second opinion needed (calibration confusion)

Hello James,
Your images are v. saturated lots of red tones, and black is def. black no details, some look almost fluorescent. Nice work btw. Did you make sure that there was no light falling directly on the computer screen when you used Spyder, did you check ambient light readings?

Hmmm… calibrate at night with no lights on in the room. Work with a flashlight if necessary.If everything is calibrated you shouldn’t have to do that 30% pump-up thingie you mentioned. Forget what you did on the old uncalibrated monitor.

And…Do all critical printing and screen work in the same viewing environment that you calibrated in. Hopefully you’re working in a neutral color work station area . No bright colors around.The world of neutral gray…Munsell Gray #8. Yes folks thats the color of those print viewing stations and production rooms.

Thanks for the replies. Just to clarify the images currently on my site were toned BEFORE I purchased and calibrated the new monitor… It seems I toned on a display that was obviously way out of whack. Its only now with my new calibrated display that I can see how bad they are. It seems my worst realization is now coming to life… I am going to have to re-tone all the images on my site. Arrrgghh.

Did the images look over saturated and dark on your screen Gregory?...
Although isn’t it always necessary to up the saturation and contrast (I guess not as much as 30%) for images going on the web?

One other quick point. During the calibration with the spyder it asks you to turn off Adobe Gamma and reset the monitor to its factory defaults. I researched a little and found no way of doing either on a Mac so moved on. Is this a problem?

Thanks again!

I think You can reset to factory default color by choosing “system preferences” “Displays” then “color” and there should be the default color in the list, I don’t have a MAC screen so not sure what it is called, but there should only be the ones you named and the default in the list (at least that’s what I have). Also make sure the screen color is a neutral grey before starting, v. important.

You can always make a curve for web in photoshop and batch convert them all instead of one by one.
On LS Resources there are some tutorials for saving for web and color management maybe helpful.
http://www.lightstalkers.org/resources/bytype/48

Good luck – even w/ spyder you might have to tweak a bit if conditions are not optimal as in a digital darkroom.

Also, What browser are you viewing your site in? I’m pretty sure that only safari uses profiles for viewing.

Yes Adobe Gamma should be turned off. Don’t have a Mac so I can’t tell you where to look. For Windows people
go to RUN/MSCONFIG/STARTUP and uncheck any boxes where you see ADOBE GAMMA. Why is the type in this reply box so tiny this morning?

Usually viewing in Safari, but checked in IE… that looks like crap too.

I would still be very interested to hear any other folks opinions on how the images look on their displays. When I check on my wifes machine (uncalibrated ibook standard settings etc.) the images look OK.

Over-saturated, very red and VERY contrasty … but otherwise nice pics!

James you have a beautiful webpage (i like the little “beep”) and most likely you now have a calibated monitor. Your images are highly oversaturated and with no details in the shadow. What a pity with such nice pictures.

I do it like this in PhotoShop: Work with your images in Adobe RGB and when you are satisfied you assign sRGB. The image will then show you what it looks like on the web. NOW you turn up the saturation. Not 30%, but more likely 10-20 %. Try that.
A little tip: If you work with raw files in Bridge, you select sRGB before you open the image in PhotoShop. Then you don’t have to assign the colorspace later. But notice, that Bridge remembers that profile, next time you work with it, so you may whish to alter it back to Adobe RGB.

Good luck and congtatulations with the new calibrated monitor.

Yup, same as above, highly saturated, and blacker-than-black blacks on the majority of colour images. I wouldn’t necessarily say they are over the top, particulary since they’re all the same, comes across as intentional.

I have the same set-up as you do now, Apple Cinema display calibrated with a Spyder2. Sounds like you’ve done everything right, and I would suggest calibrating in the conditions under which you typically work for best results. As mentioned above, calibration is all about consistency, and do all image editing, print prep, etc. in similar conditions. You’ll definitely need to forget everything you did before, 30% added saturation on a calibrated monitor, gives you, well, your current images. You’ll also want to re-calibrate regularly, you can set-up the calibration app to remind you upon start-up. Nothing ever seems to really change in any discernible way, except that i just feel better about my set-up.

Hopefully your flash has been set-up so you can just dump folders of new images to your server, you’ve got a great portfolio of images and projects.

Oh, and i think the b&w images look great as is, they benefit from the extra contrast, imho.Suits the subject matter well.

Thanks to you all for your valuable input on this, its pretty conclusive!... looks like its back to the toning board! :(