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by Mark Picard on Sat Nov 02, 2013 1:07 pm
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I recently purchased a new NEC monitor with Spectraview. I run Adobe CS6 on my Windows 7 platform. I print my Pro Photo RGB 16 bit files through Photoshop with "Photoshop manages colors", Normal Printing, Perceptual, and Black Point Compensation all checked off in the pre-printing box. I use the ICC profiles supplied by the various paper manufactures.

I have two issues I'd like to correct. First, let me tell you the monitor's present calibration stats: White Point: D65  Gamma: 2.20  Intensity (CD/M2) 110.0  Contrast ratio: Monitor default   Color gamut Adobe RGB


With these settings, my prints come out a little dark. Also, they are not as saturated as my monitor screen (but the colors themselves are very accurate, with no color casts). I kinda' made my own back yard "profile" by saturating the prints by 15 points on the saturation slider and running a Curves adjustment to lighten up the prints. Doing this works perfectly and exactly the same for both of my Epson printers (7900 and 4880), but this method seems like a band aid to me. I tried manually setting the Spectraview settings for the intensity (CD/M2) to both 90 and 100, but that didn't make any significant difference. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for you help and advice!
Mark Picard
Website:  http://www.markpicard.com
Maine Photography Workshops
 

by E.J. Peiker on Sat Nov 02, 2013 4:28 pm
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110 is too bright. Try 90 to 100 for the monitor brightness. Also realize the monitor is transmitted light while the print is reflected light. You need to look at the print using a daylight balanced bright light source to get a good comparison.
 

by ChrisRoss on Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:44 am
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The light source also needs to be bright enough, the calibration assumes a certain light intensity. I'm assuming this has changed since starting to process new images on your system with new monitor?
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by Royce Howland on Wed Nov 06, 2013 1:40 pm
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Hey Mark. I've seen this thread, just haven't had time to reply in detail yet. Ironically it's because I'm in the middle of prepping materials for a series of advanced printing workshops. :)

The short answer is, prints likely will not match the screen all that perfectly as a matter of course. It depends in large part on the image in question -- whether its tonality and colour range falls completely within the limits of what both the monitor and the printer + ink + paper can reproduce. That's a subset, like two overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. Your monitor can display some tones & colours the printers can't print, but the printers likewise can print some colours your monitor can't display.

If a given image does fall within the limits of both monitor and printer, then the match should be closer; if the image falls outside the limits of either or both devices, then the match will be farther apart. In either case, the print's look will still be heavily influenced by another major factor mentioned above which is ambient lighting. Your print can't look better than the light it's reflecting, so you still need to control for that variable to properly evaluate the print.

That's the short response. :) The long one has lots more details. There could be something "wrong" that could be fixed, but you indicate that your monitor is the only change in your workflow. If so, then you're probably mostly facing a situation where it's now giving you a bigger window onto your images than you had before, and this is showing you that the original files contained more tone and/or colour than you've been printing up to now.

From a color management viewpoint I don't see any issues with your summary of the monitor calibration setup. I would personally target a brightness of 90 or 100 cd/m2 but this too depends on the ambient lighting in your photo work room. If the lighting is a lot brighter than "standard viewing conditions" that are assumed by calibration targets, then you'd need to set the monitor's brightness to a higher target in order to avoid washing out display detail and as a result over-compensating for it as you work up your images.

I do think there are probably issues with your printer profiles. I've evaluated many profiles from all kinds of sources, and learned that printer profiles are a common weak link in the printing pipeline. A few vendor-supplied generic profiles are good, many are mediocre, and a surprising number range from poor to abysmal. Custom profiling would likely improve your situation depending on what papers and profiles in particular you're using. You've got a tremendous amount of high-end gear, I'd say it's worth going that last measure and getting custom profiles at least for the primary go-to papers you use.
Royce Howland
 

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