Appearance on a calibrated monitor?

Can someone tell me how this image looks on a calibrated monitor? One of the two (crappy) Dell TN panels I have in front of me give the background a redish hue, but it looks fine in the other. My two (slightly less crappy) TN panels at home have the back looking either perfect or too cool. I don't have access to a calibrated IPS panel anytime soon...

The background itself has a colour cast gradient so there is no way to directly WB the entire image to be neutral without doing a desaturation on the background.

You can confirm this by bringing it into PS, hitting CTRL-L for levels, selecting the middle eyedropper, and then dropping it first on the right side of the bkg then the left. The balance changes depending on which side you hit meaning they have a colour difference between them.

Oh cool. Thanks for the tip, Hoff!

TheHoff wrote in post #7303529
The background itself has a colour cast gradient so there is no way to directly WB the entire image to be neutral without doing a desaturation on the background.

It does? I don't see it.

I loaded the pic into Paint Shop Pro and used the eyedropper, same as you do in PS.

At the left edge I see RGB 145, 145, 143. Right edge, 205, 203, 204. Center, next to the ear, 194, 193, 191.

These are all neutral with a slight red bias. Very slight.

And, in answer to the original question, that's the way it looks on my calibrated CRT monitor - gray gradient.

-js

Obviously we're picking nits when we're talking about a colour cast this small but it definitely has differences on the right and left side. The right side as more blue -- B is often as high or close to R while on the left side B is lower compared to R... that is using the normal eyedropper.

Using the WB eyedropper like I described above where it sets the WB according to the neutral you clicked is the most obvious way to see it.

Again, the difference is very small but is there. It isn't something you'd notice with your naked eye but if you're trying to get a true neutral across the entire background, it will be impossible unless the background is a very true hue across the entire scene. If it is slightly more blue on the right, the balanced out colour will still be slightly more blue (or vice versa depending which you WB to).

I figure any real-world photo is neutral if R, G and B are within 3 or 4 points of each other, and that's what I see here.

Do you see similar numbers to those I got?

-js

Yup, it is within those numbers -- I agree it is minimal... but as the OP was being really picky with the colour cast across monitors it seemed best to show how there was a slight cast, even if very slight.

The colour cast differences I was seeing was very noticeable to the naked. If it's neutral within a few points, than it's okay. I just didn't want this to suddenly have a red or orange background should I decide to print it. A slight side benefit is that I know which of my monitors is semi-reliable now.

Thanks to both of you for the help!

A colour chart is helpful in this case:

FWIW, The shadows have detail & the whites aren't blown, so it he looks pretty good to me. The shirt looks more neutral than the background, but it doesn't bother me, so I'd say you're pretty close. The real test will be when you make a print, & then you'll probably have other printer issues to correct, regardless of how it looks now.