Alan321 Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · UPDATED - Question about calibration and monitor brightness | |
DigMeTX wrote:
Ok, here are a few that I edited after setting brightness using the camera method and then using the Colormunki Smile to calibrate colors. I'd love for anyone with a fully hardware-calibrated monitor to comment on what you think about the colors and brightness that you see here.
Brad, I'm not sure what you expect to get from this process but one thing is certain - calibrating and profiling a monitor will not directly affect the numeric values of the colours in the image. The images are too bright. Consider the first shot - was the sky meant to be white or blue ? Consider the last shot - are the colour values on the girl's face meant to be up around 97% ? I'd expect not - that's whiter than my legs I reckon it's numerically a good stop too bright no matter what your display shows.
Herein lies a problem with calibration and profiling - you need a set of values that works well for general viewing of the image that produces plausible results - e.g. the white of an ocean wave breaking in direct sunlight should look bright and white rather than grey. However, a print viewed in a typical room at night will not look anywhere near bright enough and to mimic the capabilities of the print you might be tempted to lower the brightness of your monitor. That's quite ok for judging what the print will look like but certainly not for editing files that will be presented to others. That's because I might always view my prints in direct sunlight and so my monitor might be set much brighter than yours.
I looked at the images in Lightroom 4 with the 2012 process engine and a linear tone curve.
Another issue that will never be resolved by colour profiling and calibrating is the correct white balance. That is best fixed by using a grey card or a colour chart in one of the images and use that to determine the WB for a neutral patch in that lighting, and then apply that WB to the other images taken in the same lighting. However, it can always get messy when you have some of the image in sunlight, some in shade, and perhaps some lit with flash.
All the profiling will do is help to ensure that the monitor has the greatest possible chance of displaying any colour in the image file correctly, but that in itself won't mean that the colour value value in the file was actually correct for the scene as you saw it.
In case I just missed something, what is your target brightness for the monitor in Cd/m2 ? I typically use about 120 Cd/m2 to display images that look reasonably good on screen, but drop it down to 90 Cd/m2 for editing images to look ok on a print on my wall under the room lights.
[it's very late here and I ought to be asleep, so I just hope that I haven't written something in a way that confuses anyone]
- Alan
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