[nelliestew]

Hi

I've discovered that print outs of my shots are a different hue to that which I can see on screen. My O/H has suggested a pantone huey (?). Knowing nothing about them other than they are on ebay for around £50 + p & p , does anyone have experience of them or should we go for an alternative?

Nellie

[silkstone]

The Huey may help to calibrate your monitor, but it won't calibrate the printer.

Do you suspect that your monitor is not correct? In the Pixalo Gallery there's a greyscale step-wedge near the top. Can you distinguish all the different tones, and do they all look neutral grey? If so, your monitor may be adjusted correctly. There are also test files that can help with manual calibration*.

I've recently bought a Spyder3 Pro to tame a monitor which had a colour cast that varied over the tonal range, and that has done a reasonable job. Once your monitor is calibrated or profiled correctly, you can then start on the printer. Some photo paper manufacturers (e.g. Ilford) offer free profiles for different printer/paper combinations, and these can help.

* Have a look at....

Photo Friday: Monitor Calibration Tool
Monitor Calibration Tests: Black Point

[nelliestew]

Cheers Silkstone
I'll give it a go now - the lightbox orchid and the b/w conversion were nothing like the image on screen..
Will let you know
Nellie

[silkstone]

It's probably not much help, but having calibrated this monitor with the Spyder3 I'm getting a close match on both the Canon i9950 and the MP610 using default settings for Photo Paper Pro and Ilford Galerie Smooth Gloss.

See how you do with the test images and maybe splash out on a profiler if manual adjustment is difficult.

BTW are your images in Adobe RGB or sRGB?

[nelliestew]

Hi
The images are in sRGB...still tootling around with the monitor adjustment..
nellie

[AQ]

Are you printing from Photoshop. If so what setting are you using for colour management .

Also what printer do you have and what settings are set up for that.

I may have been lucky but I get quite close matches between my flat screen and the final print. This is what I did. Much less expensive than a calibration tool but I may have just been lucky.

I used that monitor link above to set up the monitor brightness and contrast

I have CS3 set up as sRGB and "no colour management" in the print dialogue. Then for the Epson R265 printer with a continuous ink system I have set up a custom print profile by trial and error. I set the printer to Epson vivid mode and then printed a test print. With the Epson printer you can adjust the brightness, contrast and the cyan, magenta values. That I did by trial and error but I do have a reasonably good eye for colour shades (I have worked with dyes all my life). It only took about 5 prints to get a very close match.

[brian wright22]

Hi Nelliestew. It took me ages to get a sort of colour match. The problem is that a monitor is either "emissive" or reflective depending on whether you have an CRT or LCD display respectively. This should not make a difference to colour matching but subjectively the LCD does appear to be more saturated and can lead you to think the printed picture is different!!.
Like you I have tried some calibration aids by borrowing various devices and have set up the monitor using a "greyscale" chart and then reverting to manually changing the printer profiles to suit.
I would add this is not the method that proffessional graphics labs would adopt.Having many monitors and staff they need to have a common calibration and standard of repeatability.
One point I will add is that when you are satisfied with you printed results always use the same printer paper. I have found different makes of paper has more subtle affect on the end results than most other variables.
Brian

[Larne]

Also bear in mind that you are never going to get an identical result between screen and printer as each is capable of displaying a different range of colours (and the printer significantly more than the screen). The trick is to get something that is close enough and is acceptable.

I used a Spyder2express to calibrate the screens on my two computers here. Although one LCD screen is brighter than the other the colours are pretty much the same. I recently acquired a Canon Pixma iP4500 and I just use the on-board colour management, tell it what paper it has and the result is very close to what I see on the screen - acceptably close.

It's just down to getting everything working to a common baseline. Sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is - if you have the right tools anyway. I hope you are able to get your sorted out and working.

[nelliestew]

Still working on it - Epson 265 printer - and tend to have Epson paper. I used the tools suggested last night , and need to check the results as although "better", this could also be due to brightening the image prior to printing. I intend to concentrate on this over the next few days to get it right. I will resort to a callibration tool by Saturday, if I can't get it as I am using acres of ink!
Thanks all for your help - will let you know
Nellie

[nelliestew]

Hi Larne
Adjusted the monitor ( I think) but the print out of my dandelion head is brown in hue. Would you suggest spyder2?
Nellie

[Charlotte]

Hi Nellie, I have Pantone Huey. It's very basic, and I find it annoying that it gives you choices of several 'colour schemes' which include one for photo editing. I expected a single neutral calibration key. Using the 'photo editing' choice, I have a red tinge on my screen which I'm not keen on, and gives me the impression that it's not calibrated in the neutral colours/tones that I would expect from a calibrator No-one's commented that my colours are always out, so I guess it does the job though

[nelliestew]

Hi Charlotte
definately food for thought - I have had comments that one or another shots could have been brighter, when what I was seeing was the opposite - I will keep on trying with the monitor (until pay-day!) and then decide on either Pantone Huey or Spyder II , as I find the current print outs a bit dispiriting,
Cheers!

[Larne]

All I can say is that the Spyder worked for me - but not having tried any of the others I obviously cannot say that it is better or worse.

Good luck with getting it sorted though - nothing worse than producing a great image on the screen that looks rubbish when printed.

[nelliestew]

Result ( I think) I had another go at the links provided by silkstone - and using the black point , recalibrated to view at 3 as opposed to 13. The resulting printout gave me the sharpness and colour I wanted - so long may it continue! Cheers to everyone for their help



Monitor Calibration Tests: Black Point[/quote]