What is Calibration?

[Brandon_DP]

I read a lot of posts talking about calibrating their monitors, and I was just wondering what it actually is...

[John Rauch]

Calibrating a screen is making it more accurately represent the colors that will be printed.

[Laura]

What John said. Calibration is setting your monitor to a well-defined, standard state, that displays the most accurate colors for your output device (printer, press, projector, film, whatever). You want the colors on your screen to accurately reflect what will be printed.

Monitor Calibration: a quick overview

-- Laura

[johnercek]

damnit- you guys got the easy question. Next up he'll be asking what a color profile is....

[Brandon_DP]

damnit- you guys got the easy question. Next up he'll be asking what a color profile is....

What's a color profile?

J/K

[johnercek]

A color profile is like monitor calibration, only it's software oriented and it's to simulate the effect of printing on different printers.

Lets say you are working on a poster that is going to be printed in both china and america. You set up the color profile for each of the different printers and when you view 2 different copies on your screen with the different profiles, they will LOOK different (a red might look more brown for example), even though the RGB values for each of the pixels are exactly the same.
Using that, you can either eyeball the difference, but most of the time you can do an automated conversion to make sure the prints will come out looking the same.

[Brandon_DP]

Is there a specific calibration I should use on my Macbook?

I was looking through system prefs, and found that I could edit it there...

[Just. a Style]

Hmm, i have a f**kin same problem.

For answering to Brandon_DP, you should do something in first part :

- Go to your Apple Menu
- System Preference
- Monitor
- Color
- Calibration

(i'm not sure if it's right words, because i'm on a french version)

You have to put your Mac in the Gama 2.2 format. After that, nothing else to do with.

In fact, my problem is : when i saved a picture with photoshop, when i open it with "Aperçu" on my Mac Desktop, it's the same, same color, etc. But, when i upload it on a website, like Facebook, Deviantart, or other, colors become really pale. It starts to get me angry because i'm just realising that i have the same problem on all my pics uploaded on my Deviantart, not really the same colors than the originals. I know there's a way to got same pictures.

Does anyone know how i can figure it out then resolve it ? It's really annoying !

[johnercek]

the best way to solve that problem is to do a save for web (or mobile devices)- which will convert your colors to the sRGB somethingsomethiingsomething 2.1 format, and that will make sure your colors will stay the same on dA.

If your file is too large, then you will want to change your workspace to sRGB, and it appears the best way to do that is change your color settings by going shft+ctrl+K , and changing the RGB to sRGB 2.1

Using the "convert" or "assign" color space options will give you a color shift.

[Just. a Style]

My workspace is already set on SRGBnnininin2.1, and i always saved my picture with Mobile Devices/Web. The difference is, when i click on "Original", then "Optimised", i see the same difference of colors as on Internet. Colors get more pale on Original and more saturated on Optimised. I've always had this prob, even when i was on PC.

edit : thanks though

redit : there's a screen to show you

[johnercek]

yep! working as intended as the good folks at blizzard would say! =)

(although i have to admit I'm surprised, i really thought the save for web and mobile devices would preserve color appearance- not do a lazy swap)

One quick question: Where do you get a majority of the images that you work on? Do you start from scratch in Photoshop, or do you have one particular inker sending you work, or are you importing all your own scans?

alright here is how to solve your problem on an image by image basis (and more to follow so you have your color management set up ... "right" - even though whatever is right is really dependent on what your clients want)

color-profile-single.jpg (178.21 KiB) Viewed 1102 times

simply put, it's not enough to have your display profile in sRGB- every file has it's own color profile as well. makes things complicated I agree. My guess is that your original work was in adobe RGB (1998). if you do a conversion, your colors will stay the same as you see them on screen, but the "background info" will change so that when it's converted to web you won't see a color shift.

ok- so it's a pain in the ass to do that for every image- who needs that right?
enter your color management settings:

colorprofile-multiple.jpg (416.09 KiB) Viewed 1102 times

This is why i asked where you were starting from on most of your images. If your workspace is already in sRGB, then the problem is the files you are opening are probably bringing in their own color profiles. This will fix that.
(don't forget the "convert to working RGB" option)
now whenever you open an image that doesn't match your working profile, you will be aware of it, and you can change it so your final work won't color shift on you.

That SHOULD be able to fix things on you- If it doesn't, I'd be happy to try to help more, but will need more info.

[Zombie Dave McCaig]

Just for the record, you should only be working in sRGB if you ONLY plan to post stuff online. Adobe RGB (1998) is probably the best color space to be working in if you intend to convert to CMYK for printing purposes. sRGB has a greatly reduced gamut. Personally, I like coloring in sRGB if I'm going to be converting to CMYK if the stuff I'm coloring is going to be printed on cheap paper since it tends to dull things out a bit and I like the way that looks on stuff like Vertigo books, but that's just a personal preference.

[Predabot]

Just for the record, you should only be working in sRGB if you ONLY plan to post stuff online. Adobe RGB (1998) is probably the best color space to be working in if you intend to convert to CMYK for printing purposes. sRGB has a greatly reduced gamut. Personally, I like coloring in sRGB if I'm going to be converting to CMYK if the stuff I'm coloring is going to be printed on cheap paper since it tends to dull things out a bit and I like the way that looks on stuff like Vertigo books, but that's just a personal preference.

I just realized that I've been doing this wrong for YEARS.

It's... a bit embarassing actually.

I calibrate first, yeah? But then I also USE that monitor-profile as working-space! Damn... Not good.

*recalibrates*