[krypticide]

I've got a Huey, and it works pretty well. It was weird going to cooler colors, but LCD monitors tend to yellow as they get older so my eyes had just gotten used to that. Of course, most people don't have calibrated monitors, so most important is how well the images print.

[5teve]

Here is a thought... I don't know much about the monitor you are using. I recently purchased a monitor and calibrator and have seen various items about calibrating. I use the X-One so it offers the option of calibrating for brightness...

In order to get my monitor to calibrate, I really had to cut down the brightness and color saturation. In my case I reduced the RGB values all to some value lower than 100 (e.g. 60 60 60). I don't have a Samsung, so your mileage will vary. I was shocked though that with my new Dell monitor that I had to reduce the settings for brightness down to near zero (not absolute zero but how the monitor portrays zero) just to get the luminance to the target the X-One software suggested.

Out of the box though, your images are going to come in with RGB of 100 100 100 which over-saturates the whites and makes it tough for a calibrator to get an accurate adjustment. My guess is that you need to tame the brightness down a bit to get more accuracy out of your colors.

I don't know a lot about the Huey, but if it doesn't have a brightness adjustment, that is likely the problem you are facing.

In addition to the brightness, my calibrator suggested adjusting the RGB values independently to get the "white balance" correct. However, that is something you only do if you have a CRT monitor. I did that with my LCD monitor and ended up with the color cast on everything (all software, windows, etc). It is more important to keep the RGB values balanced and lower. The calibrator and software will make the appropriate adjustments internally for the profile.

I hope this helps.


I know the biggest reason I switched to a calibrated system was not so much because of my colors but because of the brightness of my prints.

Hi and thanks for that.

The safest thing to say about my monitor is that it is cheap! i dont think its the worst in the world but it is a TN panel, so that wont help really.

After reading yesterday and (before posting my last update) i read that with this type of samsung you have to crank back the RGB values by about 75% so i did that with brightness at 75% and contrast at 100% This gave a still bright but very pleasing to the eye colour. Still no go on the print tho.. i have reduced the brightness back some more and recalibrated but it doesnt seem to have made much difference except it looks a bit muddier (probably because of lower brightness) nothing like the prints.

It might sound like a stupid question, but do you use Canon inks or aftermarket inks?

Yves i have found in my experience the stupid questions are always asked by the most experienced people, because its always the stupid things that people forget! I am using aftermarket inks, so there could be a cast from that yes. i have never noticed an issue before tho (with my old camera) what i am going to do though is take the pictures to a print shop just to see if they have this cast also.

gone thru the same hell. sometime later then I stopped bothering about screen calib as I found it useless 'cause it didn't do any visible change. However, applying the profiles accordingly made a lot of difference plus the fact, that the prints have to examinated in very light environment, otherwise you have to brighten up the shadows more than you expect from what you see onscreen. I now use to print out of LR, specify the profile of the paper being used there as well, let LR handle color mgmt which has to be set in LR as well the driver of my HP B9180 (otherwise the results are inaccurat) and choose the paper in the driver. And I watch very carefully on all driver tabs, that all already made settings remain the same after changing some other setting because some of then influence each other which may cause unexpected results. Sounds easy and straight forward, which it probably is, yet to my dismay not for me. Finally however, I acchieved results that are somewhat close to what I see on my screen. But I - like yourself - reduced the brightness substancially.Cant give an advice for the Canon stuff, but mayber there exists smething like a guide for printing out of LR - I found a similar thing for B9180 in the web (guess HP issued it). Throwing the printer out the windows is an option, but I would try selling it instead if you give up;-) Good luck!

Thanks for the long reply, in short i am using a guide off the net relating to printing using intents in photoshop using canon printers. so i translated that to LR. i let LR manage colours using the canon MP530 PR1 paper profile. have the intent to either perceptual or relative, turn off all ICM on the printer and match the print quality to the same number as the paper profile (1) i also have the same issue now from CS3 but picasa doesnt... but to be fair the picasa prints are a billion miles off and it looks like there is lots of blocking and colour distortion on the picasa prints... i dont see how to set picasa to use any kind of colour management tho (im not a big fan of picasa only the web albums!)

I think the most difficult aspect of digital photography and color management is the fact that what you see on your monitor is back-lit and what you see on paper is not.

For most typical photos, the results will be ok, but the subject that really got me was a museum exhibit by Chihuly that was basically in the dark with the sculptures lit from underneath or behind. The result was that a book of prints I made came out really dark and lacking in color because what I had edited on the screen was not what came out on paper (the backlit images were much brighter and vivid on screen).

After looking at the photos on my work monitor and reading some threads here, it dawned on me that my monitor was just too bright. Most monitors are, and as a result I toned down my brightness settings and calibrated it to get the results I wanted.

That is why I made the suggestions I had earlier. Without adjusting the RGB (i.e. leaving them at 100 100 100), my monitor could not get dark enough, even at a brightness of 0, to satisfy my calibrator. Only when I reduced the RGB significantly could I get to a point where the brightness could be set a some finite value and the resulting prints look correct and consistent with what I saw on the screen.

As i mentioned above the brightness and RGB reduction gave me good colours IMHO. and i take your point very well abut the backlit images... its a very good point! what you saw is i guess what im seeing, lack of detail in the prints compared to screen (on top of the green cast)

I've got a Huey, and it works pretty well. It was weird going to cooler colors, but LCD monitors tend to yellow as they get older so my eyes had just gotten used to that. Of course, most people don't have calibrated monitors, so most important is how well the images print.

Yeah the cooler colours have an almost green / blue tinge to them, which was why i was wondering if something else had gone wrong along the way! i dont think there is a tinge its just compared to the yellow cast that they come out of the factory with (warm colours) its very different!

Agreed most people dont have calibrated monitors, but a few people seem to be able to see the green cast on their monitors when viewing my pictures. (which was the original intent behind the first post) i see blue of varying degrees on all 4 monitors that i have access to. no green shift.

I guess ths stupid question could well have something to do with it.. so i will wait until i have some prints off a commercial machine and then let you know how i go!

Thanks again for all your time and trouble replying to me

Steve

[SWEngineer]

...I was looking for a subjective response highlighting any Glaring casts.. ...Hence why im asking for opinions.. no right no wrong answers.. just do they look 'right' ie no green / blue / pink casts..

For what ever it's worth, my monitor is calibrated and works to my liking. With it, I do not see any notable cast in either of your pictures. The whites and grays look reasonably neutral at least superimposed against all the blue in these images. Some areas do have strong blue casts, but that is expected from the sky reflecting off the water. Given what you are asking for, I would say your images look "right" on my monitor.

Regards.

[5teve]

For what ever it's worth, my monitor is calibrated and works to my liking. With it, I do not see any notable cast in either of your pictures. The whites and grays look reasonably neutral at least superimposed against all the blue in these images. Some areas do have strong blue casts, but that is expected from the sky reflecting off the water. Given what you are asking for, I would say your images look "right" on my monitor.

Regards.

Thanks for that Mark, A subjective impression was what i was after, which you gave. Did you find the images dark at all?

I took the images to the local print shop (big w!) and had 2 prints done for me. they were done using a Fuji machine and on fuji crystal archive paper. The colours came out fantastically rich (no colour cast, so ink may be an issue at home thanks Yvyes!) however the prints were very very dark rendering the lower half of the boat hulls almost black. now i know the print shop wont be the best, but i was expecting less of a difference between that and the screen.

To also throw another problem in, i have had some more pictures printed in my local club magazine (sea sports) and once again they are muddy and very dark (similar brightness to the print shop ones but poor colours compared to the print shop.) so i am now wondering if the images really are dark?

Just noticed too that with my own printer, if i preview before print then the preview still has the same green cast to it as it prints with? could it just be canon, and vista 64 being screwed up?

OK another update, if i print from windows photo gallery (yes i did say that) and use ICM enabled on the canon driver and the correct quality for the paper used it prints out pretty close to the screen, no colour cast at all. A bit over sharpened for the 6x4 print im doing but colours are pretty pleasing... it has to be an adobe / vista 64 issue but no amount of googling is getting me anywhere!

Thanks

Steve

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Last edited by 5teve; 10-08-2009 at 06:54 AM. Reason: cause im busy trying to solve the problem :O)

[5teve]

following on from a reasonable print from windows photo gallery i installed the pentax software and printed from there. It worked pretty much as well as the Windows gallery print, just less sharpened (not a bad thing the windows one made your eyes bleed!)

i did some reading about lightroom on the net and seems MAC users are suffering with colour issues when using lightroom in 64 bit. So just for a giggle i manually installed 32 bit lightroom alongside the 64 bit version (in vista HP 64bit) and printed from there. Strangely it was the most accurate print yet all colour management switched off in printer and on in lightroom.

I switched back to 64bit lightroom and even more strangely that now prints out exactly the same? i have no idea why, or what happened, but i also printed some more prints out and they all came out well in relation to the screen and no colour casts what so ever!

So its fixed, im happy... and confused and if anyone else has the issue?.. well it has to be worth a try!

Thanks

Steve

[flyer]

Maybe you should invest in something like a color reference kit (Scuadra comes to mind). It contains a reference print and a CD with test images to print and compare to the reference print. You can also use the reference print to "more or less" adjust your monitor. Scuadra.fr - Accessoires Photo Made in France