Color Management (Dunlin)

[Evan Cain]

I typically don't like to post images that were similar or from the same series of images that I have already posted. So I am apologize for the similar content.

I just received my first IPS display but have not calibrated it yet. It will probably be a while until I can afford to get it calibrated (college heavy on the wallet). I currently have it set on the factory setting sRGB in the hopes of getting it as close as it can be without being calibrated. I'm just looking for some general feedback from calibrated users on the color management and brightness/contrast side of the image, otherwise it is quite a boring shot. Recommendations on color management hardware will gladly be accepted (under $150 if possible).

Thanks in advance.

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome Even,

I will leave the color management questions to other more knowledgeable than myself in that area. The image as presented is way too light. And there is a smattering of over-exposed details. Have you adjusted the angle of your monitor so that you can see the variations in all the dark and light boxes in the calibration strip at the bottom of each page?

I reworked the image by sloppy selecting the bird with the Quick Selection Tool, running my NIK Color Efex Pro 50/50 preset (Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor) and then pulling down the curve. Then I pulled down the curve for the whole image to darken everything a bit.

All of the above and tons more in our Digital Basics File.

As for the image, I love shorebirds and I love the low perspective and the sharp focus on the bird. The position of the horizon line is less than ideal but the biggest problem is that the bird's head is angled away a bit.

[Arthur Morris]

ps: I do believe that the original was likely over-exposed as some of the WHITEs are now greyed out a bit. On the other hand they could surely have been recovered during conversion. Again, all as detailed in Digital Basics.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Evan, excellent low angle, and I agree with Artie that your original image was probably over-exposed. Artie has now sorted how it should look, and my additional feedback would be to take a bit off the bottom and top. We all learn every day.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The original is overexposed and the repost correct on a calibrated monitor. If on your monitor you see yours as correct and Artie's as too dark then you will need to calibrate for luminosity. Colours appear to be good from my end. Nice low angle and feeding pose, but agree on the head angled away.

[Evan Cain]

Thank you everyone for your critiques. After messing around a bit with my monitor, I have changed my brightness values so that Arthur's version is correct. I am still trying to get use to how dim the display is in sRGB rather than the factory preset. Would a calibrator increase the brightness? Or should I just get use to editing with a dimmer display?

Arthur, thank you for the time you put into your response. Very helpful.

As far as the overall image goes, I had already culled it because of the diagonal line in the BG which IMO was more distracting to the image than the slightly tilted head. I decided to post this one as Dunlin are quite common and almost everyone knows what proper breeding colors they have.

Thanks again,

Evan

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Evan,

You are welcome. As far as I know, calibration affects only color not brightness. I believe there is a thread here somewhere on changing the actual brightness on a Windows monitor. Good that you were able to do that. Then fine-tune the calibration strip by tilting the monitor is possible. I am unsure as to what you mean by editing with a dimmer display but I think that I just figured it out. You adjusted brightness with the Fn Brightness keys. That is not the way to do it correctly. I always work in a dimly lit room with the brightness set to max. But as above there is a way to get into the guts of a Windows machine and adjust the brightness. It was tricky and I forget how to do it and it took help from lots of folks to get it right. If anyone can locate the old thread, please provide a link.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

hello Evan.
I believe everything has been mentioned regarding the bird and how it looks on calibrated monitors but I want to offer a link which will take you to a very good option for colorimeter that is a bit less of what you are expecting to pay. It is very easy to use and reliable. I recently upgrated my monitor and it came with the i1 color munki but I know this other colorimeter is just as good and is way cheaper! Good luck.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...i_Display.html

[Evan Cain]

Hi Evan,

You are welcome. As far as I know, calibration affects only color not brightness. I believe there is a thread here somewhere on changing the actual brightness on a Windows monitor. Good that you were able to do that. Then fine-tune the calibration strip by tilting the monitor is possible. I am unsure as to what you mean by editing with a dimmer display but I think that I just figured it out. You adjusted brightness with the Fn Brightness keys. That is not the way to do it correctly. I always work in a dimly lit room with the brightness set to max. But as above there is a way to get into the guts of a Windows machine and adjust the brightness. It was tricky and I forget how to do it and it took help from lots of folks to get it right. If anyone can locate the old thread, please provide a link.

Hi Arthur,
For me, tilting my display does not create any brightness or color shift when looking at the grey scale strip at the bottom of the page.
The two main presets that are on the monitor I am using (Viewsonic VX2370smH-LED IPS display), are sRGB and native--there is also a user controlled setting I assume is for calibration. The native showed some obvious color casts in the green channel, and I had read sRGB was decent for out of box editing, so I switched it to sRGB. It was great for color rendition, I was getting no color cast on whites or the grey scale strip. However, that is when I noticed that the sRGB setting caused the display to reduce its brightness setting significantly (I would guess around 30%). Brightness and contrast settings are not available for the sRGB setting.
I had also read somewhere that often times when a display is calibrated, the display's brightness is significantly lower than the factory preset.

I went ahead and purchased the Spyder4Pro, so I should see in about a week what affect it has on my display's brightness and color profiles.

[Diane Miller]

The Spyder is excellent and easy to use. This is a complex subject, but to try to simplify it: calibrating will give you a solid basis of brightness and white balance, and the following step of profiling will fine tune colors in color-managed applications like PS, LR, and some web browsers, etc. This is not at all the same thing as trying to tweak monitor settings. That doesn't work. There is good information online -- I'd go to the Spyder website, www.datacolor.com for more info.

Once you are calibrated, don't mess with monitor settings. The default should be automatically set to use the calibration and profile as the default. Leave it there -- don't change to sRGB or anything else. Once you have done it, you're done -- trust it. Work in a "dimroom" for best results. The super-bright high contrast factory settings are meant for offices.

The fact that tilting the monitor doesn't change appearance means you have a quality monitor, but that doesn't mean it's right for digital darkroom work out of the box. None are.