[P-E]

I seem to spend hours calibrating my monitors and often look at colour shifts outside Photoshop.

I real irratation for me is the colour red which seems to suffer more than any other colour out of a colour managed application like Photoshop.

Wondered how far others went when it comes to calibrating/colour management.

[Soupdragon]

I was really hoping to see some technical responses to this as I too suffer from colour shifts when viewing and printing.

[P-E]

Searching around the net shows that there are many people questioning the same thing.

Many complain after 'saving for the web' that the colours looked washed out but mine always appear to suffer from slight over saturation.

I know that photos will not look exactly the same in a non coloured application such as IE and I always convert to sRGB even though the picture was originally shot sRGB.

I now use Spectraview/EyeOne Match 3 to calibrate and set this to use a gamma of sRGB IEC619-2.1 which I find better than 2.2.

[Markulous]

Dunno about colour shifts, but one of the big complaints is the Adobe vs sRGB colour space with respect to red - as well as your rubbish Bayer sensors not recording red too well!

Oh, and I shoot RAW, convert to Adobe RGB (for prints) and then sRGB to display on 'Net. (A common complaint is that quite a few forget to convert to sRGB before Save for Web, leading to darker, slightly washed out colour)

[Steve]

I must admit I suffer from this as well, my colours shift as soon as I view them outside of a colour managed application. My prints and what I work with in PS match though so it is just when saving for web that I have to take care.

Like others have already mentioned I always convert so sRGB before saving and usually increase the saturation a touch to compensate for the web size shots.

Not that long ago I spent a fair amount of time researching this issue and discovered that it is a wide spead complaint. I tried all the supposed fixes and found none removed the problem completely.

[Gary Bagshawe]

I went on a day seminar thingy run by adobe all about colour management and it confused the hell out of me. All I need to know is that if it looks like that on my monitor it will come out of my printer how I want it too.

[P-E]

Since calibrating my monitor to have tonal response to represent that of sRGB, I see very little colour shift with only the reds still proving a problem.

[P-E]

Sorry to drag this one back up but the other day I got am email out of the blue from Neil Barstow who I had never heard of

He forwarded me his phone number and we had brief chat about colour management.

Here is his web page which might be of interest to some..........I am no way trying to promote his services just thought it might be of interest to those like myself who get involved and confused with colour management.

Neil Barstow - Colour Management Consulting

[fionaB]

the only calibration i have ever done to either monitor or printer is to use the usual adobe gamma thingy for the monitor. I know my monitor always shows the image ever so slightly brighter than it prints so i take that into account when getting an image ready for print.

Not very technical etc but if it looks like i want it to when it is printed i dont see why i should change things..... the old saying " if its not broke dont fix"

Fi

[j sotelo]

Heres a few links that might be helpfull..though I think the best thing to do is buy a Monitor Color Calibrator but if you cant, try these links....

ww.ephotozine.com

http://www.normankoren.com/color_management

[Rob Barron]

One thing worth taking into account is your monitor and graphics card as these two things are the definers of all the colour you see in your pictures on-screen.

I had no end of problems trying to get my monitor to look something similar to the prints my i9950 were producing all to no avail. That was a 19" CRT monitor. Recently I got rid of that and bought a DellWFP2007 20.1" LCD monitor and wow, what a difference! I can now see everything in the picture, even in the near black areas. But most importantly, what I see on my screen is a lot closer to what comes out of my printer.

It is well worth getting a proper Printer Profile made to ensure the inks and papers you are using produce the results your screen is showing. After all, I can print exactly the same image on two different papers and get MASSIVELY different results.

All webmasters know that when producing graphics for the internet, they should use a palette of 'web-safe colours'. That means forgoing the pleasures of 16.7 million colours and restricting themselves to the basic range that the interent can reproduce accurately. A lot of people are not aware of it but when you use 'Save for web' that is precisely what is happening: the colours used in the picture are adjusted to their nearest web-safe equivalent. This means the number of colours in the shot are reduced massively, the filesize goes down.... and subtle shading often disappears with it :o)

As mentioned, calibration is a huge subject and some people pay inordinate sums of money for tools to do the job.... with varying degrees of success! If you need absolute accuracy then money needs to be spent: if however you are happy with a close equivalent, no big deal. Obviously the use you are putting your results to makes a big difference. If the shots are for a client paying heap big sums of cash then they might be expecting colours to match provided swatches.

My answers here haven't really answered anything, sorry. But if it makes you feel better, we all suffer the problem to some degree and due to the spactral nature of red, that will always be the one that drives us nuts!

Cheers,
Rob

[Dave Canon]

Please remember if you set sRGB as the colour space for your camera, for the RAW conversion or for your working colour space, it is a smaller colour space than Adobe RGB (1998). This is fine if you never print. However, if you print, Adobe RGB (1998) is recommended converting to the printer profile at printing or sRGB for web or digital projector output. Colour Management is a complex subject but I can strongly recommend Adobe Photohop for Photographers by Martin Evening which covers this topic in sufficient detail.

[P-E]

Originally Posted by Dave Canon

I can strongly recommend Adobe Photohop for Photographers by Martin Evening which covers this topic in sufficient detail.

Got a copy on my desk and can also recommend it