HALP. Nvidia callibration?

[TheRocket]

Can anyone explain to me how to calibrate an LCD with Nvidia?? I am beyond frustrated. I understand photo colours and quality differ from monitor to monitor, but I am editing on the new desktop, and when I post the photos online and look at them from my laptop they are COMPLETELY desaturated and the blacks have lines and noise. Where as on the desktop the colours look almost TOO saturated!

The issue I'm having is I've done all my editing on my laptop before this. I make it a point to look at the photos on my website from every computer I come across and it's always looked decent. From this desktop to my laptop looks HORRENDOUS and I have no idea how to fix it! The desktop monitor itself seems a little OVERsaturated to me, and a little too red/yellow/orange. Beyond using the sliders I have no idea how to correct this.. or WHAT to set the sliders to for good photographic output.


I have Nvidia open, and I'm trying to find all the info on what to set it to but I'm getting nowhere. I have set the temp to 6500k like the intarwoobs have advised me. I am playing around with the gamma and contrast but it looks like crapola. I am so frustrated and I have an entire wedding to edit.... ready to pull out my hair. Please send help in form of photography calibration advise.


Or you know... send a Spyder.

[TheRocket]

Alright... I set my laptop by the monitor and slid the sliders until I was semi happy with it to match my lappy. But now is the question if my lappy is severely off as well and my work looks like crap to the rest of the world. Ugg. Calibration is the bane of my business. I need ot invest in a Spyder but even then....

If anyone has a better understanding or suggestion.. please halpz.

[Dibria]

If you do a lot of photographic work and take it very seriously there is always products like the Huey from pantone for a more affordable alternative to the Spyder products:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/PANTONE-huey-PRO/dp/B00163HQK2/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1330359459&sr=1-1

Otherwise it's a hole lot of trial and error, you may want to check your monitors calibration as well as the software your using. A lot of monitors come with various modes such as 'gaming' 'film' 'photo' and 'general'. These often change colour saturation in much the same way settings like 'rock and pop' or 'jazz' change the equaliser on your stereo.

Check your monitor's manual/company website, they may have some advice on that end, try plugging your laptop into the monitor and seeing if you have the same problem - if you spend ages fixing the problem in software when it's a monitor issue and then change monitor it could come back with a vengeance.

[rustak]

Yeah, to actually get the result that you want (looks good everywhere, instead of just setting things up to match your two monitors), you'll have to get a calibration device. You *can* try Windows 7 (and Vista's?) built in color display calibration -- from the start menu, type in color calibration, and there should be a "Calibrate display color" item. Run through that on both your desktop and your laptop.

Also, as Dibria said, make sure your monitor is in some neutral mode, and that your white point is set to something like 5000K or 6500K before you start calibrating anything. The default white point setting is usually much higher, which is very blue. 5000K or 6500K will look weird until you get used to it, but it's a much more natural base white color, and will make photos look closer to what they will when printed and viewed with reflective light.

Just did a quick google; http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/moni ... ration.htm is a pretty good overview.

[tamaness]

I've used QuickGamma to do some basic calibration. It's not perfect, but it worked well enough to get even color between two monitors of different age and brand.

Also, if your monitor manufacturer has a color profile available, install and use it. It'll make everything almost perfect.

[ecks]

Hardware calibration for accurate colours is only half the equation, unfortunately. Different monitor types / panels have different colour capabilities and limitations as well, and they can't be calibrated away.
Generally speaking, TN is the worst for colour, MVA/PVA better and IPS best. Also some panels may be 6-bit instead of 8-bit and use dithering and all sorts of other tricks to simulate 'better' colours. Backlighting technology also affects things obviously (your monitor can't display colours that don't exist in the backlights spectrum).

All that said, most people in the world are probably using cheap, uncalibrated panels, so if your work is destined for a digital environment there is probably no reason to pull out too much hair. For print, you're at the mercy of the print shop and their equipment as much as anything else.

For short term the advice about using your monitors colour profile and making sure it's not set to some stupid mode is probably the best. But if you ever want to get SRS BSNS about colour and get a hardware colour calibration thing, you need to know about the monitor side of things too.

If it's any consolation human vision is more sensitive to lighting than colour anyways. In fact lots of lossy image/video compression formats use chroma subsampling (among others things).