Calibrating a laptop Monitor?

I figure a laptop is not the best way to go about post processing images. But that's what I have my software on, and will be my means of pp for the foreseeable future. I was wondering if it's a good idea, or not worth the effort to calibrate it's monitor? Any suggestions on what calibration tool to use? Up until the recent past, I always got back prints that looked like I processed them. I never had to use profiles. I just sent them off and they came back fine. Now I get a lot of inconsistant results. Mostly with oversaturation. Thanks for any suggestions.

Chris

I am using a calibrated Dell Vostro laptop. Of course colors are still not as good as when you are using a Calibrated Eizo or Lacie screen on a desktop, but it sure pays of to take the effort and calibrate your laptop monitor. It makes a big difference.
I used my spyder colorvision 2 to do the job. Besides backlighting there are no controls to adjust contrast, brightness, colors, ... so I just went trough the calibration wizard and didn't adjust anything.

For calibrating a laptop screen with no controls, there's no reason to spend a great deal of money on the hardware. A $60 Spyder2Express will do the job well.

I just sent them off and they came back fine. Now I get a lot of inconsistant results.

What are you doing differently to cause this to occur? A calibrated monitor won't necessarily be the 'fix' for this particular problem.

Yes, it does make sense. There's really no difference from a laptop to a desktop in terms of colour accuracy of an uncalibrated system. Laptops don't have any magic ability to render colour better than desktop displays so calibrating is important.

Even after calibration, things won't look the same as on a good desktop display. You're going to be faced with higher contrast and less brightness range (i.e., darker areas will be darker, brighter areas will be brighter). When you calibrate, try to make a mental note of the position of the screen relative to your eye level and the screen angle. Try to keep this as close to a constant as you can if you're using the laptop in a different environment.

I use an Acer on the road and I've got to the point where I'm pretty comfortable with the differences between it and my desktop display so I can have a reasonable degree of confidence that what I do on the laptop is accurate.

As for your prints coming back fine without a profile in the past, was this with a calibrated desktop display? If so, that's the reason why. If you're working in a properly colour corrected environment then short of soft proofing, you should be seeing colours accurately so what you get back from the lab will be accurate. The lab will apply the necessary profile. You would only use the lab's profile for soft proofing. If you're now working in a non-colour corrected environment on your laptop with the inherent problems of laptop screens, that could explain the printing problems you're experiencing.

It will certainly help a bit, but you will never see all the tonal gradations and subtle color differences. The typical laptop display can only show 6 bits per color or a total of 262,144 different colors, while a CRT or photo editing grade LCD will display 8 bits per color or 16,777,216 colors. The colors that are not directly displayed in the 6 bit screen will be dithered, or approximated, more or less closely to what should be there. You will see dot patterns, wierd colors and other things instead of what you would expect. In a recent situation a friend emailed me an image that contained a great deal of blue sky, with dust specs clearly evident on my CRT. I emailed the friend, advising him that he should consider having his sensor cleaned. He thought I was crazy, that he did not see any such dust specs on his images displayed on his Dell laptop screen. The following day he went to work and viewed his images on a CRT and promptly called me to apologize for all the mean things he was thinking about me - he was finally able to see the specks. If I can't see dust specks on an image I have to wonder how much more information I am missing out on.

It would make good sense to purchase a CRT to do photo editing and connect it to your laptop. Then calibration would make a lot more sense and you will end up with more consistent results.

Hi Chris,

Let me push you a little bit. I'd like to see you even get some basic cheap-o desktop LCD that you can plug into your laptop, instead of doing all your post processing on the laptop only. Besides the limit of tonal gradations, the color gamut of the vast majority of laptops is considerably smaller than even a $200 LCD. That might be the cause of your saturation inconsistencies. A typical laptop cannot produce the saturated colors that even a bargain basement LCD can. Also get a colorimeter that will allow you to calibrate both.

Here's a visual of what I'm talking about: A new MacBook laptop display vs. an inexpensive LCD. The multi-colored wireframe is the LCD and the gray blob in the middle is the laptop.
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Image:Laptop.jpg

That's an impressive image, Patrick. Thanks for posting it.

Are CRT's even available anymore? My impression is that they are largely gone from the market, at a price and level us normal mortals can use and afford.

Dan, there are a few CRTs still available. I think NEC still makes some and maybe Eizo.