Colour Profiles, Monitor Settings Etc

[Stacy]

Morning!

I was wondering if you guys would mind helping me understand how I should be setting my monitor up and which colour profiles I should be using. Bearing in mind i don't have the spare money to buy a monitor calibration setup right now i'm going to have to make do for the time being with the monitors settings themselves.

I've always felt that my images when printed out seemed darker and more saturated than they did on the screen. Thinking it was my printer I would just lighten them to the point they looked washed out and then reprint, repeating until I was happy with the print. Having recently been given a new printer it does exactly the same so I'm guessing its my monitor that might be at fault.

I'll be very honest and say that I have tried to research this on the internet but it's going over my head and there are so many different opinions I'm getting a little lost.

I thought if I were to ask for help here I could get a dialogue going and be able to ask for clarification.

Currently I'm using an iMac running Mavericks which is set to Adobe RGB (1998) under the display settings.

I'm not doing any professional work where I need to check colours with clients or anything for the time being I just wish my printed images looked more like they do on screen.

thanks in advance for any help you might be able to pass my way.
Stacy

 

[chrisdesign]

Hi Stacy

If you follow these screenshots (only the important ones are shown here), you can calibrate your monitor visually quite good. And you can save your calibration profile. Do this on a rainy overcasted day with no artificial light in your room at least once a month.

 

[DannyOlivier]

This is always a tricky subject really as it also depends on the type of printer you have and the colour profile that you use with that printer to match the print out to whats on screen. I have always found generally the Adobe RGB (1998) setting is always TOO saturated and bright compared to what comes out on the print but I work in RGB and print out in CMYK. Whenever I get a new printer at home I would create an action of adjustments to compensate as best as possible for the difference in what the image looks like on screen compared to the print out (This was until I borrowed a Lacie Blue-eye calibration).

I'm sure someone will be able to shed a lot more light on this and post a link to a thread which will be a lot more helpful.

 

[Tom Mann]

This topic has been discussed many, many times on the web. Some of the information is good, some is in error. As you have found out, there are also big differences in the level of knowledge required to understand these articles.

If you haven't already run into it, this article, "Monitor Calibration for Photography", is a very good place to start.

After you read the above article, you may want to read this article, "Why are my prints too dark". It directly addresses your question and, believe it or not, is actually not all that technical once you are familiar with the basic terminology.

The 2nd article is written by Andrew Rodney, one of the world's leading experts in this area. If this article is too technical, Google other articles by Andrew, he has written many articles on this subject, ranging from much more technical all the way down to mom-and-pop level articles.

The bottom line is that if you don't have an external hardware calibrator, about the only thing you can do is try to use the brightness and contrast controls built into your monitor to try to make some test images (one B&W example below) look as good as possible on the monitor that you are using. Doing this is better than doing nothing, but these two controls are very limited in what they can do, so they just can't improve matters all that much, and so, this approach can be frustrating.

HTH,

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

This is always a tricky subject really as it also depends on the type of printer you have and the colour profile that you use with that printer to match the print out to whats on screen. I have always found generally the Adobe RGB (1998) setting is always TOO saturated and bright compared to what comes out on the print but I work in RGB and print out in CMYK. Whenever I get a new printer at home I would create an action of adjustments to compensate as best as possible for the difference in what the image looks like on screen compared to the print out (This was until I borrowed a Lacie Blue-eye calibration).

I'm sure someone will be able to shed a lot more light on this and post a link to a thread which will be a lot more helpful.

Hi Danny - I'm sorry to have to say this, but several things that you said are considerably out of line with the way things are usually done in the area of system profiling and calibration, printing, etc..

1. "...as it also depends on the type of printer you have and the colour profile that you use with that printer to match the print out to whats on screen...."

When done correctly, the profiles for the monitor and the printer are determined completely independently of each other. Yes, one can play the game of tweaking the profiles (and other adjustments) so that what you print on *your* printer matches what you see on *your* monitor, but if you do, then it is very likely that (a) a file that looks good on your monitor will not look good on monitors calibrated to the industry standard. For example, your posts on discussion groups like this will look odd. Also, (b) a file that prints well on your printer will likely not print well on any other printer including those at on-line printing services like Snapfish and Mpix, large volume offset presses, etc.

In contrast, when the profiling for both devices are done separately these issues simply don't arise. A file will look virtually the same no matter who views it, so long as they also have a calibrated monitor. Similarly a given file should print almost exactly the same no matter where it is printed (assuming a well-functioning, properly calibrated printer).
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2. "... I have always found generally the Adobe RGB (1998) setting is always TOO saturated and bright compared to what comes out on the print..."

This shouldn't happen. For colors that are within the gamut of sRGB, the brightness and saturation of colors is, for all intents and purposes independent of the working color space you use. I can't say why you are experiencing this, but one of the most common reasons is because an error was made somewhere along the way. For example, if someone *assigns* Adobe RGB to a file they thought was sRGB, of course it will look garish, but one should almost never have to assign a color space to a file. Almost always, one *converts* from one color space to another.
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3. "...but I work in RGB and print out in CMYK..."

I presume you are printing on a conventional Epson or similar inkjet designed for amateur photographers at home. If this is the case, the print drivers for almost all printers of this type assume that they are being fed an sRGB file. A few will know what to do with an Adobe RGB file, but if they are fed one of the many varieties of CMYK files, almost all will automatically attempt to convert it back to RGB, and then make a second conversion to the proper variant of CMYK needed to produce the correct ink deposition on their particular system. For example, if you have a printer that uses more than the basic 4 colors (C-M-Y-K), how do you think the printer converts from a 4 color CMYK that you send it to, say, the 6 color space that it actually requires? The answer is that it uses the procedure I just outlined, so sending it a CMYK file introduces a needless, gamut-shrinking conversion step.
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4. In your post you do not seem to distinguish between working color spaces and output device profiles. Both types are specified by *.icm files, but if you mix them up you are guaranteed to get some strange effects. Once ever few months, with almost clockwork regularity, people will show up on this forum with really strange color problems that eventually are found to have been caused by someone doing something like using a monitor or printer profile as their working color space. I'm not saying that you are doing this, but one needs to be very careful about this when explaining such matters to others.


Have to run --- more later,

Tom

 

[Stacy]

Thank you for your guidance on this one.
I've had a play with the settings you gave Chris and it does seemed to have improved the situation, so thank you for taking the time to take the screenshots!

Do this on a rainy overcasted day with no artificial light in your room at least once a month.

I live in England.... this shouldn't be a problem!! :cool2:

Danny and Tom, I've read your replies with interest and have been researching with a better understanding of what I'm trying to achieve now.
The articles you listed were great and really helped me come to grips with what was becoming more of a headache than a learning curve!

My OH has offered to buy me a calibration setup so I'm off now to have a look at a half decent one which isn't going to break the bank!

 

[DannyOlivier]

Let us know which one you got and how well it worked Stacy.

Tom I do feel alot of what I said is valid although probably only really relates to my line of work. I was speaking very loosely about the entire subject and for me personally I never think about how close my screen matches to the print I always adjust the image relatively to the print out. The Large format Epson spectroproofers throughout my company are all calibrated regularly and everyone knows the CMYK profile .

Sorry I was not very concise in my original reply and what I said only really applies to my particular line of work. My bad!

 

[Stacy]

Just wanted to say how much of a difference your help on this made!

I've had some canvases printed in the past and they have all come out too dark. Well after doing the points advised above and changing some images to compensate for the changes made I sent off another to be printed on canvas and it has come back perfect!

I've even been asked to create another and been offered payment for my work which is a first for me.

So I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to the contributors on this thread! I'm still investing in a calibration set-up as this has proved just how much of an important investment this will be.