Monitor disparities viewing animations

[josephus]

We're doing our first animations for a client of some model home interiors...complete walkthrough. I'm finding a pretty huge disparity in how the images look on various monitors, we have four monitors in our studio, and it looks different on every one. The base walls colors of these are supposed to be beige, and on the various monitors they range from beige, to pink beige, to grey. This is maddening! How do I deal with this? These animations are going to be posted on the client's website.

 

When setting the colors, I'm using a consumer flat panel display in sRGB mode, 50% brightness (default factory setting was 100%), 100% contrast, all other settings factory default. I figure most people viewing these will have a similar monitor with factory default settings in sRGB mode.

 

Any suggestions/thoughts would be GREATLY appreciated!

[Brian Smith]

I stumbled upon a solution to this a while back. Have your client go to this website and pick out the colors there http://www.materials-world.com/

 

Materials-World.com lists virtually every major paint manufacturer and almost all of their available colors. Simply have your client go to this website and pick out or confirm their color selections, and regardless of variations in monitors, when you send them back the final product, it will match the colors they selected. Otherwise, you could go around and around chasing a ghost. Best is, if once you show them the final product and they want to change the colors, you have grounds to charge them for the changes if you want because they picked out the color and it will look the same in the final product.

[josephus]

Brian, thank you for the reply and helpful link. I viewed one of those assortments of color swatches on two different monitors, and they look quite different. That is actually my point, that even though I'm using client-approved colors that look right on my monitor, they may look quite different when people view the animations on the website. Where I have neutral beige walls, some may see pinkish walls while others may see grey walls...it all depends on their monitor.

 

Just to see which of our monitors displays the most accurate colors relative to the actual samples, I will check that in the morning as I have the full color samples of one of those paint companies that is listed.

 

Thx for pointing me to that site...this is very helpful (for other things .

 

Joe H.

[Brian Smith]

Joe,

I understand what your saying, but your always going to have this kind of problem. While you should do your best to make sure that all the monitors you use are calibrated as closely and accurately as possible, you can't control the monitor that your client views your work on. What I'm saying is that regardless of any of your monitors' discrepancies, as long as the client selects the colors from this site (or a site like it), when they get the final product back from you, the colors they see will be the same, assuming they use the same monitor.

[signet]

IMO

 

You should check all of your colors on a client color video monitor ( the sort the ship with edit suites) this is the only way you can be sure what you are sending to your client. http://www.planetdv.net/Content/By_Manufacturer/JVC/Video_Output_Monitors/JVC_TM-1051DG_1034_Colour_Video_Monitor_with_dual_SDI_inputs_big.asp

 

from monitor to monitor in your office there is always going to be color variation even if there all the same monitors with the same setup. Ambient light etc is going to affect what you see. Try using the Adobe gamma setup in your control panel. Do this for each monitor and you should start getting a more similar image. If you have a Mac in the office check the colors on that and use that as the benchmark to setup your pcs.

 

 

the other thing that is totally outside of your control is your client.

 

I went to meet a client a couple of months after sending them a rater good animation. they showed me around there sales office and I was horrified to see that the plasma they where showing the movie on was blowing all hell out of the colours. what a waste. you could hardly see the detail in anything. ( i spent some time fixing that for them) and from now on i am going to try and make sure that one of us is there to set up the damn thing up.

 

It is a huge problem

 

 

Mike

 

Senior Designer

http://www.uniform.net