Iain Denby Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 Shit, I just get a black screen. Have my eyes packed in all together? ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted September 5, 2008 Author Share Posted September 5, 2008 calibrated monitors shouldn't make a difference. the tonal values will still be there, calibration or note. looks like its gone offline too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 calibrated monitors shouldn't make a difference. the tonal values will still be there, calibration or note. I think maybe it would make a difference. RErender on the vray forum made a good point about this, "if two hues fall out of gamut range they could theoretically be mapped to the same color making a correct order a game of chance". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 (edited) A non calibrated monitor will definetly make a difference as if the curve response is not linear the tonal range could be skewed. Also the gamut of the monitor could make a difference as well. Case in point, last night I mentioned I was accessing this from my laptop via remote desktop. Even though RDP was set to 24 bit, my laptop (MacBookPro) has a significantly smaller gamut than my Dell High Gamut monitor. Last night I scored 12, today I scored 0. Edited September 5, 2008 by Jeff Mottle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 I did a quick screen capture of the color swatches and brought that into PhotoShop and checked for out of gamut colors and there were none. I compared it to the sRGB color space. That having been said the sRGB color space is only an approximation of what the "average" non-high gamut display is able to reproduce. Every monitor is different. The exact RGB values for the swatches can be found by looking at the source code on the page, so I'd have to check those values against the sRGB color space model to see if any of them are close to the edges of the color space. If any of them were it's possible for some monitors to be less capable of differentiating two similar swatches. I do know for a fact that when I profiled my MacBookPro display last year there were several areas where it fell short of the sRGB color space. It also is much less capable of reproducing a color ramp than my high gamut monitor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 I did a quick screen capture of the color swatches and brought that into PhotoShop and checked for out of gamut colors and there were none. I compared it to the sRGB color space. That having been said the sRGB color space is only an approximation of what the "average" non-high gamut display is able to reproduce. Every monitor is different. The exact RGB values for the swatches can be found by looking at the source code on the page, so I'd have to check those values against the sRGB color space model to see if any of them are close to the edges of the color space. If any of them were it's possible for some monitors to be less capable of differentiating two similar swatches. I do know for a fact that when I profiled my MacBookPro display last year there were several areas where it fell short of the sRGB color space. It also is much less capable of reproducing a color ramp than my high gamut monitor. geez, i thought i was a geek...i feel much better about myself now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 Everyone in our industry should know this stuff. The scary part is that almost no one does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alias_marks Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 Scored 8! got up and walked into the coffee machine That's effing hilarious, I just spit all over my keyboard! hahahahahahaha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted September 6, 2008 Author Share Posted September 6, 2008 Everyone in our industry should know this stuff. The scary part is that almost no one does. is it though? i completely understand a duff monitor wont do you any favours, but is the whole process of calibration really worth a ton of beans? let me explain... i've been in the business for nearly 20 years and have never been through an official calibration process. I generally turn my monitor's brightness and contrasts quite high, and make sure the monitor's output looks as good as i can get it. if there's obvious downfalls or 'flatness' or difficulty in reading between colour values then i'll bin it and get a new one. But as i say, in nearly 20 years i've never had a monitor problem. perhaps i've been lucky. i've tried this colour test on my flat screen in work and my 10 year old lcd at home both with 100% success. Also, the work i produce day in day out for screen and for print has never been in doubt or question as far as colour is concerned. my work certainly hasn't suffered from it and i've never had complaints from printers or clients about it. (i've had complaints where it turns out the recipient's monitors have been broken and they didn't know, but not mine). As i say,i dont just use a monitor straight from the box, i turn my brightness and contrast quite high which gives me my usual settings and have never suffered in nearly 20 years. what i see on screen is what i see in print basically. perhaps i've just been lucky. i do in effect go through my own calibration technique, but as for official calibration techniques? i dont personally use them. They bang on about it big time at the vray forums claiming it's of top importance and your image will suffer and not be 'real enough' if not properly calibrated, and they even suggest calibration programs sometimes costing a few hundred bucks to buy. i personally just dont go with this. just use your common sence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 is it though? i completely understand a duff monitor wont do you any favours, but is the whole process of calibration really worth a ton of beans? let me explain... i've been in the business for nearly 20 years and have never been through an official calibration process. I generally turn my monitor's brightness and contrasts quite high, and make sure the monitor's output looks as good as i can get it. if there's obvious downfalls or 'flatness' or difficulty in reading between colour values then i'll bin it and get a new one. But as i say, in nearly 20 years i've never had a monitor problem. perhaps i've been lucky. i've tried this colour test on my flat screen in work and my 10 year old lcd at home both with 100% success. Also, the work i produce day in day out for screen and for print has never been in doubt or question as far as colour is concerned. my work certainly hasn't suffered from it and i've never had complaints from printers or clients about it. (i've had complaints where it turns out the recipient's monitors have been broken and they didn't know, but not mine). As i say,i dont just use a monitor straight from the box, i turn my brightness and contrast quite high which gives me my usual settings and have never suffered in nearly 20 years. what i see on screen is what i see in print basically. perhaps i've just been lucky. i do in effect go through my own calibration technique, but as for official calibration techniques? i dont personally use them. They bang on about it big time at the vray forums claiming it's of top importance and your image will suffer and not be 'real enough' if not properly calibrated, and they even suggest calibration programs sometimes costing a few hundred bucks to buy. i personally just dont go with this. just use your common sence. Hi Steven, To a certain extent I would agree with you. Day to day I never have any color issues. I never used to use any calibration stuff and since using it I dont see any perceivable change in my process or product. So whats the issue? Well.....for the last year Ive been sharing a studio with a digital retoucher (see http://www.joeybluebird.com). He's an old pro and goes all the way back to doing traditional pre-digital retouching. He works in CMYK (all his work goes to print) so there are cvolor issues to be addressed and if my monitor is off it doesnt help.Ive been collaborating with him and a high end photographer on several ad campaigns, not architectural stuff, more weird shit than anything else. Once you are doing images for print in the advertising world and working with other high end studios, you realize what all the color calibration fuss is about. It also makes you question why you should be judging your own work in what I would call a 'relative environment'. If you get a call from a print shop saying your image looks like shit then you need to be able to argue on solid footing. I think a parallel can be drawn to audio. Everything is about fidelity. If your primary source files are pristine, you have a better chance of the clarity surviving the mix, edit, reproduce events than if it was 'just ok non one speaker'. That said, most of our clients are architects and developers here and we tend to be operating in small autonomous environments. No-one will could give a monkeys as long as it looks ok. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 (edited) A calibrated display would never have both it's brightness and contrast cranked all the way up. The brightness is always set to 100% to ensure the monitor is displaying all of the color range it can, but the contrast is usually set to zero and then moved up until a grey ramp just barely starts to show the darkest swatch on the ramp. If it's set too high you start to blow out some details. Now onto some of the reasons you have probably been able to get away without color management. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you worked alone in a one man show? Either way, your color management is built into your head, and you know that if you adjust your monitor like X you will get a known result when you go to print, to the web to a clients screen etc. If there is no one else in your department then you just took away many of your variables, which are ensuring a consistent output between all of the devices in your company that are used for visualization. Based on the fact you also scored a zero, means your color perception is really good and you can probably easily detect color casts, and color temperature of your monitor to a reasonably calibrated position. You can get close if you work on your own and you do have a good sense of color and tonal range, but if you start to add other variables to the mix, you're screwed or work in an environment where color is more important. I would hazard a guess that if you did calibrate your monitor you'd still see some difference. When you profile a monitor (and there is a lot more to color management than just a monitor calibration), the software adjusts the video card's lookup tables over hundreds of values to ensure a perfectly linear response. There is no way you can do this with just the on board controls. Calibration software adjusts how the video card outputs color to ensure the display outputs the proper response. If you are using really high end displays like LaCie or an Eizo their factory defaults are considerably better than say a Dell. Also when you create an image and send it to someone else without an embedded profile, there is no definition of what that color really means. It's all based on what's in your head. Like I said, this may be a lot closer for you than many others, but given that no one else is able to download the contents of your brain to know how you saw the color, it makes it a lot more difficult for others to use the image. Like Tommy said once you start to work with photographers, high end print studios etc, color management is key. Images are always viewed under controlled lighting conditions, monitors are calibrated weekly, and everything is locked down to a known spec. Talk to anyone in an FX studio and they will almost certainly use color management. This stuff is not some hokus pokus, it's high level stuff and is used when you don't work in a closed environment. It's kind of like when you buy one of those point and shoot cameras and the printer by the same maker with the dock on top so you can print right from the camera. It's a closed environment. Everyone speaks the same language and everyone understands one another. If it were possible to put another manufacturers camera into the dock, I can gurantee you the color output to the printer would not be the same. The fact that the scores for professionals in our own industry are so diverse speaks volumes for the need of color management to be adopted in our industry. No one sees colors exactly the same way, and all of the devices interpret them differently. (Even two identical devices don't respond the same) but if all of the devices were profiled and calibrated to a known value, then the ONLY variable would then be the color an individual actually input into their app. If you are good with color I bet you can get 75-80% of the way there, which in some cases might be good enough, but that last 20% will not happen without a calibrated environment. Edited September 7, 2008 by Jeff Mottle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted September 7, 2008 Author Share Posted September 7, 2008 i think it's as Tommy says - when you start dealing with high end photographers and printers is when it matters. i work with a couple of colleagues and a fair few different monitors between us and never suffer any problems or noticeable colour discrepancies. Also, the printers we do use (usually organised by the client for every different job) also dont complain. But then, i personally dont have much faith in printers anyway; they generally all want everything at 300 dpi and dont much understand anything else. you are right Jeff in the fact it might be sensible for us all to have a standard calibration so we're all batting from the same sheet, but as it stands i think a lot of this talk is pretty irrelevant in a lot of cases. my client's and client's printing guys dont seem too bothered to the fact this thread itself would probably go straight over the heads of most of them if they were to read it. it's all relative. calibrate in relation to what? what benefit will that extra 20% give me if my colour vision is near perfect, my imagery looks almost identicle from monitor to monitor and when sending to our colour printers, and the people i work with and around dont unbderstand or require colour calibration? we're happy and our client's are always happy, and the hi-end publications i've sent work too look (to the eye) the same as what my monitors look like. colourwise, does it make your imagery any better than mine because you're calibrated and i'm not? i think not maybe. if we were all standard calibrated and fired from the same gun then it might be a different case. i'm not dissing it, but perhaps it might mean more to certain aspects of our trade than others. i fully go with the fact you need a good monitor and to be mindfull of your viewing material, and ii know some champion it more than others, but personally it's something that isn't going to bother me too much in the foreseeable future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 it's all relative. calibrate in relation to what? There are establshed color models based on the way humans see color. Everything in color management is based on this. From these color models, a exact number is then assigned to the colors in the source image that are then understood by other calibrated devices. I think you are probably the execption to the rule as I have yet to work anywhere where printing images and proofing images from screen to screen has not been problematic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 Got my wife to do the test this afternoon. She scored 4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 Finally did the test at home on my at least 8 year old Sony Trinitron Monitor that has never been calibrated and I got a 3. Now if I get a chance, I'll have to do it at work on the Dell LCD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 I did a quick screen capture of the color swatches and brought that into PhotoShop and checked for out of gamut colors and there were none. I compared it to the sRGB color space. That having been said the sRGB color space is only an approximation of what the "average" non-high gamut display is able to reproduce. Every monitor is different. The exact RGB values for the swatches can be found by looking at the source code on the page, so I'd have to check those values against the sRGB color space model to see if any of them are close to the edges of the color space. If any of them were it's possible for some monitors to be less capable of differentiating two similar swatches. I do know for a fact that when I profiled my MacBookPro display last year there were several areas where it fell short of the sRGB color space. It also is much less capable of reproducing a color ramp than my high gamut monitor. A question that is related to your post, but not the topic of the original post... Right now I am using a Spyder3 Elite. I am not getting what 'feels' like a good calibration off of it. By 'feels' like I mean it looks like it is slightly shifted towards green compared to other calibrated systems I have used. The other spectrometers I have used are a Eye-One, and a Spyder2 Pro. Is there a way to check the system for accuracy without a second spectrometer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 A question that is related to your post, but not the topic of the original post... Right now I am using a Spyder3 Elite. I am not getting what 'feels' like a good calibration off of it. By 'feels' like I mean it looks like it is slightly shifted towards green compared to other calibrated systems I have used. The other spectrometers I have used are a Eye-One, and a Spyder2 Pro. Is there a way to check the system for accuracy without a second spectrometer? How old is your display? Is it a CRT? If so, the red guns are usually the first to go which could explain the green shift. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted September 8, 2008 Author Share Posted September 8, 2008 Jeff, thanks for your general info into monitor calibration. if i'm more interested and want to try it, where and how? thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Jeff, thanks for your general info into monitor calibration. if i'm more interested and want to try it, where and how? thanks If you really want to understand what is going on, more than just pressing the buttons in these calibration/profiling apps and hoping everything works as it should, then this is the bible: http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Color-Management-2nd/dp/0321267222/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220857339&sr=8-1 It's a really tough read, but if you read it a few times, you'll really understand this stuff. I find it all pretty interesting. But as Brian pointed out earlier, I guess I'ma color geek. Monitor calibration/profiling is only one step in a color managed workflow, but having just a calibrated monitor will no do any harm. This is the device I use: http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=812 Eye-One Photo. This is a higher end spectrophotometer, but you can get cheaper colorimters that will also calibrate/profile displays. ColorVision makes good ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 geez, i thought i was a geek...i feel much better about myself now. My thoughts exactly!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cccj Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Got a 0, haha, I thought it would be too difficult for me to finish it, can not believe i got a 0(perfect), does that mean I made no mistake? I'm not sure, becuase it asked me to fill in my age and sex when I finished it. Does age or sex matter? Thanks to Stephen, that's a really funny game, I m sending it to my colleagues at office, so much fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 How old is your display? Is it a CRT? If so, the red guns are usually the first to go which could explain the green shift. Currently I am on a Dell 2408WFP, which is definitely a far cry from a high end monitor, but the color space it covers it decent. The display is less than a year old. I did not try the other spectrometers on this monitor, or try this spectrometer on other monitors. I like to think that I am usually better at troubleshooting on this, so I don't know why I didn't try this spectrometer on another system, where I feel good about the calibration. So that will be my next step. I did read somewhere that someone felt they were having a color shift, and they sent the spectrometer back tot he manufacturer for a replacement, and they were happy with the replacement. Just to make sure I am using nomenclature correctly, ....is the Spyder a spectrometer, or a colorimeter? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Just to make sure I am using nomenclature correctly, ....is the Spyder a spectrometer, or a colorimeter? The Spyder is a colorimeter. A colorimeter measures light through filters that mimic the response of human vision, and produce numerical results in one of the color models that describe how humans see color. A spectrophotometer measures how much light at each wavelength a surface transmits or reflects. Spectrophotmeters can be used on non-emmisive surfaces (like paper, fabric etc) to determine color as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tamir Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 Perfect 0 for me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koper Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 OOOI...., to many long posts here, and with eyes hurting i'm not reading all of it. just to say, got a perfect 0 on my non-calibrated monitor. will have to check on my two calibrated monitors tmrw. ps. looks like most people here needs to start eating their carrots!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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