or is there a bit of onus in their court? It will be supremely frustrating for you if you make the changes, but the problems persist. Certainly you'll be better armed for a fight with the lab, but fight you will.

Our principal lab recommends very clearcut monitor and calibration settings, and their QC is so good that they've called us with a heads ups for recalibration a couple of times when they saw our color wandering. And perhaps the biggest test of all, their smaller priints come off separate machines from their large prints, yet the two always match up when we receive mixed orders. Even months or years later, print reorders also always show up identical to the original prints.

We went through a couple of labs over these specific issues before finding our current one. It made us nuts, because clients were often on hand when the problem prints arrived. In their hearts most could accept our explanation of lab problems, but it nonetheless reflected poorly in us. And the problems caused us inordinate extra work and delay in deliveries.

Two BTW's:

We found our current lab by simultaneously sending "problem files" to a number of compeating labs.

And, we're also doing our work on LCDs (Apple), rather than CRTs.

Buck: I'll put in a plug for color eyes display pro software. I'm very happy with it. This is the second blog I have answered today and it is the second time I have recommended the "From Camera to Print" tutorials available on the Luminous Landscape site. (Mr. Reichman is going to have to put me on the payrole at this rate.) It provides a comprehensive review of the colour management process from, uh, camera to print and will save you much headache. Regards.

Thanks for the advice, Hank

I recently had them print a couple of 12"x18"s of a telephoto sunrise picture that a colleague dubbed "Jupiter Rising" because of the green bands across the sun in the print. As I said before, this is a well known online printer. My dealings with them have been primarily impersonal, through their website. The instructions on their website recommend calibration before sending them files to print, but not having what I needed to do the job, I sent them files without calibration. In that regard, I really have no one to blame, but myself. And I'm not looking to blame somebody.

I have only talked to the lab about my problems once. We haven't gotten confrontational. They urged me to calibrate the monitor and then try some test prints. So, that's what I'm trying to do.

Really, I'd rather deal with a local lab, face to face, but there isn't one in my town other than a couple I've already tried and passed on. I'm not going to be a high volume customer, so I don't expect red carpet treatment. I just want prints that look reasonably close to what I see on my monitor.

Because I am a complete newbie with color management, I just want to assure myself that I am making the best decisions in getting the right hardware/software to do the job. While I'm not a money-is-no-object kind of guy, I am willing to spend a bit more to get decent gear. In addition to avoiding mis-spending my money, I want to avoid the aggravation and waste of time of fiddling around with second rate equipment/software.

Your advice to send problem files to multiple labs, sounds like a great idea. I'll do it, but first I need to to the calibration thing.

thanks, again.

Thanks for the recommendations, Greg. I'll read the tutorial. I do prefer not to have headaches.

Edit: I bought and am now downloading the Luminous Landscape videos.

Another idea for a newbie to color management is to buy your equipment from a dealer who has experienced people in technical support. They can help answer your questions when they arise.