Screen calibration

[bigsarg7]

Well today I went to vist my local hardly normal store photo department, and found a brand spanking new printing machine. Apparently it surpasses the older fuji machines they used to use. After printing out some images from a wedding shoot last week i noticed a massive difference in the prints, they are a lot darker. While I was waiting around for the prints i got to speaking with the employee (who actually has some personality ) She got to discussing this new fan dangeld machine and we were discussing that they might come out darker then they used to on the old machine, and suprised....no not really they were a lot darker then normal.

She proceeded to tell me to calibrate my imac screen to their prints.....but i am not to keen on doing this, has anyone got any suggestions as to how to deal with the difference from the screen to print? In the past i've found the imac to be very accurate in colors.

Does anyone have any recomendations as to how to calibrate the screen correctly? I'd hate to calibrate it to hardly normals machine as when i print elsewhere it would be incorrect as well. ?

[Mr Darcy]

I'm sure DaveB will come in with specific (and accurate!) advice, but for a general overview:

There are two issues here

1. Your screen is not calibrated. You need to set this up. It can be done by eye, but is better done with a tool called a colorimeter Spyder and EyeOne are two brands here. Be aware that you need a wide gamut one for your mac.

2. your computer is not calibrated to the printer. Hard to do when the printer is not yours, but the store with the printer should calibrate their printer regularly & be able to supply you with a profile that will allow you to "see" the print on your computer screen exactly as it prints. Ideally, they will do this every time they get a new batch of ink and/or paper. Hardly Normal...it'll never happen. Unless the head of dept is photo mad too. You should be able to download a generic profile from the net that will get you close though.

A colorimeter for your screen will set you back a couple of hundred dollars (don't know the correct figures). A colorimeter that will work for prints too will set you back several thousand dollars. AND you need to do a (one or more) test print every time you use it. Gets expensive quickly. So HN keep their profits up by not doing it at all. And will continue in this vein until the start losing serious money because of it.

The issue is that your screen works by adding colour. To get brighter colours, you add more colour. A printer, any printer works the exact opposite way. If you add more colour, the image gets darker.

[Geoff]

My suggestion is to find a local and competitive (if they exist) pro photo lab. They should walk you through the process of correct callibration. Simply telling you to expect your prints to be darker from the person at Hardly Normal's is not satisfactory. As already suggested you really should also get a calibration device. I have the Sypder 2 Pro (I think, from memory) and whilst it's a bit fiddly..my prints when sent to the lab always turn out as I see them on both my MacBook Pro and iMac screens.

Hope this helps.

Sadly - HN are only there for profit margins and for Mums to come down with zillions of 'snaps' of the kids from her P&S. I don't think that HN are always going to maintain a reliable and ongoing quality service, even if they do have the greatest and latest gear.

Geoff.

[surenj]

I would suggest reading through this site and asking questions. [ Keith is quite approachable ]

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/viewing.html

[DaveB]

Yup. You should calibrate/profile your iMac screen to the global standard using something like a Spyder or ColorMunki. The Spyder3PRO sells at retail for ~$250. You buy your own calibrator because you should re-do it every month: your screen changes over time and this will reset it.

Once you've done that, you should be able to get decent prints from any pro lab. If you wanted to try a non-pro lab such as HN I think you should be sure you're supplying them with sRGB files, and then cross your fingers.


Note that it's common for many people to complain that their prints are too dark when they start using a proper printer. This is because they've got their screens set too bright! The Spyder/whatever will guide you through this as part of the profiling, but on recent iMacs you end up setting the screen to minimum brightness (and then it's still too bright, although the software calibration does its best to compensate).

[bigsarg7]

thanks everyone for your comments. I only tend to print things off at harvey norman if i want a quick look at an image. But to get actual prints of my final work i was using another local but found their quality dropping rapidly. So now i need to find another company to print them for me. As i said i only use HN for quickprints not for final prints. I will get my screen calibrated using one of those suggested, i had heard the spyder didn't work to well on the macs, not sure if thats older versions of spyder or newer, but its definately worth doing.

thanks for all your advice. Taken aboard and here's hoping i can get it calibrated so the prints are closer to what i see on screen in the future!!

appreciate your time.

kristen

[Mr Darcy]

i had heard the spyder didn't work to well on the macs, not sure if thats older versions of spyder or newer,

Probably the older version.
I have an eyeOne which worked well on my old PC, but it went completely gaga when I got a Mac. On looking into it, it was because the old profiler was not designed for the wide gamut screen that the Mac has. The new profilers are designed for wide gamut screens. Until I can afford a new profiler, I am living with the default settings on the Mac. But then I rarely print, and never sell my work, so as long as I am happy with the results, all is well.

Incidentally. the Mac looks better at default settings than the PC did profiled, though in fairness to the profiler, profiled was vastly superior to unprofiled on the PC, and the profiler cranked things to the limit of its settings. It was a BAD screen.

[surenj]

ACtually if it's ONLY the brightness that worries you, then just reduce the brightness on your monitor or make an export profile on LR or similar to reduce brightness on export or something... You might not need a color calibrator at all.

[devilla101]

Avoid Harvey Norman even to take a quick look at an image. I've sent 'test' prints out to them and they just suck! I had a b/w image printed and it came out with a blue color cast. The colors photographs printed were the same.

As for the screen calibrators the older Spyder 2 are not as good as the newer ones. I heard the old ones didn't like the glossy screens plus also monitors with a wide gamut.

[Wink]

I've got a Dell U2410 which is calibrated with a Spyder3 Pro.
The software told me i could upgrade to the Elite software package for $99US. Does anyone know if the added features are worth it?