Not able to calibrate monitor - color & brightness

If I had enough hair to sacrifice, I would be pulling it out at this point.

I have an ASUS PB278Q which I have been very happy with over the years. Lately, I have noticed that both the colors and the brightness are lacking when I print. I can't say for sure when I first noticed this but it has become increasingly annoying. I look at my photos on the monitor and the colors pop, good contrast, good definition of blacks and whites, etc. but when I look at my prints, they just look blah.

I have a very dark room that I work in and calibrate once a month. I am really at a loss as to what to do at this point. It seems like I end up throwing money away when I get my prints made and they come back dark and with the color washed out. I use Datacolor Spyder X Elite for calibration.

I work in both Lightroom and Photoshop and soft-proof quite a bit; not every photo I print, but most. I have not seen anything when I soft-proof that would give my any concerns. As with the files I export for printing, I am careful to use the correct color profiles when I soft-proof.

I use Bay Photo for most of my prints and I am very careful to use the correct color profiles when I export my files for printing and I specify "No Color Correction" when I get my prints. I am thinking of having some of my latest prints redone using color correction just to see if the results are much different.

I think I have covered the critical details about my editing and printing.

Good review of the monitor, with lots of recommendations, at https://www.tftcentral​.co.uk/reviews/asus_pb​278q.htm.

By the way the review dates from 2010; is you monitor perhaps 8 years old? Are you using Windows? Is there a driver that might need updating?

KLR-VA0501 wrote in post #19146341
...when I get my prints made and they come back dark and with the color washed out.

If your prints are 'too dark', I presume that you failed to start with fundamental monitor Brightness and Contrast adjustments BEFORE doing monitor calibration (which affects HUES) How does this image look on your monitor?

IMAGE LINK: https://app.photobucke​t.com …9f-4701-887e-c17b85c6d11b

KLR-VA0501 wrote in post #19146341
If I had enough hair to sacrifice, I would be pulling it out at this point.

I have an ASUS PB278Q which I have been very happy with over the years. Lately, I have noticed that both the colors and the brightness are lacking when I print. I can't say for sure when I first noticed this but it has become increasingly annoying. I look at my photos on the monitor and the colors pop, good contrast, good definition of blacks and whites, etc. but when I look at my prints, they just look blah.

I have a very dark room that I work in and calibrate once a month. I am really at a loss as to what to do at this point. It seems like I end up throwing money away when I get my prints made and they come back dark and with the color washed out. I use Datacolor Spyder X Elite for calibration.

Could be a few things happening.
You could be working in an environment not suited to your calibration.
There could be something wrong with the calibration.
There could be something wrong with the printer
There maybe something wrong with the files your sending to the printer
Could be any combination of the above


To start with, what process are you following to calibrate the monitor?
And, what White Point and Luminance values are you using?

Making progress. I did check brightness and contrast based on the included graphic. I have had a copy of that for quite awhile but keep forgetting about it. Both contrast and brightness were off. Contrast by about 10; went from 80 to 91. Brightness was off by a bunch; went all the way down to zero.

With the most recent adjustments and re-calibration after adjust contrast and brightness, I am seeing much closer results between monitor and prints. When I re-calibrated, the calibration wanted me to raise the brightness which seemed odd. I did but I have since dropped it back to zero which seems to be much more in line with what I see when I print.

KLR-VA0501 wrote in post #19147277
Making progress. I did check brightness and contrast based on the included graphic. I have had a copy of that for quite awhile but keep forgetting about it. Both contrast and brightness were off. Contrast by about 10; went from 80 to 91. Brightness was off by a bunch; went all the way down to zero.

With the most recent adjustments and re-calibration after adjust contrast and brightness, I am seeing much closer results between monitor and prints. When I re-calibrated, the calibration wanted me to raise the brightness which seemed odd. I did but I have since dropped it back to zero which seems to be much more in line with what I see when I print.

If your doing the calibration properly, it will set the contrast and brightness for you.
But it is very dependent on the luminance target you set, which is how bright you want the monitor based on the light levels in the room.

Check your luminance target, it may be to low for the monitors as they age.

When the NEC's were newish I could set Spectraview to a target intensity candela of 65 cd/m2. As the monitors aged that dim of a setting was not obtainable and I'd get a delta that was 2.XX+. Now they are set to 90 or 95 cd/m2 and that yields an acceptable level that what I see on screen is what I'll get in a print off my Epson.

I also have printer profiles from the lab I use for the intended printer. Depending what is being printed those are applied/baked into the file for the desired results. Generically my lab does most sRGB so that's not to hard on an export file. The guys that run the machines know how my work is so they can adjust if I don't apply a profile so that it matches my usual look.