Calibrating 27 inch Imac. Prepping images for my website.

<p>I’ve got a new 27 inch imac and am in the midst of editing images to put on the soon to be new and improved <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cathyscholl.com/">http://cathyscholl.com/</a> which I just moved to wordpress.<br>

I realized this morning that I had not yet calibrated my new monitor so I used my (oldish?) Eye-One Match and voila! All the images that I selected for my online galleries suddenly look awful! MUCH less vibrant than they did with the imac profile <img src="http://blog.bretedge.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_sad.gif" alt=":(" /> <br>

I was planning to re-work the images with the new Eye-One profile so they will at least look good online to anyone who has a profiled monitor…<br>

Even though these images are only for web galleries I think I am still going to be a lot better off uploading images that look good with the Eye-One Match profile than the imac profile, don’t you agree?<br>

The imac profiled images looked good to me but they’re bound to look very dull to most anyone else due to how bright the Imac profile is, correct?<br>

Thanks in advance,<br />Cathy<br>

</p>

<p>Are you sure you're not simply having trouble with Adobe RGB vs. sRBG color space confusion in your output JPGs? Or do the dull-looking images also appear that way in color-managed applications?</p>

<p>Matt...I did go thru the Adobe RGB vs sRGB confusion a few years back...I remember it well :)<br>

but I now convert all my images to sRGB before saving them as .jpegs so I think I am dealing with a new<br>

problem.... I found a good blog article about the Imac monitor profile:<br>

http://blog.bretedge.com/2010/01/12/the-imac-calibration-conundrum/</p>

Hardly anyone who views your site will use a calibrated monitor, and most will use a browser that doesn't even support

color management.

 

The idea that the way to deal with this chaos is to produce photos set up for a color-managed system that's calibrated

is intuitively right, but I strongly suspect that no one actually knows.

 

These days, I view most photo sites with an iPad, which can't be calibrated. Those site that use Flash, in case you're

thinking of using it, I don't view at all.

<p>The blog article you linked to is out of date and doesn't cover the LED backlit displays like the one in your 27" iMac, which has better evenness, no "I can't make it dim enough!" issues, and a larger color gamut ( mine is just slightly larger than sRGB.) </p>

<p><em><strong>I was planning to re-work the images with the new Eye-One profile so they will at least look good online to anyone who has a profiled monitor…</strong></em></p>

<p>not at all.. you are confusing yourself here. The monitor calibration is only good for YOUR monitor thats all. You only use this profile for YOUR monitor only and never never <strong>never</strong> for anything else, specially not to embed it in any images you have.</p>

<p>Saving them as sRGB is your best bet.. no other choice. That way you are making thing easier for you and everybody; if they have a color managed web browser or not it will look good.. and IF they have a calibrated monitor it should look even better.. but you cant take this chance.. so by using sRGB you are covering all the angle.</p>

<p>If you find your image less vibrant than before it is totaly normal since the Imac monitor is wayyyyyy over bright to start with, and the color is in fact wayyyyy too light and poppy vs the reality; good for watching a video, or for people who dont really care or understand color management.. bad for us ; )</p>

<p>So the calibration certainly dim the whole monitor, and put it a bit warmer than the bluish cast you start with, making the impression that all your image look duller than before.. what you can do now is probably rework all your image by putting them a bit lighter, and use a hue saturation to bring them back to life.. then repost them on your web site.</p>

<p>FYI i have quickly visit your web site and dont find your image dull at all.. but maybe a little 10-15% saturation could make them pop a bit more.. to what you probably want in the end.</p>

<p>Thanks Matt, Marc and Ellis for your responses.<br>

Patrick, thanks. I am not embedding any monitor profile, just saving as sRGB but I assumed that (for example) if I am seeing an overly bright image...since my monitor before profiling luminance was set at around 200... I might have darkened the image based on my monitor and then I assume it would look very dark to someone whose monitor was set at luminance 110, no? <br>

Anyhow I just re-calibrated to make sure something wasn't amiss...currently my luminance is set at 101, guess I'll leave it there and will take your advice to work with saturation to make up for some of what I "lost." I agree that the Imac profile was too bright and the color palette was not my favorite...but I am not sure that I am now seeing warmer tones and less blue (as you mentioned?) I'm no color expert so I will take your word for it :)<br>

Thanks for looking at my site and for your suggestions!</p>

<p>Just looked at your website. Nice wsensitive work Cathy. The only problem I notice d with color is that some very saturated reds look saturated to the point of being pure red with no detail - a sign of over saturation. Mostly these are the paint dots on the Saddhu but it is true for some fabrics as well. . </p>

<p>Ellis, thanks for looking and for your comment.<br>

Until today I haven't ever added saturation...and the images I'm working on now have not been posted yet!<br>

Probably some of the images you saw were .jpegs created by my 5DII...maybe the camera .jpeg setting oversaturates reds?<br>

The images I am working on right now I am adding saturation at +10 so it should be pretty subtle...at least I hope so!</p>

<p>Ellis...<br>

Another possibility is that if you are seeing older images (although the sadhus are new) they may have been shot on film.<br>

I used to use Kodak VS film and ran into saturation issues back then.</p>

<p>Not sure how much help this article may be, but on the off chance that you'll find it useful, here's a link to <a href="http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/monitor-calibration.htm?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news16"><em>Monitor Calibration for Photography</em></a> from Cambridge in Colour.</p>

<p>P.S.<br />The few pictures you currently have on your website look good to me too (I'm on a callibrated 24" iMac) but it takes them a while to load properly, as if you saved them at the highest quality (?) -- if that's the case, maybe you could consider lowering the quality setting a notch or two, just so that to make the files smaller without affecting the "viewing" IQ.</p>

<p>Tomek, <br>

Thanks for the article, very interesting. Great advice about my file sizes. You are right, I did save them at high quality (12) and I have been thinking about what I need to do about getting them to load faster. What in your opinion would be correct setting for highest quality but faster loading? 10? Thanks!</p>

<p>i use, 8 and correct file size ( i mean correct pixel X pixel size, not resize when place in your web software)</p>

<p>Patrick,<br>

Thanks alot.<br>

I didn't understand the second part...is correct pixel x pixel size an option when you save the image? Not familiar with that.</p>

<p>no. I meant when im exporting my image to place them on my web site i always make sure that they are at the size i want to show them.. let say if my template is made for a 600x800 pixel image i resize them for that pixel size. Years ago, in flash for example, if you place a 2meg file in your template, and simply reduce the file to fit your template, the file was still 2meg.. when using the correct file size to start could be a small 200k for example... not sure if im explaining correctly ; )</p>

<p>Yes I understand now! :)<br>

I learned this lesson the hard way but yes, I do size my photos to fit the template. Ok, great. Thanks.<br>

So you think 8 is still high enough quality even for a fairly large image 958x? </p>

<p>Cathy, you can preview before saving. Reckon it will depend on the content of a particular picture: on some you won't be able to see any difference, on some (perhaps the ones with lots of fine detail?) you may start noticing slight deterioration in IQ. If you're uncertain, save two versions -- one at 10, the other one at 8 -- and compare them. Mind you, once you publish on your website, viewers won't have the benefit of a reference file, and with nothing to compare to, their perception of the lower quality photo will be more favourable. You often don't realize how bad something is until you experience how good it can be! ;-)<br /> <br />As for the size / pixel dimensions, bigger definitely makes greater impact; no doubt about that! My favourite is 1000x1500, which fits nicely on the 24" of screen estate, but you may prefer to cater to the general audience. The most conservative figure I saw recommended was 700 pixels tall, guess so that it would fit on most laptops without the need to scroll up and down. The only way around it that I can think of would be to have two different sizes (that's because, from what I've seen, the algorithms that automatically compress pictures to make them smaller and load faster have an annoying habit of making them look fuzzy and sometimes murky too, case in point being photo.net itself... e.g., compare the IQ of <a href="../photo/11768191&size=md"><strong>this</strong></a> with <a href="../photo/11768191&size=lg"><strong>that</strong></a> ...hence I wouldn't suggest that.)</p>

<p>Tomek, thanks. <br>

My blog and website template on wordpress offers a few sizes. I go with Large at 958 wide x ? which I use for horizontal images. I haven't yet figured out what looks good in a vertical image to go along with that...working on it...<br>

Tomek, Patrick and all... one more question<br>

This has gotten off topic from my original question but thanks for sticking with the conversation :)<br>

I have uploaded most of my images at 12 quality. Can I take those same .jpegs saved at 12 and re save them at 10 or 8 without deterioration or do I have to start all over?</p>

<p>That's easy enough to find out by experimentation: nothing beats first-hand empirical evidence, so do that and compare side-by-side. I wouldn't expect to see any JPEG compression artifacts after only one re-save of max quality (12) files, and should the IQ deteriorate, I'd suspect it was due to lower quality setting (8) rather than re-saving, but don't take my word for it -- test yourself!<br>

<br />BTW, don't you have final .psd versions saved with all the layers and in 16-bit per channel mode? -- when you said "start all over" it sounded like starting from scratch, i.e., RAW development.</p>

<p>Tomek, yes thanks I will experiment. It would also be interesting to have two pages, one with images saved at 8 and one at 12 and see how much difference there is in loading time. Wonder if someone has done that?<br>

I am ashamed to say that in this case I saved the images only as .jpegs. Didn't think I'd want or need them for anything else other than this one gallery. Oh well, live and learn.</p>