Need help with color profiles

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desertjedi

Weaksauce
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Feb 29, 2008
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Thanks for reading my long post...

I start editing photos on my new Planar 20" MVA-panel LCD but the pics were very cold and I knew I needed to calibrate. So I calibrate with the Spyder 2 Suite and the "coldness" in the pics in Adobe Lightroom is gone. Pics look just like they did on my previous LCD.

So I'm looking through Preferences in Paint Shop Pro 8 and I find a Color Management option. I open it and see that Color Management (the use of color profiles) is an Option. I thought that as soon as I "kicked in" the new color profile, everything would be affected. So I enable Color Mgt. in PSP 8. The good news is that colors seem a perfect match for the colors in Adobe Lightroom - which I use for "first pass" editing. It appears that Lightroom doesn't require you to turn on Color Management but Paint Shop Pro 8 does.

So during this whole process, I decide to calibrate my LCD for my gaming rig which is on the "other side" of my KVM. I create a profile and crank up a game. But I can tell the game looks really cold just like it did before. I ALT-TAB out and can see that the color profile is not "in effect". Damn!

So is the bottom line that only certain software can make use of color profiles either explicitly like Paint Shop Pro or implicitly like Adobe Lightroom? Apparently, the game I loaded simply "flushed out" the profile info from the video card when it started. Is there anything I can do to prevent that? As soon as I exit the game, the color profile is back "in effect". My current solution is to use the color profile on my business box but tweaking the color globally on my gaming rig with the Nvidia Control Panel. Anyone know how to calibrate an LCD by eye? :D

To top things off, in all this "color work" I find that the left side of my LCD is colder in temp than the right side so I'm exchanging it for the same LCD (only option).

I guess I was very lucky to have been using an LCD for almost 3 years that had exceptional color right out of the box - my trusty 19" Viewsonic VP930b. What a pleasure to use!
 
download monitor calibration wizard to correct the game problem. the games dont load color profiles for some reason, and your nicely calibrated display goes out the window once you start the game. the little program fixes that. just make sure when you save a profile into monitor calibration wizard, you use the calibrated profile, nothing else, that way the game uses the calibrated profile for games.
 
Thanks, Dunan! Looks great. I'll give it a go.

While on the same subject...I'm getting conflicting directions on whether I should calibrate with same lighting on that I use when I edit or with no ambient light striking the monitor. One source implied I should be editing pretty much in the dark! Unfortunately, I need very good lighting, preferably outside daylight coming in, to give me a true view of the colorful shirts I am editing while I sit at my PC.

Anyone have any input on whether I should calibrate in my standard room environment or in the "dark"? EDIT: I did a bit more research on this and it appears that a darkened room is preferred.
 
Definitely calibrate in the dark. The light will just randomly screw up the readings from the sensor.

The technical reason the game "resets" your calibration setup is the video card lookup table. This table maps one color to another, e.g. the image may request RGB (255, 255, 255) "white", but this will map to RGB(255, 255, 240) or something because your display is "cool" and needs less blue. Sometimes this lookup table is screwed up by other software. Note that the monitor should have the correct profile associated regardless of whether you game or not--it's just a matter of keeping the lookup table configured correctly.

To correct it, try running the Spyder2 "profile chooser" after you run a game. This will reload the LUT (lookup table) with the correct data, and your color managed applications should again work properly.
 
i would say calibrate in total darkness also, because you'll get the best contrast ratio that way.
 
It's best to calibrate in the dark, unless you have a light behind (and only behind) the monitor.

The light refracting through the anti-glare can cause havoc with the sensor and throw things off. I've found best, and most consistent results in little to no light.

Regards,

10e
 
Thanks for all the info. I'll be definitely calibrating in a completely dark room next time - but I refuse to do it naked! :D

Hey, what bugs me is that I read that if you mess with the brightness/contrast controls after you calibrate, you're actually screwing up your colors. I even saw an example. But if I leave the B/C controls at default, I'll surely be blind in a couple of days.

Would the answer to this to set my B/C controls to what I like before I calibrate? That seems to go against the directions of the calibration software.
 
it probably tells you to set contrast @ 100 and brightness @ 0 after resetting the monitor to factory standards i'm guessing?

since setting contrast on an lcd to 100 and bright to 0 completely jacks any monitor i've calibrated, i set the contrast to as high as it'll go without looking washed out. for example the benq in my sig i set to 80 contrast and 20 brightness before i calibrated because the picture looked natural that way but could still use some color fixing.

and its true that you cant change the brightness/contrast after calibrating cause it will throw the calibration off. usually the software will ask you to set the brightness at a comfortable level first.

use the most advanced mode the software gives you to get the best results. dont do a 'quick calibrate', the more tweaks to the monitor the software lets you do the better.:)
 
Well the Spyder 2 software prompted me to simply set factory defaults (meaning the highest possible brightness/contrast) but if I wanted to I could tweak the white and black points by adjusting the brightness and contrast while looking at the black/white squares on the screen. That would be a lost cause because, in order to use the LCD, I have turn the B/C settings WAY DOWN, way past where I could differentiate those squares.
 
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