New LCD Color profiles.

[nathanchristopher]

Hey guy's. I just picked a new external Monitor (a Gateway FPD2185W

TFT LCD) primarily for Photo editing. My laptop LCD was giving me

bad color casts. I don't now how to set up a color profile so that

what I see on the screen is what my lab will see as well. I don't

have the means to purchase a spyder color system. Is there any

program that I can use to ensure color consistency? I know this is a

broad Q, but any insight into this issue would be greatly

appreciated. Thanks! Nate.<div></div>

[jezghani]

One thing you can do is use Adobe Gamma. If you have a PC, it's in the control pannel, and it's pretty much just a wizard that you follow. If not, you could also take a picture that you have gotten back from your lab and sit it next to your monitor and change the settings until it matches picture. I don't know much else that you can do besides that--it's what I do!

[patricklavoie]

the best approach will be to calibrate your screen with a device like the Monaco Optix or

Spyder. So it should be easier to know the final product in the end.

[Tim_Lookingbill]

Pantone has partnered with GretagMacbeth and come out with a

cheap puck based calibration package for around $100.

 

Nice Gateway display, btw, looks pretty darn neutral from what I

see. A bit on the cool side.

 

There are lot better eyeball calibrators than Adobe Gamma for

the Windows platform if you just do a search.

[bill_t__new_mexico_]

I stubbornly fooled around with visual monitor calibration for a long time, and finally managed to get a fairly decent calibration on a few monitors. However, I have to admit nothing beats hardware monitor calibration. A colorimeter system is perhaps the most important investment you can make if you want accurate prints. I am converted to the idea that is not a luxury that can be worked around, but rather one of the most indispensable of tools. A Gretag Eye-One 2 calibrated my Lacie CRT to absolute perfection in very little time, and keeps it that way. Some of the entry-level software packages that come with these colorimeters may have trouble with certain monitors with non-linear response curves, so it is probably best to select a package with a "step up from entry" software package. The standard Eye-One 2 software is more than up to any CRT or LCD.

 

Another very useful thing is if you can get a printer profile from the lab. Using Photogshop's "View->Proof Setup->Custom" dialog, and then selecting the lab's profile, you can get an idea how your screen image will translate to the lab's printer. But of course, you need an accurately calibrated monitor for this to be meaningful.

[bill_tuthill]

Photo.net participant Ted Marcus has a review of the Pantone product

that Tim mentions <A HREF="http://www.tedsimages.com/text/links.htm#huey">here

on his website</A>.

Seems something like that is needed. Our crappy Dell monitor at home

can't even show an all-gray grayscale without color crossover.

And altering color temperature changes the crossover!

[ted_marcus1]

I had a similar situation when I got a Dell 1905FP LCD. The monitor very bright and very sharp, but out of the box it's useless for photography. Colors looked washed out, and patches on a grayscale wedge had various greenish or reddish tints. The CD that came with the monitor didn't include an ICC profile, but I ferreted out and downloaded one from Dell's support site. It only made things worse.

 

<p>Adobe Gamma reportedly doesn't work with LCD monitors. I tried it anyway. The contrast was a little better, but the odd tints remained. I found a link to <a href="http://quickgamma.de/indexen.html">QuickGamma</a> (and its companion QuickMonitorProfile) on Norman Koren's site. It seemed somewhat better than Adobe Gamma, possibly because it uses Norman Koren's gamma chart that could well allow a more accurate "eyeball" adjustment. QuickMonitorProfile reads the monitor's color characteristics from the plug-and-play data. But it still didn't get rid of the strange color balance problems.

 

<p>Actually, I knew about those problems when I bought the monitor because various reviewers had mentioned them. So I ordered a Pantone huey when I ordered the monitor. The huey arrived a week after the monitor, so I tried the measures I described above as stopgap measures.

 

<p>The huey costs $89 and can adjust the monitor to ambient light, so I figured it would be worth a try. It works. It made the grayscale neutral, set the gamma to something reasonable, and tamed the excessive brightness. It's probably the cheapest solution that can make an LCD monitor usable for photography, although its software is definitely intended strictly for novice users. Pantone's marketeers seem to have ruthlessly suppressed anything that looks remotely "technical" from both the product and its sales materials. I can only guess what gamma and color temperature it actually set, since it provides no such information. But if you're willing to live with that limitation, it's cheap and it works.

 

<p>As Bill Tuthill noted in the previous post, I have a review of the huey on my Web site. It should answer more of your questions. (Thanks, Bill!)