Laptops Suck. Well, My Laptop Sucks...

I just recently picked up a new laptop. I haven't had a chance to calibrate the monitor, but today I was stuck at the studio waiting for a delivery so I played a little. I used the "calibration image" from Millers to get a rough match, and then started going through Saturday's wedding images. I just saw the result on a calibrated monitor... It's ugly.

All the warm tones, reds, yellows, oranges, etc, are grossly oversaturated. Ewwwww. If you happened to see the image I posted in the wedding forum before pulling it down, you know just how bad it is. Almost everything that I did is unusable...

I don't know if I hate the laptop, Vista, or my own stupidity. I never used a laptop for editing before... so I was even careful and watched the RGB values on the neutral tones to keep out color casts. images still suck. Aaaargh.

Suggestions on working with a laptop? Frequent calibration the only option? How do you control viewing angle for consistency? Any suggested calibration kit - ideally that's not a fortune?

Hmm well using an uncalibrated monitor for editing is a bad idea...but you should already know that.

My Dell's screen sucks too, so I tend to not really use it. But it's usable in color managed programs like PS and LR...it just looks like crap outside of those. Wallpaper, Windows Image Viewer, etc.

Yeah, I'm retarded. I've been spoiled having a couple of monitors that I haven't really had to think about in a while. I started to take for granted that I could trust the computer in front of me. Doh.

Is it hard to keep a laptop screen accurate since ambient light is changing with every location, viewing angle isn't consistent, etc.?

I spent $70 on my Spyder2, and have had nothing but great results on both desktop and laptop monitors.

*Mike* wrote in post #3244153
Yeah, I'm retarded. I've been spoiled having a couple of monitors that I haven't really had to think about in a while. I started to take for granted that I could trust the computer in front of me. Doh.

Understandable.

*Mike* wrote in post #3244153
Is it hard to keep a laptop screen accurate since ambient light is changing with every location, viewing angle isn't consistent, etc.?

Yeah I tend to not use my laptop for processing, despite being much much faster than my desktop.

*Mike* wrote in post #3244114
Suggestions on working with a laptop?

Don't do color critical work on them, or use a seperate monitor...
Calibration can only do so much, then again, it should get you 'within the ballpark'.

Changing brightness of the surrounding and variation in viewing angle are difficult to take into account. Also, most laptop screens are just not good.

I'm assuming your color mananegment is setup right? (link in my sig)

Calibration: I own an Optix XRPro. Very nice.