Who calibrates their screen

I have been meaning to ask this for quite a while now and it's only when I have commented on a forum today that I have noticed that not everyone calibrates their screen.
To me, everyone should, from the absolute beginner to the professional.

Also if you do calibrate, how often do you check it?

Personally I check mine every 2 weeks or if I have a particular job I do it before I start working on them, this could mean that I do it 2-3 days after the last check.
I have the Spyder 3 Pro, and like many others it also takes into account the ambient light and constantly adjusts the screen when the lighting changes.

It would be good to know who does this and if there is anyone that doesn't think it's necessary.


Paul

I certainly do so because I haven't seen a display that is even remotely correct in terms of colour. Especially when you are shooting RAW it is very important that your display is correct.

My old CRT was quite good out of the box but my first TFT was off by miles and even after profiling it wasn't really good.

My current TFT is very good at displaying colour but it has to be profiled. There is one nag with this display and that is that when you select to display a 6500K whitepoint it is not stable over longer periods. I have set it at its native whitepoint and now the screen is very stable even over longer periods.

this picture seems to suggest that your monitor is not displaying the dark end very well, or the ambient light falling on your monitor is too great. Either that or you aren't bothered by noisy backgrounds.

I don't mean this harshly Paul, I am am genuinely curious to know if you can see it and are just not concerned (sometime noise is good).

Personally, I haven't found an affordable system, so I go by trial an error.

Nice, gruesome picture by the way. My daughter's worse nightmare - lots of little moving things

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Plymouth Photographer

Definitely calibrate. After having grief with a particularly bad LCD, I now use www.argyllcms.com with the Spyder 2 Pro hardware.

Works an absolute dream and produces the best profiles I've ever used
(But does take an absolute age to do!)
I now have multiple LCD monitors that actually agree! (brightness variances excepted)

It's worth noting that the Argyll CMS software will work with even cheaper hardware - like the Huey and Spyder (regular). So you can have pro-quality calibration on a budget (but it is command line driven... although not too difficult to do!).

Matt

This image is straight from the camera, no noise reduction, no nothing...well except for a bit of a crop. I'm working on a large job at the moment and decided to have a break by popping this image on.
So basically what you see is what you get.

Edit: oh and of course the writing on the image, that's the only 2 things done to the image


Paul

You take it seriously, Paul !


As you know already, I do not calibrate

I feel bit shame for that
I will make the theme actual at home......

But I am surprised to see te result of the poll at the moment !! So many do not !!!

Haven't been able to afford calibration hardware yet, but I guess they're coming down in price and I'll recive my first paycheck for four years in august

I calibrate my monitor although I don't really see much point in it.
Although the color hue seems about right, I have yet to see the calibration make any sense of how to determine consistent brightness.
I have a GretagMcBeth eyeOne and although it does require adjusting brightness and contrast, the results are very dependent on the starting brightness and contrast of your monitor. i.e. there is no defined "correct" brightness. For instance, my monitor is not adjustable to get a low enough brightness to fall in line. Instead of calibration dimming down the results, it keeps them extra bright. I am sure there is some limitation and a desire to balance out loss and gain in certain areas, but it all seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors that just doesn't work as well as advertised.

My prints always come out a bit darker, so I just lighten them a bit before printing.

Most of my work is seen "out of context". In other words, for the most part, no one will know if the color is a little bit off unless they were actually standing next to me at the same time the shot was taken and are very color aware.

So I pretty much perform calibration to stay reasonably self-consistent, and not trying to get a perfect match to another source.

Much of the differences in brightness, and especially the blackpoint come down to how the software uses the hardware device and creates a calibration file.

The basic "matrix/shaper" profile can be particularly disappointing - as you described.
I've had MUCH more success when creating cLUT (Colour Look Up Table) style files. Argyll will do them both (but the cLUT is a fair bit more work)

The difference was astonishing
(But then, as I found out, not all "colour managed" apps can handle cLUT profiles. Some can only handle matrix/shaper profiles )
Matt

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http://www.mattmatic.co.uk
(For gallery, tips and links)

I calibrate my monitor using a Spyder3Pro, the software reminds you to recalibrate every couple of weeks. I find it a pretty quick and painless process

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Regards Huw

flickr

Thanks Matt. That might explain some things.
I would suspect everything I use is capable of handling LUTs but, I will have to look into that.

I dont calibrate my monitor...maybe I should, but I regularly look at my pics on three different displays and I've never been dissapointed.

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Bob

My website (Hadfield Photography)

Pentax Gallery Artist page:link

Flickr Photostream: link

Matt, what are the advantages of using argyllcms compared to the software you got with your spyder?
I have a eye-one display 2 which comes with software that is quite similar in operation as the software that came with the spyder 2 hardware.
I wonder if I will gain something when switching to argyllcms.

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Camera:K20D|Ist*DS|Spotmatic II|MZ-10
Pentax Lenses: DA16-45|DA50-200|50A 1.7
Tamron Lenses: 28-200
Takumar Lenses: SMC 55 1.8
Sigma Lenses: EX DG 50-500 'Bigma'|EX 50mm Macro
Flashes: Metz 58 AF-1|Samsung SEF-36PZF|Pentax AF-220T

I've looked into such gadets but find them to expensive for my needs.
The monitor is calibrated by eye with some help of programs and such.
It isn't 100% correct but neither are the spider and such.

I also find that if you calibrate your monitor you also need to calibrate the printer and your camera. I don't know how much sense that makes though.
I now get constant results with prints and what i see with the monitor so maybe i'm lucky but well it works.
I'm although curious if my work is the same on someone else his monitor but since there are so many types i believe there is always a difference calibrated or not.

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Stefan


K10D, K5
DA* 16-50, DA* 50-135, D-FA 100 Macro, DA 40 Ltd, DA 18-55
AF-540FGZ

Stefan, I doubted a lot before buying my Eye-one display 2 but I finally took the plunge and I never regretted the fact that I bought one.

Like Matt I experienced problems once with a poorly performing display and that was not a nice one... You send out a large number of images to print and they come back with a horrable colourcast...

The nice thing about argyllcms is that you can use a Eye-one display lt package which is cheaper then a display 2. The only difference is the software.
I am going to try the argyllcms software later to see if it works ok.
The eye-one display 2 goes for around 200 Euro's these days?

And if someone asks me why I bought a eye-one instead of a spyder? Well they perform just about similar and to me it was the same and a lot of Canikon people were allready using spyders so I wanted something different

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Camera:K20D|Ist*DS|Spotmatic II|MZ-10
Pentax Lenses: DA16-45|DA50-200|50A 1.7
Tamron Lenses: 28-200
Takumar Lenses: SMC 55 1.8
Sigma Lenses: EX DG 50-500 'Bigma'|EX 50mm Macro
Flashes: Metz 58 AF-1|Samsung SEF-36PZF|Pentax AF-220T