Originally posted by photoptimist Indeed! And perhaps you and Charlie70 would like to replicate those endorphins by replicating those eye-perceived colors. But what colors did your brain think that your eye saw?
I had a cataract fixed in one eye and now my left and right eye have different color balances!
When I had mine done I discovered everything was brighter than I thought it was, indoors and out, and there was more noise in my images than I realized.
Quote: And perhaps you and Charlie70 would like to replicate those endorphins by replicating those eye-perceived colors.
There's no "would like to", that's what I do.I'm not going through that song and dance where I calibrate everything to get truly accurate colour, but I don't like the final image.
Originally posted by CarlJF The first thing to do is to make sure your screen is properly calibrated. Many monitors, if not most, are way off by default. This can be done with a probe (Spyder, Colormunki...) and software that will make and apply a standard profile for your graphic card/screen combo.
Without a calibrated screen, it’s impossible to know if the color cast you observe is from the camera or the screen...
If you view the image on the same uncalibrated screen you post process on, you're colour will be correct on your screen but possibly not on anyone else's, so your statement is only true if you are producing work for unknown output devices. In a situation as noted above where different people are part of the same workflow then it becomes crucial. But for the average guy, it's not essential. I always use the Apple built in calibrations software found in the control panel when I first buy a system. I've never seen a need to go beyond that.
Proper calibration is only meaningful to others who employ the same calibration. Otherwise, if you're like me and it looks good on my HD TV, further calibration beyond that is of no benefit to me. If others want me to calibrate for other devices, well, you gotta pay me to do that. It goes beyond my personal needs.
I don't care where the colour cast is coming from, I only care that I can get what I want displayed on my output device of choice. Maybe sometimes proper calibration helps. I have no references on that topic, one way or the other. All I know is my computer has a Samsung monitor and my 4k TV is a Samsung TV, and what my computer screen looks like is also what my TV screen looks like, except the TV is more contrasty. The great unasked question here is, can every calibrated output device produce the same colour. I think different systems have different capabilities, and the calibration will not produce exactly the same results no matter what you do. But hey, that's just a suspicion. Calibration is only real, if you calibrate the input device to match the idiosyncrasies of the output device. And since you have to do that for every output device likely to be used for it's display, it's probably next to pointless. If you calibrate for your own devices at least you know it's good on those devices. If you don't, you don't know it's good anywhere.
I have no doubt some professionals need it. I'm not one of them. Recognizing that saves me a lot of mucking about. My advice would be do as much as you can with as little effort as possible, and live with it, unless you are working pro. And certainly don't waste money on stuff. If you are selling your output it may be different, but even in that case, not necessarily. You might possibly end up with colour balance problems, but I suspect it would rarely make much difference to final output.