What is best gamma and white point to use when calibrating a monitor

<p>When calibrating my monitor with my Spyder3 it always gives me an option of which gamma and white point to calibrate to. I understand that the industry standard for editing a photo for print is 5000k. But what is the suggested gamma for this same procedure? I left mine at 2.2. I usually work in a darkened room. Also should I create another calibration profile for editing a photo to be displayed on the web and what gamma and white point would be considered optimal for that? Thanks for the help......<br>

Fred</p>

<p>- Don't work in a darkened room. Processing images on screen depends upon your eyes, and your eyes will be thrown off by being in darkness looking at a bright monitor. </p>

<p>- I use Luminance 120, gamma 1.8, and white point 5500K. It works for me. </p>

<p>For the web, you usually want to use sRGB. sRGB assumes a gamma of 2.2, a white point of 6500K, and fairly dim ambient light at 5000K. Though different viewers will (of course) vary from that, it's probably (at least in theory) best to follow it as closely are you reasonably can.</p>

<p>For printing, I prefer the ambient light and the monitor white point both set to 5000K, but the gamma still set to 2.2.<br>

<br /> Working in a darkened room isn't a major problem as long as you adjust the monitor brightness to compensate -- but don't go overboard on compensating either. For photo editing, your eyes are reacting primarily to the monitor in any case, so you don't have to adjust a lot. It used to be common to put graphics artists (and such) in the basement, with quite dim lighting and monitors set to about 80 cd/m2. In a brightly lit office, you usually want around 120 cd/m2 (or so). My own preference is somewhere in between, with lighting that allows things like reading papers, and the monitor set to 100 cd/m2.</p>

 

<p>If you don't have a high bit internal panel (you'd know it, you'd be using a very good display like an Eizo or NEC SpectraView), set this for Native Gamma and Native WP for the least amount of banding from the resulting calibration. There's nothing else to adjust but the backlight intensity. Now, if you find print to display matching off, color wise (White Point), try altering the WP from native to D65 to whatever target produces a visual match. </p>

<p>Cd/m2 is solely based on the viewing conditions of the booth by the display. Use a value that produces a visual match. </p>

<p>I'm using the Spyder3 puck with ColorEyes Pro software. I had been calibrating my Dell 2209WA (IPS) with D65 and 2.2 gamma, but ColorEyes recommended using the L* gamma setting. This gave me a slightly higher contrast as compared with 2.2, but it also introduced some slight visible banding in Black and White images. I calibrate to a 120cd/m2 luminance using only the Brightness (backlight) control on the monitor. 120cd/m2 is achieved with my Brightness lowered to a 15% setting. Tech support from ColorEyes suggested that going to a brighter 130cd/m2 might help with the banding. Any comments from the color management experts?</p>

<p>I am using a ViewSonic VP930b. I plan to start having my printing done at Costco. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. What I've done is downloaded the color profile specific to the machine that is in use at our local Costco from Dry Creek Photos web site. They say their color profiles are developed for print viewing at D50 (~5000k). They don't indicate on the website which gamma to use or brightness level and I don't know enough about it to avoid confusing myself. My Spyder software says to use low to very low ambient light with that white balance. I guess I'll stick with the 2.2 and try to match the ambient light to the 5000k.<br>

If I am editing for the web I take it I should have an alternate calibration profile to switch to for that purpose???<br>

Thanks for the info.........</p>

<p>Fred. I think you've got it backwards... The Spyder software suggests that if your ambient light is very low, as measured by the device, use a warmer color temperature setting than 6500K. Personally, I stay with D65. Living in New Mexico, USA, my daytime ambient light is never low.</p>

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<p>They say their color profiles are developed for print viewing at D50 (~5000k). They don't indicate on the website which gamma to use or brightness level and I don't know enough about it to avoid confusing myself</p>

 

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<p>Gamma of the display has nothing to do with output to a printer. Stick with Native (or 2.2).</p>

<p>Luminance is based on viewing conditions. You'll have to set it such that prints match the display under a viewing booth. </p>

<p>Chas.....your right.......I do have that backwards. Spyder measures the ambient light at very low and then suggests using 5000K. I thought I should use 5000K any way because as stated above it was the color temp used when the profile was developed and I thought it would be important to use it in order to have a closer match between Costcos printer and my screen colors. Andrew....as for the gamma I am going to use the 2.2 but should I find out what the native gamma is and use it if it is much different? The Spyder had me adjust the brightness to 69% which seems dim but I was in a dark room too. I'll need to do some printing now and use some trial and error.....thanks for the help.</p>

<p>Fred, regarding Native gamma, you don't have to "find out" what it is. With the Spyder3 software it's one of the standard gamma settings options. After calibrating, use the Information function to see the details of the display profile, including what the device determined was your native gamma. I think the rationale is, it's one more thing that is controlled by the monitor itself and one less thing forced upon the video card's LUT.</p>

<p>Hi Frank and I've also just got a Spyder 3 Elite. This may be an older thread but I think could still be of interest to people like myself with more response if it comes?<br /><br />I'm having fun trying to calibrate my monitors also and I'm trying to find the best settings for printing.<br /><br />First let me say in my experience don't use Costco. You pay for the lower price and it's not sufficient quality for clients or even for yourself. Last time I used Costco was the last as it was clear they don't calibrate their printers and each size I had done came out at crazy different levels with missing black and white grey scales. I had to reprint using a different lab and there was no comparison. <br /><br />In other words Costco lost detail in the darker shades and burned out the whites where there was or should have been detail.<br /><br />The fact that you are trying to calibrate your machine is a clue here because it was only after using Costco that I started to question my own monitor/s settings as I wondered why their prints looked so different.<br /><br />So right now I'm where you are wondering what is the technically best level and for me I'm not looking for a reply that says:<br /><br />"It works for me" or similar. I'm looking for industry standards that the top and best guys work to and the reasons why.<br /><br />I get what Jerry is saying about sRGB for the web. Yes, I agree it makes sense to be at 6500K and it's good to know this assumes a gamma of 2.2.<br /><br />If you use a lower gamma of say 1.8 it will make the mid tones look a little lighter. What I don't know is how this relates to the print from a lab who calibrate correctly?<br /><br />Using a gamma of 1.8 makes the image generally look a little lighter and the shadows look a tab lighter on the face for example with a light ratio of around 3:1 with good exposure in a studio.<br /><br />From a visual point of view I would suggest a gamma of 2.2 looks more like the prints I get back from the lab but there is an issue with my monitors.<br /><br />In a word they are crap and only pallet quality at around £300 max each for my 26" LCD. To get a good Adobe 1998 colour space I would need to spend around 5-8 times that price. More like the high end of that for the Adobe Pro color space used by top pros who happen to have loads of money too.<br /><br />As my monitors only show sRGB color depth then I have to print at that too but here's the next issue.<br /><br />All labs I've used so far only use sRGB for printing, Jessops for example. Jessops can't handle Adobe 1988 color space but they do calibrate their printers very well for sRGB, perfect in fact so far as I can tell. But, at times I've seen colour casts that were not on other prints from the same machine.<br /><br />Ideally, I would like to find a lab better than Jessops but so far no luck. The only sure thing I would suggest is to either find a top lab with employees who take pride in perfection or get a printer and match it to your screen. £5000 plus probably for a decent printer that can do A2. Nothing like as cheap as Jessops per print either so unless you can be sure your clients can pay more and/or you can increase the margins then it makes no business sense. More a labor of love than business sense I fear.<br /><br />For me then Jessops is who I use as they do it right and to a consistent quality.<br /><br />I'm still stuck though with these lower quality monitors that really don't show the grey scales as well as Jessops prints them. In other words, even after calibrating with the Spyder, Jessops prints more in the shadows than I see and maintains some of the highlights I thought was burned out and especially on larger prints where I guess they take extra care to get right.<br /><br />I appreciate this a limitation of my monitors and currently available funds to put right and the Spyder will not help this much.<br /><br />All this said; I absolutely find the Spyder 3 Elite does a great job getting the maximum possible out of my monitors and I can't imagine how I've managed without them until now. Well, yes I can, and that's why so many of my prints came back looking different than I thought they were. Some were better and some worst.<br /><br />While I can't do much about the missing grey scale and color in my monitors I'm now struggling to work out what is the best gamma color temperature to use.<br /><br />Eye one/two recommend a color temperature of 5,500K while Spyder suggest 6,500. Others are saying 5,000K.<br /><br />Now a few things to consider:<br /><br />First 5,500 is the temperature of flash and daylight with sun but how many people will be sure to look at their prints in daylight? Most prints will end up indoors mounted and will vary from daylight to tungsten lighting.<br /><br />6,500K then must be only for sRGB for the web as that setting makes no sense for any other use.<br /><br />This brings up the next issue. If you edit for printing but also want to show off these photos on the web then you need to make an adjustment albeit subtle. This of course assumes you are being fussy and or need to get it right. If then you edit for printing, for clients for example, then how do you convert from say 5,000 to 6,500?<br /><br />The other issue is at 120cd/m2 and at 5000K the whites look very pink compared to 5,500K.<br /><br />It's all a bit of a mind field of things to go wrong/right and there appears to be no set rules which is a worry to me.<br /><br />So far I'm finding the best results on my modest set-up are 160cd/m2 at 5,500K. However, since my monitors are not the same the Spyder has some limitations and this is compounded as the weaker monitor has a hump in the gamma curve to make the lighter tones look brighter, than they should, than the mid tones and darker tones.<br /><br />The bottom line is there are compromises that have to be made and a lot of trial and error to find what makes the monitors look best matched.<br /><br />The documentation with the Spyder is lacking and wrong in places so much research is still needed. For example; Spyder datacolor say that with Windows it's not possible to use Studio matching but they are wrong as I've done it.<br /><br />In fact I've phoned them un in Germany and they assured my that with Windows XP it's not possible to match monitor unless I have 2 video cards rather than one with dual outputs.<br /><br />Datacolor are clearly wrong here so I suggest they need to do more reseach rather than just say get Apple Mac's.<br /><br />One thing does happen in XP is that the profiles report wrong when using the nvidia/windows display tools in as much that it reports both monitors are using one profile. This is not actually happening though because it's clear the profiles for each monitor is different and their (datacolor) own software reports that each monitor has unique profiles.<br /><br />Whererhouse Express was very helpful, where I purchased the Spyder from and were very happy to exchange the item or refund the item as well as collect it from me for no cost.<br /><br />It was only my own investigation that produced a clear picture that the Spyder does support dual monitor on Windows XP. I suspect it's the Windows XP 64bit OP that's the issue as that one is very buggy even now.<br /><br />Back on track the Spyder for me works wonders and it's a must have item.<br /><br />What I would like to know is what the top pros suggest is correct for a low ambient level office to work in and what color temperature for printing?</p>

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<p>From a visual point of view I would suggest a gamma of 2.2 looks more like the prints I get back from the lab but there is an issue with my monitors.</p>

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<p>The TRC (gamma) calibration of the display has zero to do with the output. We see such settings in display calibration aim points, working spaces and output spaces. They are all independent of each other. ProPhoto has a 1.8 TRC for example. You don’t have to have a 1.8 TRC for the display. Nor does the output device have to follow that TRC. The native state of most display systems are close to 2.0-2.2 and calibrating them farther from that only introduces banding in the previews. </p>

 

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<p>The other issue is at 120cd/m2 and at 5000K the whites look very pink compared to 5,500K.</p>

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<p>The only real 5000K (actually D50) illuminant is 93 million miles from that display. These are simply correlated values and at that, you’d have to heat the display such it would be a molten blob of plastic before it really produces anything like D50 or 5000K (which are not the same). The value is meaningless! The value that produces a match to the viewing booth next to the display is all that matters. Different products could tell you they are aiming for 5000K and both would likely provide different results. The same is true for luminance. The correct cd/m2 is that which produces a match. Until the viewing conditions are taken into account, its impossible to even start to guess at the right settings or recommend a value:<br>

http://digitaldog.net/files/Print_to_Screen_Matching.jpg:<img src="http://digitaldog.net/files/Print_to_Screen_Matching.jpg" alt="" /></p>