color profiles,gamma,calibration - help

[kcpopps]

I have been trying for a month to get my monitors correctly calibrated. I am at my wits end! For some reason, my monitor has a bit of a reddish tinge and I just cannot get it straightened out.

I'd never had a problem in the past, but recently I started getting prints back with too much red in them. In my last order, I tried to compensate and they came back too green. I feel helpless and blind now when working my photos in photoshop.

I have searched and read about gamma - and I think I have a pretty close setting for brightness/contrast. All the graphic tests I've been using the monitor looks pretty good. But there is that reddish/brown tint in there still.

I thought my monitors were bad and I bought new ones. That problem remains on the new monitors so its not that.

I have a dual monitor setup with a ATI Radeon 7500 grahics card. I've used Adobe Gamma a dozen times and it seems to look OK for contrast/gamma but the red tint remains. I had another Gamma program on here for a while - then I deleted it when I read that 2 gamma loaders might conflict. Monitors are set to 6500k.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, for this post, I'd just like someone to take a look at the following image. I have made the image grayscale in PS - yet on my monitor, it still has a slightly redddish/brown tinge to it. I want you to look at it and tell me if you see any reddish/brown or if it looks properly black & white.

Image is here (http://www.kcvideo.com/webtestimage.jpg)

[rohitkumar]

it looks b/w to me

[dmunger]

It looks black & white to me, also.
I do notice a slight red tint to it.

[Bodog]

The photo looks B&W to me... Color mananagement is a very complicated issue and can be difficult to get set up correctly. But , if you're seeing a red cast on your monitor and your prints also have a red cast, then it would seem to me there is too much red in your image and it's not a monitor problem. Do you check your color numbers in photoshop? If your curser is over an object that should be grey in your image and Info shows RGB to be 128, 128, 128, and looks red, then there is a problem with your monitor, but if the red number is higher, it should look red, but there is a red color cast in the image itself. Have you checked the color set up in your video driver? When you set up Adobe Gamma, did you adjust each color seperately? Perhaps the red is off there? There are so many things it could be...

[Jesper]

Adobe Gamma..... :(

If you really want to profile and calibrate your monitor properly, forget about Adobe Gamma and buy a hardware calibration device. There are several options: Colorvision Spyder, MonacoOPTIX XR, Gretag-Macbeth EyeOne, etc.

Adobe Gamma is not good, because it relies on your eyes to calibrate the colours. The human eye is not very good at measuring colours, and how you see colours depends on a lot of factors - the ambient light, the colour of objects around you that you've been looking at, if you've been drinking a lot of coffee, etc.

Jim (Bodog) is right: try using the eye dropper tool in Photoshop; if the R, G and B components of the pixels are equal, the image should be neutral in colour. But how it looks on your monitor and how it comes out of the printer depends on how these devices are calibrated.

Most colour printers are not good at printing B&W images.

[jimsolt]

Adobe Gamma..... :(
Adobe Gamma is not good, because it relies on your eyes to calibrate the colours.
While I agree that the electrical calibration devices are more accurate, and this is undoubtdedly more important for printing, there is an argument to make that for viewing images you use the very same eyes with the very same limitations when you calibrate with Adobe Gamma that you use when you look at the photos on the very same screen AND if you send photos off to someone else to view them, what method have they used to calibrate their screens?
This is an age old argument. I'm sure it will never be solved. I spent a lot of years explaining to film makers why their films didn't look the same on TV as they looked "in the editing room." I think it safe to say, I never made my point.
I am of the opinion you should get it as pure as possible and looking as much like you want it as possible, then be prepared for others to see it differently.
Jim

[kcpopps]

In photoshop, on the grayscale image, the RGB values are the same. If you guys don't see a slight touch of red in the image I posted, then I feel it must be just the monitor display.

So now I have adjusted the red-green-blue values seprately in Adobe Gamma. I've been reluctant to do that because for some reason I think that should not be necessary. But it looks better now. The background of the workspace in PS looked brownish red too and now it is more nuetral gray - PS workspace should be a nuetral gray color - right?

I'm still a little less than confident that I have accurate color matching between monitor and prints from my processor. I'll have to do some more test prints

I guess I do need to invest in one of the Colorvision calibrators. Money is tight at the moment so that may have to wait a while. My question about these things is does their software take control of and identify settings in all the various devices involved - from the monitor, graphics card, and whatever else? I just wonder how they accomplish the task and if I have something set wrong somewhere if that software can correct it. I assume it must.

Thank you all for the helpful replies and advice - I appreciate it.

[maderito]

While I agree that the electrical calibration devices are more accurate, and this is undoubtdedly more important for printing, there is an argument to make that for viewing images you use the very same eyes with the very same limitations when you calibrate with Adobe Gamma that you use when you look at the photos on the very same screen AND if you send photos off to someone else to view them, what method have they used to calibrate their screens?
This is an age old argument. I'm sure it will never be solved. I spent a lot of years explaining to film makers why their films didn't look the same on TV as they looked "in the editing room." I think it safe to say, I never made my point.
I am of the opinion you should get it as pure as possible and looking as much like you want it as possible, then be prepared for others to see it differently.
Jim
Jim - I disagree. Eyes differ; monitors differ; viewing conditions differ. The only way to talk about what color is projected on a monitor or printed on paper is to describe it relative to an external reference standard in a calibrated color space.

I prefer to produce images on devices (monitors & printers) that have been calibrated against a known standard. From there, I can have an intelligent discussion with someone. If my image looks different (e.g. too warm) in their display/viewing environment, then I can know that it's an issue with their environment, not my image colors. I can also investigate how their environment differs from mine and perhaps change my image processing accordingly. But I wouldn't waste time wondering if I got my image right in the first place. Chasing a tail is all you do when you can't agree on references standards.

[jimsolt]

You will get no argument from me about your thinking being the correct view. I meant to say this in my feelings about "getting it as pure as possible." I was really differing with the view that one method is not good because it depends on your eyes. The real thrust of my "argument" should have been that in most TV control rooms there are as few color monitors as possible because they are so hard to match to one another and it becomes hard to tell "which one is correct". These are usually VERY expensive pieces of equipment set up by experts with VERY expensive gear, and they are still hard to match to one another. The arbiter is the scope. That will tell the story. The problem is the viewer often doesn't have a scope (histogram) and is seeing something different from me. In summation, I think you are absolutely right in theory. If you start out with the correct image you are much better off. I have frequently been frustrated by someone else thinking the picture is red when I know it is green. :)
Jim