Colour Calibration / Management / Profiles ?

MS
Posted By
Mark Spencer
Dec 15, 2009
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896
Replies
2
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Closed
I’d appreciate some advice if anyone can help? I’m relatively new to digital photography.

My images are distinctly ‘muddy’ when reproduced on something other than my monitor at home. This is immediately obvious when I print, but I’d assumed I needed a new printer (it’s an Epson Stylus Photo 895), but as I got the same ‘muddy’ quality when I submitted three images for projection at my local camera club last night, I’m wondering whether it could be something to do with Colour Calibration/Management.

When I first installed Photoshop ~6 months back, it said (something like) the monitor’s profile appears to be corrput, did I want to use it anyway? I said no. This seemed to be born out by the fact that images I viewed in Windows Photo Gallery and Powerpoint all had a terrible sepia tone until I subsequently deleted the monitor profile. Vista Color Management is now configured to use sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as default for monitor and printer.

Have I set this up wrong somehow, or should I be using a different colour profile/s?

My graphics card is INNO3d NVIDIA GEFORCE 7300GS and monitor is SAMSUNG SYNCMASTER 205BW 20.1" TFT-LCD. I have the latest NVIDIA graphics driver installed. My camera is a Canon EOS 40D

Thanks for any help.
Mark
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Jeffrey Kaplan
Dec 15, 2009
Previously on adobe.photoshop.elements, Mark Spencer said:

My images are distinctly ‘muddy’ when reproduced on something other than my monitor at home. This is immediately obvious when I print, but I’d assumed I needed a new printer (it’s an Epson Stylus Photo 895), but as I got the same ‘muddy’ quality when I submitted three images for projection at my local camera club last night, I’m wondering whether it could be something to do with Colour Calibration/Management.

Almost certainly. First, make sure that you have the color profiles sRGB and aRGB installed on your computer. Do so via your computer’s display settings \ color management. If you do not have them, you can locate them on Adobe’s download site. Then calibrate your monitor. You can do this manually if you know how and have an appropriate test image of known correct values, or you can get something like a Pantone Spider. NOTE: Windows 7 has a built-in display calibration wizard to guide the user through manually adjusting both the display settings in the computer and the monitor.

Second, when editing your photos, apply the color profile appropriate for the intended display: sRGB for computer monitor/projectors and aRGB for printing.

Also, bug the person who runs your club’s computer to do the same if it hasn’t been done there. At my camera club, it’s been a constant complaint over the past couple of years that photos displayed on the projector were muddy compared to the submitter’s system. The guy who ran the computer would respond with "it looks better on the monitor". Well… I now have the computer and that job and the FIRST thing I did was install the color profiles from Adobe and calibrate the system. The complaints have stopped. 🙂

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Sandy Birrell
Dec 15, 2009
Jeffrey Kaplan wrote:
Previously on adobe.photoshop.elements, Mark Spencer said:
My images are distinctly ‘muddy’ when reproduced on something other than my monitor at home. This is immediately obvious when I print, but I’d assumed I needed a new printer (it’s an Epson Stylus Photo 895), but as I got the same ‘muddy’ quality when I submitted three images for projection at my local camera club last night, I’m wondering whether it could be something to do with Colour Calibration/Management.

Almost certainly. First, make sure that you have the color profiles sRGB and aRGB installed on your computer. Do so via your computer’s display settings \ color management. If you do not have them, you can locate them on Adobe’s download site.

There is a lot on the web that covers this. I spent months trying to get my pictures looking similar to the image on the screen, you will never get them exact 🙂 I consistantly get prints that look like the pictures I view on my monitor but I still re-calibrate it every few months to make sure they stay that way. It is an on-going process as the monitor ages and levels change. Even changing the ink catriges in the printer might mean a re-calibration to get it right 🙂

Have a read at these sites for some ideas.

http://www.poynton.com/notes/brightness_and_contrast/index.h tml

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

http://www.oceanlight.com/html/about_color.html

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/match_print s_to_screen.html

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/329/329486.html

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