Posted by Barbara Graham on September 27, 2010 at 6:29 PM
I took my laptop to North Carolina a couple of weeks ago and saw what my images looked like on that monitor and and ended up getting Topaz deNoise for noise. Now I'm back home and instead of just using one monitor I have my external monitor and my laptop monitor both being used. Now I see that the difference in color, particularly purples and blues, is huge. On my external monitor a deep purple/blue flower is very, very bright, and on my laptop monitor it almost looks boring, so two extremes, where something in the middle would be great. :D
I'm checking out color calibration now, both on here and through Google. I don't do this to make money, don't need to calibrate for prints and really don't want hardware, but I just did a little minor calibration using the NVIDIA control panel and the display on this page: http://www.displaycalibration.com/color_depth.html. I'm going to keep researching, though.
But my question for you is, when you color calibrate your own monitor you really have no way of knowing what something is going to look like to someone else on a monitor (as opposed to if you calibrate for prints), so is there any way to deal with that? Thank you.
Posted by Richard Ditch on September 27, 2010 at 7:34 PM
But my question for you is, when you color calibrate your own monitor you really have no way of knowing what something is going to look like to someone else on a monitor (as opposed to if you calibrate for prints), so is there any way to deal with that?
No.
But by calibrating your own monitor and working to that standard you are more likely to have your image display properly on the monitor of someone else serious enough about photography to have calibrated their own monitor.
"But my question for you is, when you color calibrate your own monitor you really have no way of knowing what something is going to look like to someone else on a monitor (as opposed to if you calibrate for prints), so is there any way to deal with that?"
Simple answer is "no". As you've discovered, the same image on different monitors can look quite different. Now, multiply that by the vast number of screens out there, and you can see the magnitude of the issue.
I have a calibrated monitor and am set up for printing my images. I know they may look different on another monitor, so I really don't worry too much about it: I'm more concerned with the print quality.
--P
Posted by Lon Overacker on September 28, 2010 at 1:13 PM
But my question for you is, when you color calibrate your own monitor you really have no way of knowing what something is going to look like to someone else on a monitor
Not withstanding your own calibration, there is another aspect of this to consider. Adding on to what Preston said about the vast number of monitors out there, we also need to understand web browsers too.
In a nutshell, you should be saving your jpg images with the sRGB profile. It's fine to work with them on your machine in color spaces like Adobe RGB 1998, but before posting on the web, convert to the sRGB color space. It's unfortunate, but all web browsers are NOT color aware, like Internet Explorer, IE, and therefore if your image is RGB it will look different in IE as opposed to Firefox. So, for example, your recent "Smokies Moon" image did not have a color profile of "sRGB" and will likely look different in different browsers as well.
So, you can cut some of the issues in half as far as how things look on other monitors (which also may mean browsers too) by converting the image to sRGB.
Discussion
3 repliesI'm checking out color calibration now, both on here and through Google. I don't do this to make money, don't need to calibrate for prints and really don't want hardware, but I just did a little minor calibration using the NVIDIA control panel and the display on this page: http://www.displaycalibration.com/color_depth.html. I'm going to keep researching, though.
But my question for you is, when you color calibrate your own monitor you really have no way of knowing what something is going to look like to someone else on a monitor (as opposed to if you calibrate for prints), so is there any way to deal with that? Thank you.
No.
But by calibrating your own monitor and working to that standard you are more likely to have your image display properly on the monitor of someone else serious enough about photography to have calibrated their own monitor.
Simple answer is "no". As you've discovered, the same image on different monitors can look quite different. Now, multiply that by the vast number of screens out there, and you can see the magnitude of the issue.
I have a calibrated monitor and am set up for printing my images. I know they may look different on another monitor, so I really don't worry too much about it: I'm more concerned with the print quality.
--P
Not withstanding your own calibration, there is another aspect of this to consider. Adding on to what Preston said about the vast number of monitors out there, we also need to understand web browsers too.
In a nutshell, you should be saving your jpg images with the sRGB profile. It's fine to work with them on your machine in color spaces like Adobe RGB 1998, but before posting on the web, convert to the sRGB color space. It's unfortunate, but all web browsers are NOT color aware, like Internet Explorer, IE, and therefore if your image is RGB it will look different in IE as opposed to Firefox. So, for example, your recent "Smokies Moon" image did not have a color profile of "sRGB" and will likely look different in different browsers as well.
So, you can cut some of the issues in half as far as how things look on other monitors (which also may mean browsers too) by converting the image to sRGB.
Hope that makes sense.
Lon