Re: Monitor calibration and print viewing
Re: Monitor calibration and print viewing
- Subject: Re: Monitor calibration and print viewing
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 23:20:56 EST
In a message dated 11/6/00 3:20:37 AM, email@hidden writes:
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I have a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of calibrating a monitor.
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I was under the impression it was so that we all standardized on something,
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so that if files got passed along we could be certain they would look the
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same (within the limits of differing hardware etc.) at all locations. But
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if
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we are able to choose different white points and gamma doesn't that just
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throw the whole notion of standardization out the window? As a photographer
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who intends most of his work to end up printed I reckon I should calibrate
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to 5000k, gamma 1.8, and work in a color space of Colormatch RGB or Adobe
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RGB 1998. I understand that I can tag my files with the colorspace, but
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that
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still does not assure me that someone working on this image downstream
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will
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see it as I do if they have calibrated their monitors differently than
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I
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have. So what am I missing?
I have a matching pair of monitors on my machine, and if I calibrate one to
5000k, 1.8 and the other to 6500k, 2.2 (OS9 and PhotoShop 6 required to
manage multiple profiles simultaneously) then the same image on both looks
very much alike. The difference is rather subtle, and not a crisis-level
mismatch. The eye adapts pretty well for different white points, within
reason; and different monitor gammas are compensated for in the workingspace
to monitorspace conversion. The biggest problem is that by running them side
by side, the brighter monitor interferes with seeing white on the other as
truely white. Without the brighter monitor adjacent to it, the eye will
compensate and make do with the lower light level. After all
C. David Tobie
Design Cooperative
email@hidden