Colour Balance Advice needed & REPOST

Hi All

Wasn't really sure which forum to post this on as i is not particulary a critique required on the bird/composition as it is only a chaffinch on a stick. What I am looking for is some advice on colour balance etc. I recalibrated by monitor and laptop (using spyder 3 pro)and now on both it looks spot on however I had some test prints done ( I dont do my own printing) and they were very cool looking and seemed to lack vibrance in the greens and yellows, slightly puzzled on what to do next.

Was hoping that some of you who have there monitors calibrated and know the calibration is correct would be able to comment on the balance.

Looking at your potings theyseem good on my monitor soI am now really confused.
Thanks in advance

Shaun
Looking at this on my laptop it looks almost monochrome.
I.ll have a look on the main one later.
JohnR
Edit.
It looks just the same on my other set up- hardly any colour at all.
I should wait for some comments from others for a while.
Cheers
JR

Thanks John suddenly realised that I had also menat to post this image that has more colur vibrance

Hi they both look fine, you need to know what colour profile the printer is using and change your prints profile to match it.

Phil.

Shaun - both of your pics look fine. However I'm using a Mac with a colour profile aware browser called Safari.The pics you have posted have an Adobe RGB(98) profile attached. On non colour profile aware browsers your pics will look really washed out. Like JR found. Pics for the web should have an SRGB profile attached.

I suspect your printing problems are also to do with not using the appropriate printer colour profile.

John

Hi Shaun,

As John states for display on the web using non colour profile aware browsers you are better of converting to sRGB with Black Point compensation enabled.

Are you using a commercial printer? If so they may have the correct profile for their equipment, it is probably best to speak to them so as to avoid many of the pitfalls involved in printing (double profiles etc)

Cheers

Phil

If you are supplying your image file to the printer in the aRGD colour space, it is basically up to the printer to apply the proper profile for the equipment, paper and inks being used to produce the print. The printer should be able to supply you with a profile that you can use to softproof your image (i.e. see how it is going to look when printed). You can then adjust the image to compensate for any loss of colour/saturation/vibrance that is going to occur as a result of printing on that printer and with that paper. You will still not get an exact match between the print and the screen image though, due to the print being viewed by reflected light and the screen image being produced by transmitted light; they should be close though, the main difference usually being that, without adjustment, the print is a bit darker in the midtones. I usually raise the midtones (128 midpoint in curves) in the print file by 10 or so to get a good match between the print brightness and the unadjusted screen image.

Another reason why you might not be getting a good match is that your monitor has been calibrated with the brightness too high.

Thanks everybody for the advice so far I have once again recalibrated the monitor and reset my colour space for posting to the web and this seems to have improved things, as always with these things it is a combination of small thing that add up to one bigger problem - so feel that I am about half way there.

For good print matching you generally want to target 90 - 100 cd/m2 as your screen luminance. Most monitors that aren't purpose built for color critical work and you may therefore have trouble getting it down to these levels. If so then try at least to get the brightness down to around 120 cd/m2.