Monitor calibration and print viewing
Monitor calibration and print viewing
- Subject: Monitor calibration and print viewing
- From: tflash <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 22:45:24 -0500
A newbie here trying to calibrate my monitor and profile my printer. I hope
someone can shed some light on some of my confusion. I'm on a Mac G4, OS
9.04, LaCie 22blue using Colorvision Photocal/Spyder, if that's relevant.
1.) I have a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of calibrating a monitor.
I was under the impression it was so that we all standardized on something,
so that if files got passed along we could be certain they would look the
same (within the limits of differing hardware etc.) at all locations. But if
we are able to choose different white points and gamma doesn't that just
throw the whole notion of standardization out the window? As a photographer
who intends most of his work to end up printed I reckon I should calibrate
to 5000k, gamma 1.8, and work in a color space of Colormatch RGB or Adobe
RGB 1998. I understand that I can tag my files with the colorspace, but that
still does not assure me that someone working on this image downstream will
see it as I do if they have calibrated their monitors differently than I
have. So what am I missing?
2.) I calibrated my monitor to 5000k gamma 1.8. Being a photographer I own a
Minolta 3f colormeter (a photographers tool, not a color management tool) so
I filled the screen with white and read it with my color meter and it reads
3950K. This is disturbing, but perhaps beside my point. My question is about
viewing conditions for the print. I'm not able to spend $1200-$1500 yet on a
dimmable viewing booth, but I do have some OTT-Lights and replacement tubes
for a Just light box. Both have very high CRI rendering. Should I try to set
these up in such a way that the light falling onto, or reflected off of, my
paper is of the same intensity and color teperature as that which emits from
my monitor. Or, if these light sources are closer in color to 6500K (as
indeed they are) should I calibrate my monitor to 6500K. Is it fair to guess
that if I were in a closed loop system I could go either way, but if I need
to share my files I should keep my monitor at 5000K and adjust my lights?
All replies are welcome.
Todd