Hot answers tagged color-management
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There are probably a few things you should look for. Color range is probably the most important factor, and a monitor that is at least capable of representing the Adobe RGB Wide Gamut color space (or color gamut) is important. Most professional cameras will generate images in the Adobe RGB space, while many printers, such as Epson's Stylus Pro line, support ...
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Check out this image by Jeff Schewe from wikipedia. It's a 2D projection of what's really a three-dimensional space, but it makes the basic concept clear:
So: sRGB is a subset of AdobeRGB, which is a subset of ProPhoto RGB.
You can also see how ProPhoto RGB extends outside of the curved shape which represents visible colors. And you can see how AdobeRGB ...
19
Color Management is a scientific process by which various devices used in an image processing workflow can be used despite differences in their supported color. Every device is only approximating some of the total range of colors humans can see, and this limited range is called its "color gamut". Each device has limitations, but those limitations differ from ...
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When discussing the number of colors perceptible to the human eye, I tend to refer to the 2.4 million colors of the CIE 1931 XYZ color space. It is a fairly solid, scientifically founded number, although I do admit it may be limited in context. I think it may be possible for the human eye to be sensitive to 10-100 million distinct "colors" when referring to ...
15
Since you can't do anything about the color management of other people's monitors, the best you can do is:
Make sure your own system is properly color managed (see other questions here on color management). That way, you are at least certain that you're starting from a known point. This is really worth doing even though it takes some effort and probably a ...
14
This can be a complex answer, and quite often, the outcome is that it depends what you print on, meaning you might need to change it or recalibrate often.
On White Point
White point from the perspective of the human eye is a very subjective thing, as the eye automatically "recalibrates" itself to differing white points depending on the kind of light that ...
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Here is the one we suggest using at SmugMug, the full sized image is available for anybody to use.
http://cmac.smugmug.com/SmugMug/Test-prints/Calibration-prints/122238_UAxBs#5637776_3P7qj-A-LB
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I expect you are looking at the exported JPEG photos with some program which does not properly take the color space into account — it just assumes sRGB, the standard default. So, only your photos exported to match that expectation work. (Even if your screen is calibrated, your applications might not be so smart.)
Keep in mind that Adobe RGB is a color space ...
13
ColorHug is the Best Answer
Linux developer Richard Hughes has designed and sells an open source colorimeter called the ColorHug. If you are running Linux, and don't have other hardware available already, this is simple, cheap, and fast. (In fact, it's about 50× faster than the old GretagMacbeth was using before.)
The current price is £60 plus shipping ...
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To start simply, the answer is "It is used for still photography!" I'll explain a little more in a bit, and its use is fairly niche at the moment.
The roots of xvYCC
The xvYCC encoding is, as far as I can tell, a modern enhancement to YCC encoding, or in its long form, Y'CbCr (or YCbCr, which is slightly different.) The YCC encoding is part of a family of ...
13
Color laser printers, especially the big high end office printers, have the color capabilities you need for printing the company logo and the occasional Excel pie chart — but they are truly bad for printing photos.
But the good news is that almost any of the current generation of ink jet printers, even the cheap ones, are pretty good at printing photos - ...
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OK... I used to run a print shop so i think i qualify to answer this.
Any print shop that can print 36x20 inhouse will be using a large format inkjet printer, id say Epson, HP or Canon.
Assuming the printer is reasonably new (IE < 4 years) it will almost definitely use good inks - in Epson's case UltraChrome. IF the print shop uses a constant feed ink ...
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There are a three types of flat-panel monitors (IPS, VA, and TN) and IPS will give you the best results for photography. It's often difficult to figure out the exact type of panel a given monitor uses; here's a list.
Install it somewhere you can provide consistent lighting, and calibrate it with a hardware colorimeter.
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The lab photo printers are likely to be dye-sublimation, or silver-halide (where the digital image is projected onto normal photo paper) which unlike lithography don't require halftoning, however they still use ink and thus follow the subtractive colour model, so the principal is the same.
The reason your colours were off is probably due to CMYK conversion ...
11
The short answer is that yes, essentially all monitors need calibrating if you're going to do photoediting. Apple makes some decent monitors, but they're not particularly different from others, nor (specifically) any less in need of calibration than others. Keep in mind, however, that calibration isn't magic -- it won't suddenly make a really cheap monitor ...
10
I've had exactly the same issue and it is possible to arrive at a correct and workable solution. There are a lot of misconceptions both in the question and the previous answers (and indeed, around colour management in general), so let me try to clear them up and provide you with an answer.
First, the misconceptions...
Regular (non-wide) monitors do not ...
10
Printing a picture seems like it should be easy but there is a lot more involved when it comes to getting predictable colors from what you see on the screen to the print. The first step is calibrating your monitor. This ensures that your monitor is displaying colors correctly. You can purchase a calibrator from companies such as Colorvision (Spyder series) ...
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I have one. You're right — it's a good value for the money, and there's basically no catch except that if you're running under Mac or Windows you'll need to know a little more about what you're doing than you might if you just bought one of the big-name devices.
That's because there's only software for Linux. If you are using Linux (any modern ...
8
The biggest is color management by far. I use the term "photolab" instead of "online printing company."
Ensure your files have the correct color space attached. Many pro labs support a variety of color spaces, so you should use the one that they recommend.
Have your monitor color calibrated using a hardware colorimeter. Eye balling it, will not give you ...
8
Probably not the answer you want, but if you have a bad monitor, and a bad printer, you're probably going to get bad prints.
A color calibration system (hardware) would help, but that's an investment of money and if you aren't willing to do that for your monitor/printer I'm guessing you aren't willing to spend the money on a calibrator.
If you don't make a ...
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It looks like the ZR30W uses a fluorescent backlight. Although it's a cold-cathode fluorescent, the color still changes a little with the temperature. You want to be sure you let the display warm up for quite a while before profiling it to be sure the temperature is stable. The usual recommendation is something like 20 minutes as a minimum, but from what ...
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The obvious problem (or an obvious problem, anyway) is that relatively few cameras have (even very close to) the degree of accuracy and repeatability of exposures to make it work at all well.
Back when magazine review budgets allowed it, some of them included graphs of camera shutter speed accuracy. Especially in faster shutter speeds, it was pretty routine ...
8
Some monitors need more calibration than others and their color-gamut limits how close they can actually get to showing accurate colors.
For example, if a monitor can only has 80% coverage of sRGB, then even after the best calibration it will at most show 80% of colors right. Good monitors now cover 100% (at least 98%) of sRGB and a good percentage (92%+) ...
8
Two words: "ambient" and "context".
At the risk of making what sounds like a "No true Scotsman" argument, "real" monitor calibration is always in the context of the ambient lighting conditions. Not only do the pertinent standards (ISO 12647 and related) specify the lighting levels and colour temperatures under which critical colour work should be performed, ...
7
On the surface, it looks as though he's desaturated the colors and maybe a little exposure bump. Here's an example, the first image is only white balance adjusted to daylight:
The second image is adjusted as +1.75 exposure and -52 saturation:
You can see the drop in color intensity, while retaining reasonable contrast, that the sample images you ...
7
The ambient light temperature will effect how you perceive colours on your monitor --- since unlike a reflective medium the colour of light falling on it has no effect on the colour reflected. The colours of everything else you see around your monitor, and when you look away will differ though, and your eyes will adjust to the ambient colour. Hence the need ...
7
It's impossible to validate your color calibration without a 'real world' calibration source... Literally something that you're able to hold up to your monitor and saying 'yep, those colors on the screen are matching what I'm holding in my hand.' If you don't have a (reliable) printer in order to check your calibration, you can buy a calibrated color checker ...
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Assuming there will be test prints involved (that is, you won't be working exclusively with the screen), you'll want the lighting to be full-spectrum and daylight-balanced. If it looks good "in broad daylight" it will look right under just about any lighting conditions. I figured that out the hard way when I was painting -- there's nothing quite like putting ...
7
I don't know of any statistics that I can back this up with, but I feel like a very high majority (I'd guess at least 99%) of images on the web are going to be in sRGB.
The primary reason for this is historically most browsers have not been color managed (you can test yours here), and default to treating all images as sRGB, and further, many web services ...
7
It is pretty much impossible, although you can get closer.
At the very least you need a color-calibration device. Using that device you calibrate your screen so that the colors it can show are close to how they should be. Most laptop displays sadly only show 60-75% of sRGB color, so there can be up to 40% of colors you cannot see in the laptop. Instead they ...
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