Topic: I think I need a new monitor

[Indofunk]

Take a look at my first 3 photos on Flickr


Memories of a bygone era by Indofunk Satish, on Flickr


How did that bug get up there? by Indofunk Satish, on Flickr


High Voltage by Indofunk Satish, on Flickr

Way too contrasty, right (even for xpro)? Looks fine on my laptop screen, which is where I do 90% of my scanning & editing, but it looks horrible on this Acer monitor I'm looking at them with now. I should probably just get a good, balanced monitor and hook it up to my laptop to edit my photos, right? What is a good "prosumer" model monitor that's good for photos? Or are all monitors inherently different and I shouldn't even bother with it?

When I mix my music, I do so on nice, balanced Mackie HR824's so that I know the sound is exactly what I want. I'd assume that most people are listening on crappy computer speakers or tiny earbuds and aren't hearing my music the way I intended it with the EQ balance all over the place, but at least I know that the correct digital information is there...

[Bryan]

Monitors are changing so fast these days it's hard to tell what it will look like to someone else viewing your photos on the internet.  My photos all look different between my desktop monitor, my laptop monitor and my iPad.  Right now my iPad seems to have the best screen so I tend to go by that. 

[Francois]

Right now I'm using a Samsung Syncmaster which is calibrated with a Spyder.
Unless the screen is really old (you can always reset the settings and then drop the brightness down as they always crank it up way too high), the spyder will really tell you what you can see and what you can't.

Also, things sent on the internet really should be in the sRGB colorspace as it's the only one which will guarantee satisfactory results across screens.

[Indofunk]

Right now I'm using a Samsung Syncmaster which is calibrated with a Spyder.
Unless the screen is really old (you can always reset the settings and then drop the brightness down as they always crank it up way too high), the spyder will really tell you what you can see and what you can't.

Also, things sent on the internet really should be in the sRGB colorspace as it's the only one which will guarantee satisfactory results across screens.

This is what you're talking about?

http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder4express/

There are similar tools for sound "calibration". I never really got into them, mostly because my acoustic space is far from ideal, but I think I might be into that for visuals

[hookstrapped]

Right now I'm using a Samsung Syncmaster which is calibrated with a Spyder.
Unless the screen is really old (you can always reset the settings and then drop the brightness down as they always crank it up way too high), the spyder will really tell you what you can see and what you can't.

Also, things sent on the internet really should be in the sRGB colorspace as it's the only one which will guarantee satisfactory results across screens.

This is what you're talking about?

http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder4express/

There are similar tools for sound "calibration". I never really got into them, mostly because my acoustic space is far from ideal, but I think I might be into that for visuals

The Spyder calibrator is good for matching your screen to your print output, but it doesn't help address the fact that everyone else's screens are calibrated differently.  I think Indo just needs a new monitor that's in the same ballpark as the majority of other screens.

[jharr]

Did the monitor get all jacked up somehow? Maybe a reset to factory settings would be a good place to start. Monitors are about 85% black magic to me, so I usually trust the factory to have set it at something like reasonable. Good luck!

[Indofunk]

Did the monitor get all jacked up somehow? Maybe a reset to factory settings would be a good place to start. Monitors are about 85% black magic to me, so I usually trust the factory to have set it at something like reasonable. Good luck!

I don't *think* my laptop screen got jacked up in any way ... everything looks kinda the same as it did before. I've learned to photo edit with the screen tilted away from me about 20 degrees, because otherwise I see weird shimmery stuff that's not actually on the photo. Also I decrease the brightness to about 60% or so. It's a very bright screen. Those are two things I figured out by comparing the laptop screen to other monitors, and it's worked fairly well up to now. I'm going to re-edit these shots on the Acer to see how they come out, then take the next step (if any). The negs themselves were rather overexposed, so maybe that's the main problem...

[Francois]

I used to always adjust with a known calibrated image. That way, the results are pretty much OK.
I can live with brightness problems, just not odd color casts.

If you don't want to spend on a spyder right away, you can always do some "eyeball calibration" using something like this
http://quickgamma.de/indexen.html

I used it before and it was pretty decent.
On the site they have Quick Monitor Profile which extracts the screen's ICC profile. This is a good starting point as windows can push some out of gamut colors and not care the slightest if it doesn't have an ICC profile for your device.

Best of all, it's all F-R-E-E !