More Thanksgiving in the Sierras

This was taken down from a turn-off on highway 50 before Echo Summit.

I'm having a lot of trouble with calibrating my LCD monitor. The color is pretty accurate but the prints I'm making have much more contrast and saturation and are darker than the way they appear on the monitor.

Does this look okay on your screens?

4x5 200mm
Astia
Polarizer to keep relfections on the pond down.

- Dan.

Not sure about your print and monitor difference but it looks a bit washed out on my screen, which is calibrated. Now its hard to say weather the colors are indeed washed out or not in reality that only you can say. If you don't see washed out then your monitor probably is generating over-saturated colors. I have read somewhere that if your print are darker than what you see on the monitor then all likely the monitor isn't properly calibrated.

if you haven't gone through this before already, take a look at the target test chart, they are very helpful.
http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html


deb

It looks a bit flat and washed out to me too. However when I print it, it's darker, more contrasty and more saturated. I got a new computer with and LCD monitor a year ago and I still can't get it calibrated properly.

I'm assuming that it's the monitor because my printer and printer profiles have not changed.

- Dan

This version looks much better to me on my monitor, but prints way to dark.

this looks much better to me, atleast the colors aren't washed out. but if your prints are way darker then certainly its the gamma response that's likely the problem. you should profile your printer to match the monitor and generate your own custom printer profile instead of using the vanilla profiles. I think, this is needed since probably your monitor doesn't calibrate too well to match accurate gamma and colors your printer expects. that's the only way you can guarantee that your monitor matches the prints. the other thing to check about is the white luminance. Most of today's monitor are way too bright to do any print work.

I know these are frustrating but over time and spending countless hours, I could get over it :-)


deb

Dan, I really like the second one here. The leafless trees set this one up very nicely and are an excellent focal point too.
The fact that we shoot transparencies and scan them; isn't it just amazing how many variables we do have to deal with. I share with your frustrations on this subject, only too often I might add.

The first one looks flat, lacking contrast. The second one has more contrast and looks about right; both viewed on a calibrated monitor. I've been setting my apple cinema display to the following settings: Gamma 2.2, "native white point" for the color temperature, and 100 cd/m2 for the target luminance. This is per Eric Chan's website recommendations on monitor calibration for LCDs. I used to get dark prints w/ this cinema display until changed my calibration settings to naitive white point and 100 lums instead of the software recommended 120. doing this helped a lot. Good luck!
Nice peaceful image Dan.

I'm not sure I'm going to be much help here, because the first image posted looks spot on to me but I don't do any home printing to tell you whether what looks good on my screen also prints well. I like the warmer and deeper tones of the original post. The layers and variation of colors is just wonderful. I dread the day I'll have to configure my profile to match for both monitor and printer.