A Basic Color Management Question

As a newbie to the realm of color management, I certainly could use some basic advice.

I recently color-corrected & repaired several old family photos in Photoshop Elements on my NEC display which has been calibrated & profiled. However, when I open these images on my wife's computer (for storage in her photo library), the colors are over-saturated with extreme color casts.

What must I do to be assured that the images displayed on other computer screens will (at least closely) resemble the original?

Thank you kindly for any help.

Calibrate your wife's monitor?

René Damkot wrote in post #9671387
Calibrate your wife's monitor?

Plus tell your wife to use a color managed program to view them.

The point is that there are no guarantees other than making sure the image is in sRGB and crossing your fingers.

René Damkot wrote in post #9671387
Calibrate your wife's monitor?

Point well-taken. My dilemma, however, is that I have a SpectraView II puck/software (that is a tweaked Eye One Display II puck) for use on specific wide-gamut NEC displays only. I am reluctant to buy another colorimeter for her computer since color management is not critical on that computer.

Might there be any other alternatives to tweaking the display settings on the other computer such as on-screen settings or using test images? What about using one of the images that was post processed on my NEC display as a test image?

I know what I am asking is a crude substitute for proper calibration.

Thank you for any help you can offer. I appreciate it.

kitjv wrote in post #9672557
Point well-taken. My dilemma, however, is that I have a SpectraView II puck/software (that is a tweaked Eye One Display II puck) for use on specific wide-gamut NEC displays only. I am reluctant to buy another colorimeter for her computer since color management is not critical on that computer.

Might there be any other alternatives to tweaking the display settings on the other computer such as on-screen settings or using test images? What about using one of the images that was post processed on my NEC display as a test image?

I know what I am asking is a crude substitute for proper calibration.

Thank you for any help you can offer. I appreciate it.

Yes you could use one of your images to set the monitor, but that will be less than ideal and may not actually solve the problem. What program is your wife using to view the images? Is it color managed? If not, I don't care how you calibrate your wife's monitor it still won't be correct. Color management is more than just a calibrated monitor.

As the OP, let me apologize for not having carefully thought out my question beforehand. Let me re-state my question a bit differently. Thanks for being patient with someone who is climbing up the learning curve of color management.

I am using Photoshop Elements to post process my images on a MacBook Pro with an external NEC P221W display. The NEC has been calibrated & profiled using the proprietary SpectraView II puck & software. There appears to be 2 issues with which I could use some help.

Issue #1: First I will process an image with PSE on the NEC display. If I drag the image (while still in PSE) to the MacBook Pro's built-in display, the colors tend to be over-saturated & often with a color cast. Is this a problem of the built-in display not being calibrated?

Issue#2: Although I process my images in PSE, I organize & store them in iPhoto '09. If I open an image that I stored in iPhoto, the colors in the image are over-saturated regardless of whether I view them on the built-in display or the NEC display. My question is: what can I do to assure that images processed in PSE will retain the same color balance (if that is the correct term) in iPhoto?

I assume that iPhoto is a color-managed application. If so, is there some tweaking that I need to do?

And, thanks for your patience & any help you can provide.

I had a similar problem with a Sony digital photo frame. Film-scanned images that looked fine on my monitor showed with far too much contrast and saturation on the photo frame. If you like the neon effect, fine. But I hated it. I created a Photoshop Action to reduce the contrast and saturation to make the images look natural in the frame.

kitv,

You should be able to tweak the Macbook Pro's brightness and contrast settings to something sensible, whether its possible to lower saturation I don't know, never having owned anything other than a PC.

The answer to your second issue is simple. You cannot ever be sure how your images will look on someone elses monitor, ever. All you can reasonably do is make sure they display as you want them in a colour managed environment, beyond that, all bets are off.

It is certainly time the computer industry sorted this out. We should be able to buy a monitor/printer/softwa​re etc knowing that everything will work together to meet a published standard. We should not need to use calibration hardware to achieve it, but sadly we must.

Amazingly, different software even use different interpretations of standard colour spaces! We don't stand a chance.

kitjv wrote in post #9672557
Point well-taken. My dilemma, however, is that I have a SpectraView II puck/software (that is a tweaked Eye One Display II puck) for use on specific wide-gamut NEC displays only. I am reluctant to buy another colorimeter for her computer since color management is not critical on that computer.

Might there be any other alternatives to tweaking the display settings on the other computer such as on-screen settings or using test images? What about using one of the images that was post processed on my NEC display as a test image?

I know what I am asking is a crude substitute for proper calibration.

Thank you for any help you can offer. I appreciate it.

You'll need different software, but you can use your sensor with a monitor other than an NEC one.

Sdiver2489 wrote in post #9673786
You'll need different software, but you can use your sensor with a monitor other than an NEC one.

Thank you. A rep at NEC confirmed this as well. Now I need to determine the software that will be compatible with the sensor & my MacBook Pro.

kitjv wrote in post #9673944
Thank you. A rep at NEC confirmed this as well. Now I need to determine the software that will be compatible with the sensor & my MacBook Pro.

It's expensive but coloreyes display pro is.

Argyll CMS is free, though, I don't know if it works w/ your hardware.
I have yet to get a colormeter myself, but soon...

kitjv wrote in post #9673944
Thank you. A rep at NEC confirmed this as well. Now I need to determine the software that will be compatible with the sensor & my MacBook Pro.

kitjv wrote in post #9673259
As the OP, let me apologize for not having carefully thought out my question beforehand. Let me re-state my question a bit differently. Thanks for being patient with someone who is climbing up the learning curve of color management.

I am using Photoshop Elements to post process my images on a MacBook Pro with an external NEC P221W display. The NEC has been calibrated & profiled using the proprietary SpectraView II puck & software. There appears to be 2 issues with which I could use some help.

Issue #1: First I will process an image with PSE on the NEC display. If I drag the image (while still in PSE) to the MacBook Pro's built-in display, the colors tend to be over-saturated & often with a color cast. Is this a problem of the built-in display not being calibrated?

Issue#2: Although I process my images in PSE, I organize & store them in iPhoto '09. If I open an image that I stored in iPhoto, the colors in the image are over-saturated regardless of whether I view them on the built-in display or the NEC display. My question is: what can I do to assure that images processed in PSE will retain the same color balance (if that is the correct term) in iPhoto?

I assume that iPhoto is a color-managed application. If so, is there some tweaking that I need to do?

And, thanks for your patience & any help you can provide.

Can you post a screen shot of your color management settings in PSE?

Your NEC labeled puck is actually better than a standard EyeOne Display v.2 puck. Download a copy of i1Match software.

http://www.xrite.com …on=support&Soft​wareID=724

In2Photos wrote in post #9675076
Can you post a screen shot of your color management settings in PSE?

Pardon my ignorance, but where are the color management settings located in PSE? I can't seem to find them.

Also, another question: Should my 2 displays be calibrated in sRGB rather than RGB? (I plan to print some of my images, as well as email other images). I hope there is a consensus answer to my question. Since I don't want to ignite another "RGB vs. sRGB" debate.

Thank you.