Colour Calibrating my monitor & camera

Hey guys ,

I want to try get an accurate colour from my PC and Camera.

I have a Samsung SA950 and just got a spider express 4 pro

all I have to do now is to callibrate my monitor with the Spider thing?

Do i have to do anything else?

After I take the picture I am putting the photos into light room 3


I was reading about some ICC profiles....? I got a 7D and a 1000D...

Thanks!

Just calibrate your monitor. You generally don't want accurate color, you want pleasing color. Having your monitor show color accurately means you can tweak it to be pleasing. You don't calibrate cameras. You can create a camera profile but it's not worthwhile IMHO.

Do some test prints. No monitor will match 100% no matter how good, as monitors are backlit and prints aren't.

I don't know the Spyder4 Express setup (for one thing it's new) but I doubt that it has a robust way of dealing with the brightness of your monitor. Consumer monitors as a bunch tend to be considerably too bright for photo processing. You may not see this while you are doing the processing/developing of your photos, but the "test" will be when you have prints done -- if you look at your prints in good light (either daylight or a good bright internal light) will they be noticably dark?

Pay attention to how the calibration process handles screen brightness. If it doesn't seem to deal with it at all, then I would take the step of lowering your monitor brightness significantly. How much depends on the monitor -- the old (now dead) Samsung I used didn't take to well to this, so I ended up using it as a "second" monitor. But in general I'd try to lower it until the display is a bit better than "ugly", then maybe run the calibration again to get everything trying to be in "balance".

Then, do as Tim suggests and have some test prints done. Make sure you tell the lab "no automatic corrections"! Then, like I said, look at the prints in good light. As Tim says, your monitor will still likely come off "bright" due to the projected light coming through your photos, but your prints should not come across as "dark" when seen in good light!

A monitor for PP work is calibrated different from a monitor used to pre-proof prints. For PP work, and for web, use the monitor's full dynamic range to make work easiest to see.

For printing, the monitor dynamic range is reduced to closer approximate a print in 'normal' lighting, for WYSIWYG printing, assuming the printer is also calibrated.

Both cases require a custom color curve for accurate screen colors within the chosen dynamic range.

Camera calibration technique is to photograph a test target and create a custom color curve, using a system such as Colorchecker.

1. Camera calibration using ColorChecker.

2. Spyder to calibrate monitor.

3. Printer calibration (usually manufacturer supplied with curves for specific ink used)

ok guys thanks for your reply's!

I want to basically print some of my photo's (at a lab)

I will be editing them using CS5 and I want my prints to be very close to what I see on my screen....if this is what I want , why would I want my monitor to NOT be calibrated to printing?

I understand that with Web work I want the full dynamic range...but then is that not two different photo's I will have to produce? I will have to edit a picture on my monitor "calibrated" for print and then redo all my adjustments for web?


Was it a waste for me to buy the spider thingey!?


how do you guys do it?


Do i NEED to calibrate my camera?

Porky, melanopsin may well be correct but their post is quite confusing and is overly complex.

Just calibrate your monitor using the spyder and send your images to print. Don't worry about camera calibration, i'm a pro and I know quite a bit about color, and I don't do that. If they don't match then start a thread giving us all the details.

Thanks Tim,

I just finished Calibrating my monitor with the Spyder 4 and it said it is done.

Everything looks a bit different compared to before calibration.

I did do a "test" print from my own photo printer and the printed picture looks almost identical as my screen (my printer I have not bothered to calibrate...if I print ill go to a lab ) but I was surprised.

Hopefully this is all I needed to do to get accurate colour so I can print what I see on my screen!

thx for the help guys


porky-

I've never gotten my home printer to look anything like a calibrated lab print, so don't worry too much about that. Send it for printing at a reputable lab and see how it looks.

Easy ay!