Calibrating a monitor.

Singularity 1

I use a HP laptop to edit my photos. I do a lot of re touching for beauty head shots and so on. I'm just wondering would it be a good idea to get it calibrated - or indeed if its even possible to calibrate a laptop monitor? I've done a bit of research on this and I can't seem to get a straight answer. Has anybody any experience doing this with a laptop?

pixbyjohn

Yes it is possible to calibrate a laptop monitor, a few of my friends do it regularly. They use i1 pro by Xrite

Kenny Logins

Problem is that your laptop will move around and external light can affect what you see.

There's a good article here, it covers desktop monitors only, but the principle is the same.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/calibrating.htm

Singularity 1

I've also wondered, if I am sending photos to models who likely wouldn't have calibrated monitors, would the colours appear off on their screens if they were edited on a calibtated laptop? And there are so many people using tablets and smartphones now, it hardly seems worth while.

Then there's the printing. I get my photos printed in a lab, so if I calibrate my laptop, will the colours in the lab match my screen?

Zillah

Singularity 1 wrote: »

I've also wondered, if I am sending photos to models who likely wouldn't have calibrated monitors, would the colours appear off on their screens if they were edited on a calibtated laptop? And there are so many people using tablets and smartphones now, it hardly seems worth while.

Then there's the printing. I get my photos printed in a lab, so if I calibrate my laptop, will the colours in the lab match my screen?

Mileage will always vary depending on what screen you see something with. Gotta make it right and forget everyone else. Anyway, people that aren't photographers or something similar won't notice anything as subtle as the miniscule difference in tone on different displays. A lot of people don't even notice th e bloody aspect ratio being wrong in movies, let alone slight colour variance.

If you edit in cmyk you should get a print accurate rendition. The only big difference I've noticed is that it can be hard to get bright, vibrant colours from cmyk, especially in the pink/red end of things. For a lot of images you wouldn't even notice a swap from rgb, others; the difference is massive.

stcstc

yes you can calibrate a laptop screen - it will help

BUT

laptop screens aint very accurate to start with so your never gonna get as good as you could do

as for editing in CMYK, NOOOOO dont do it

every lab you send images to for printing will use and expect RGB

CMYK will get used in commercial printing, for things like mags and leaflets etc.

BUT

its NOT for printing photos

and although almost all inkjet printers use CMYK inks, they expect and work best with RGB image being fed to them

Zillah

stcstc wrote: »

yes you can calibrate a laptop screen - it will help

BUT

laptop screens aint very accurate to start with so your never gonna get as good as you could do

as for editing in CMYK, NOOOOO dont do it

every lab you send images to for printing will use And expect RGB

CMYK will get used in commercial printing, for things like mags and leaflets etc.

BUT

its NOT for printing photos

and although almost all inkjet printers use CMYK inks, they expect and work best with RGB image being fed to them

Hmm, that's confusing. I've had problems printing directly from rgb before and tend to find working in cmyk a bit more reliable for print. Are to you saying that working in cmyk won't show you what you're gonna get? I do do quite a bit of work for leaflets and flyers etc, but why would that be different?

calnand

I know there's a printers in cork that will calibrate your screen to work with their printers. They do it for free, if you get your printing done there.

stcstc

Zillah wrote: »

Hmm, that's confusing. I've had problems printing directly from rgb before and tend to find working in cmyk a bit more reliable for print. Are to you saying that working in cmyk won't show you what you're gonna get? I do do quite a bit of work for leaflets and flyers etc, but why would that be different?

printing leaflets etc in done in a CMYK process

printing Photos(which is what we are talking about) is done in RGB.

problems your having printing from RGB, are coincidence rather than the norm

Your camera captures in RGB, your monitor displays RGB, you desktop printer or local photolab expect RGB

stcstc

calnand wrote: »

I know there's a printers in cork that will calibrate your screen to work with their printers. They do it for free, if you get your printing done there.

calibration is not a once off thing, its something that needs doing maybe once a month or 2

BUT

you DO NOT calibrate a screen to a printer

you calibrate a screen to an international standard. also the printer to the same standard, so then they should match closer than before calibration

BUT its not an automatic process, generally there are some creative descisions made by the person doing the calibration. a bit like how to process your film in the darkroom

Zillah

stcstc wrote: »

printing leaflets etc in done in a CMYK process

printing Photos(which is what we are talking about) is done in RGB.

You're being kind of circular here...we're talking about making an image on screen appear on paper, why would you use different colour spaces for photos on a leaflet instead of a photo on its own?

stcstc

because as i said above

leaflets are printed using a CMYK process

Photos are printed using a RGB process, go take a CMYK image into one of those mini lab photo print things, almost certainly it wont accept it

thats why photos tend to not look as good on leaflet type prints

Kenny Logins

RGB has a much wider gamut, and I assume photo printers are optimised to take advantage of that? Converting to CMYK is 'dumbing down' to suit the commercial litho/digital process.

BTW, digital presses/RIPs can handle RGB photos in a CMYK document, and will process them separately but very few people seem to take advantage of that.

Zillah

Are the limitations of the CMYK colour range not a case of the inks having the limited colour range and CMYK reflects that? Surely that's the point: If you work in RGB and then print it, the inks cannot accurately represent RGB on paper, so it looks different on paper compared to what it did on the screen. If you work in CMYK then what you see on the screen is what will appear on the paper?

I'm not saying you're wrong stcstc, but all you keep saying is "that's the way it is done" without explaining why or how.

stcstc

Zillah wrote: »

Are the limitations of the CMYK colour range not a case of the inks having the limited colour range and CMYK reflects that? Surely that's the point: If you work in RGB and then print it, the inks cannot accurately represent RGB on paper, so it looks different on paper compared to what it did on the screen. If you work in CMYK then what you see on the screen is what will appear on the paper?

I'm not saying you're wrong stcstc, but all you keep saying is "that's the way it is done" without explaining why or how.

no this isnt correct, your explanation is incorrect, well it is now, 10 years ago yes it would be closer to being accurate.

for example the latest epson printers can print almost all of the Adobe RGB spectrum. which is much much bigger than CMYK

if you work in RGB and have photos printed professionally what you see on screen will be very close or excatly the same

(the cavet to this is that if you are looking at the images on a decent monitor with a wide gamut, most monitors you get with a computer cant display much more than sRGB)

Zillah

That's good to know then! I didn't know the inks had caught up with RGB. Why do they still use CMYK for flyers etc then?

stcstc

actually the inks in an epson ARE CMYK + some others :-)

Kenny Logins

Zillah wrote: »

That's good to know then! I didn't know the inks had caught up with RGB. Why do they still use CMYK for flyers etc then?

That's generally litho/offset printing (high volume, low cost). Digital uses all kinds of toners now, CMYKOGV for example (adding orange, green and violet).

genie_us

Hi

I hope I'm not about to take this thread off topic. I just wanted to ask if people would recommend a monitor calibrator as an essential thing to have?

I have noticed the odd time that when I convert an image to b&w in Lightroom I can see a sort of purple tint to it.

In colour the photos aren't blown out and are correctly exposed, or seem to be at least from the histograms. After reading this I am wondering should I buy a colour calibrator for the monitor?

stcstc

its as essential as a memory card or the lens on ya camera