Color shift when viewing image on secondary monitor

JW
Posted By
John_Woram
Jul 16, 2007
Views
566
Replies
6
Status
Closed
In CS3, if I drag the toolbar to my secondary monitor, the white in the background color box has a yellow tint. If I drag an image to the secondary monitor, all color values also shift toward yellow when I release the mouse button. They shift back to normal when I hold down the mouse button over the title bar, prior to dragging the image back to the primary monitor. If I do a print Screen and then sample the white color, I get a value of FFFFD0 — in other words, a slight loss of blue.

I don’t think this is a video driver bug, because the same effect does *not* happen if I drag an image back and forth outside of Photoshop.

Anyone have any idea what’s going on? And is there a fix?

Thanks, John
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B
Bernie
Jul 16, 2007
Are both monitors calibrated?
DM
Don_McCahill
Jul 16, 2007
Can you calibrate two different monitors? I haven’t done it, but I would think that if PS is calibrated on one monitor in a 2 monitor setup, the other monitor, if radically different, cannot be calibrated … I mean the program can only adjust to one of the two, right?
B
Bernie
Jul 17, 2007
I think it depends on the video card some may allow for different LUTs for each monitor plugged into it. Others may not.

I do use two monitors at work, but don’t see the point in having both calibrated, after all, I don’t really care if my palettes are colour calibrated or not.
JW
John_Woram
Jul 17, 2007
Can you calibrate two different monitors?

Don, I see the odd behavior *only* if I drag an image from one monitor to another within Photoshop. Behavior is normal if I do the same thing with the Windows Picture/Fax viewer, or if a drag any non-PS window (including an image in Adobe Bridge) from one monitor to another. Also, if the image is on the secondary monitor, holding down and releasing the mouse button on the Title bar triggers the color shift, but only within Photoshop. So I don’t think monitor calibration is a factor here.
C
chrisjbirchall
Jul 17, 2007
Using a dual head graphics card, you can only calibrate for the one monitor.

As Cyb has pointed out, this is generally okay as the tools do not need to be on a calibrated screen. However, it’s nice to have them close to the same. In my own set-up, the second (a 17" CRT) is "tweaked" visually using the on-screen menu.
BD
Brett Dalton
Jul 19, 2007
not true, I’ve got 2 seperate monitors calibrated on 6 macs and 3 PC’s. It may be the case on some older cards there is only 1 LUT (look up table). But even this doesn’t stop you creating a profile on the second monitor which takes into account the LUT, it wont be as good as the first monitor due to rounding errors but to 99.9% of people you won’t notice the difference.

You will need SEPERATE profiles per device. The OS will use these to alter the colours when displaying to that monitor. Again the print screen will only give you the value of what the OS is sending to the graphics card (ie the raw data), not the adjusted data, so it will tell you the difference between the "raw" colour and what your card and monitor are adding.

It also should be noted that if you change graphics cards then you need to re calibrate the monitor(s).

BRETT

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