# Help with screen calibration and photoshop curves?



## kitsunekoneko (Dec 3, 2011)

Firstly, I want to thank any of the awesome people who are willing to help me.
I have a huuuuge problem with viewing my pictures, as they appear VERY differently on different monitors.
I need to make sure my monitor is configured to an optimum and I also need to make sure I use the right amount of contrast in my pictures so that they do not look too dull or "burn" people's eyes.
To start off, please read this: http://kitsukitty.deviantart.com/journal/My-pictures-are-inaccurately-displayed-272176284

After reading the journal, please tell me which picture looks better to you, if possible.
The first one appears dull on my computer, while the second one appears more contrasted, brighter, and attractive overall.
The problem: My "high-contrast" painting style looks different on other monitors!
I have tried calibrating my screen already, but it seems that I have done it badly. Some people find the second one to be too bright, while the first one is just fine! (and vice versa)

*Notes
Usually, after I finish a picture, I duplicate the merged image and change the layer style to overlay. It's usually too bright at that point, so I use Curves in PS CS5 to make it look slightly darker.
*I started using this method after one of my favorite artist put up a tutorial: http://kiwiesrulexd.deviantart.com/art/Tutorial-Airbrush-cell-shading-187308129?q=&qo=&
She uses this method, and now so do I. (I know, slap me on the wrist for trying to copy her)
Although her pictures look just about the same on other computers!
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. D: Please help
thanks...


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## dinosaurdammit (Dec 3, 2011)

second one looks better


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 3, 2011)

2nd one has high saturation.

What is your Monitor Profile. sRGB? What is it set to in PS?

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps12_colour/ps12_1.htm


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## kitsunekoneko (Dec 3, 2011)

Arshes Nei said:


> 2nd one has high saturation.What is your Monitor Profile. sRGB? What is it set to in PS? http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps12_colour/ps12_1.htm


too high? Or is it okay?I had re-saved it with a sRGB color profile.
*Edit:* I just got a look at my monitor's profile. Here's a screenshot, because I don't completely understand it. It seems to be sRGB already, though.


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## FireFeathers (Dec 3, 2011)

I like the first image, second one is way contrasty.  I know my computer off. It also doesn't read as much purple as I normally put into my images, heh.


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 4, 2011)

Hmm. Well this can be a complicated problem. 

Your contrast can be off on your monitor, but I don't know which one you have. I'd have to see what colorspace your monitor can display in the sRGB range. The problem becomes more complicated if you're trying to print.

The selected Profile seems to be a calibrated one. The third one is the sRGB profile, and the second one is the HP monitor profile.

can you do me a favor and zip those three profiles you have displayed and PM me a link.

I can't remember exactly where these are stored in W7


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## kitsunekoneko (Dec 5, 2011)

Arshes Nei said:


> Hmm. Well this can be a complicated problem.
> 
> Your contrast can be off on your monitor, but I don't know which one you have. I'd have to see what colorspace your monitor can display in the sRGB range. The problem becomes more complicated if you're trying to print.
> 
> ...



I found them after a bit of searching got them for you! PMed


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 5, 2011)

Thanks, I'll get back with you on the results when I get a chance


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 6, 2011)

Just FYI I am working on this tonight and will try to post more info today or tomorrow. I just want the OP to know so I can help troubleshoot the issue.


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 7, 2011)

Ok, I just looked at your color profiles.

Your Calibrated display which is the profile you selected is a bit out of the color range for most people's sRGB monitors.
Your second one, HP display (DO NOT USE THIS PROFILE) it cannot capture a lot of the magenta colors.
the sRGB one I'd recommend.  You also want to make sure this is the profile in Adobe and Painter and other programs with Color management. 

The only other reason I can see why you think it's washed out is if you are using the wrong gamma settings and brightness contrast.

I'll post images tomorrow about your profile settings.


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## greg-the-fox (Dec 7, 2011)

I have a macbook pro so I have a very good display. Default Color LCD Profile, I never messed with it. The whites it displays are totally neutral.
First one looks good to me, maybe a little washed out looking and the shadows don't stand out very much. I've seen this style in anime a lot though but I guess not what you're going for.
Second one wow, WAY too much contrast. Looks like you raped it with the burn tool D: Seriously this looks awful on my monitor. Lineart gets completely washed out by the darks and the colors are all weird...
Third one I think is the look you're going for. Good balance. Colors are rich but the lineart still stands out and nothing gets blown out like in the second one. Colors seem good but the reds still seem a bit intense to me. The blues look perfect though.

I'm not sure which option to pick on your poll, I'm a bit confused because you only have two options.


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 7, 2011)

greg-the-fox said:


> I have a macbook pro so I have a very good display. Default Color LCD Profile, I never messed with it. The whites it displays are totally neutral.
> First one looks good to me, maybe a little washed out looking and the shadows don't stand out very much. I've seen this style in anime a lot though but I guess not what you're going for.
> Second one wow, WAY too much contrast. Looks like you raped it with the burn tool D: Seriously this looks awful on my monitor. Lineart gets completely washed out by the darks and the colors are all weird...
> Third one I think is the look you're going for. Good balance. Colors are rich but the lineart still stands out and nothing gets blown out like in the second one. Colors seem good but the reds still seem a bit intense to me. The blues look perfect though.
> ...



You're making an assumption that it has a good display.
If it's TFT, no pretty much all TFT panels don't have the greatest display. This means TFT tend to have poor viewing angles and color shifting depending on how you sit in front of your monitor. This is why there are people that still cling to their CRT monitors that don't have this issue. sIPS panels are the best in line to prevent this. So NEC, LaCie, Eizo, and other monitors that use this technology tend to display colors better.

But besides that...
That doesn't mean it's a terrible display. I'm saying that a lot of people don't understand color management and the properties of their monitors.
I'm learning myself, and after some posts from Hecartha on CA I'm looking at what is going on, and why it's important to know - not just for digital painting but if you want your images to go to print.

Here is an example of your Macbook Pro Color profile and how it looks to what the sRGB colorspace.





The dark part is what the sRGB color space is capable of.
The bright part is what your monitor is capable of displaying.

You might want to read more about the ColorSync utility here http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3221840#post3221840

Of course with monitors capable of displaying a wide gamut, they can go outside the sRGB colorspace, and compensate for profiles like the Adobe 1998 color space which is frequently used for printing.


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 7, 2011)

Now OP,

I'm going to show you a few comparisons of your color space compared to the sRGB color space.

Here is your Calibrated Display:





Your calibrated Display is going outside the sRGB color space. However, If your display is an HP which was your second profile listed. It seems acceptable but a few factors I'm wondering about is the fact your second profile is an HP which says it can display the below






Your HP has problems displaying the hues on the right. Magentas etc...

Here is the sRGB display.






Of course it's a match because it's the same color space. 
So going with the 1st or sRGB color profiles are your best bet, avoid the HP one like the plague. 
You probably want to use the sRGB to get the closest matching colors without programs trying to use color management compensation to keep it from shifting.

This might solve your problem, but can't help you much on how to make it more consistent on other monitors. As I said Color Management is a headache and other monitors will display results differently. Some people might like a bit more blue, some like their colors to appear more red and may make their monitors reflect that.


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## kitsunekoneko (Dec 7, 2011)

greg-the-fox said:


> I have a macbook pro so I have a very good display. Default Color LCD Profile, I never messed with it. The whites it displays are totally neutral.
> First one looks good to me, maybe a little washed out looking and the shadows don't stand out very much. I've seen this style in anime a lot though but I guess not what you're going for.
> Second one wow, WAY too much contrast. Looks like you raped it with the burn tool D: Seriously this looks awful on my monitor. Lineart gets completely washed out by the darks and the colors are all weird...
> Third one I think is the look you're going for. Good balance. Colors are rich but the lineart still stands out and nothing gets blown out like in the second one. Colors seem good but the reds still seem a bit intense to me. The blues look perfect though.
> ...



thanks for your input!
most people are saying that the 3rd one looks best. I was shooting for some sort of median so that it wouldn't appear too bright on over-contrasted monitors or too dull on under-contrasted computers.

Also, I added the poll early, before I posted the third option.
I kinda need to delete the poll somehow XD



Arshes Nei said:


> Now OP,
> 
> I'm going to show you a few comparisons of your color space compared to the sRGB color space.
> 
> ...



I see! I have changed it to the sRGB option, thank you!

I didn't think so. Color Management is quite a pain. I've had a similar issue before, however I didn't get into fixing it.
Although I can't guarantee 100% success, I think I've come to a good solution. Thank you very much for helping me out!


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 7, 2011)

One thing I should also note. You also want any programs that use Color Management like Photoshop or Painter to use the sRGB space so you'll avoid any further issues of shifting (at least within your workspace).


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## kitsunekoneko (Dec 7, 2011)

Arshes Nei said:


> One thing I should also note. You also want any programs that use Color Management like Photoshop or Painter to use the sRGB space so you'll avoid any further issues of shifting (at least within your workspace).



Alright. Not exactly sure how to do that, however, I have been checking off "Convert to sRGB" when I save my images. Is that how it's done, or should I be doing something else?


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## greg-the-fox (Dec 7, 2011)

Arshes Nei said:


> Here is an example of your Macbook Pro Color profile and how it looks to what the sRGB colorspace.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What program are you using to get that image and how do I view two at once?
This is my display (using ColorSync Utility)


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 7, 2011)

I'll get back with you on that.

The image I have is from one of Hecartha's demos of a Macbook Pro.

The image viewer I'm using is http://www.iccview.de/content/view/3/7/lang,en/ which is online and requires a plugin. It also may produce a false positive with your Virus program.

http://www.argyllcms.com/ is the one Hecartha used I believe for the screencap. I've yet to install it though I do have a utility for Windows XP (will not work on other versions, I asked).

Select in the System tab sRGB ICE61966 -2.1


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## Windfalcon (Dec 25, 2011)

A lot of people have commented on how to fix the color (which I'm going to go back and read myself because I'm super interested in this).  In terms of calibrating your contrast and gamma, however, this site has been IMMENSELY helpful for me: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/  Click the links at the top for specific tests.  The most important ones are white saturation, black level and gamma calibration.  I've been on monitors that look good, and then discovered my white balance is way off or the contrast is too high.  Once you fix your color, you'll want to make sure your contrast/gamma is accurate, too.

Keep in mind, you're likely going to have to adjust your brightness and contrast through your video card.  To do this, right-click on your desktop, and there should be a control panel for your video card (mine says "NVIDIA Control Panel" as an example).  You may have to select "Use NVIDIA settings" in order to unfreeze the controls.


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## greg-the-fox (Dec 26, 2011)

Windfalcon said:


> A lot of people have commented on how to fix the color (which I'm going to go back and read myself because I'm super interested in this).  In terms of calibrating your contrast and gamma, however, this site has been IMMENSELY helpful for me: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/  Click the links at the top for specific tests.  The most important ones are white saturation, black level and gamma calibration.  I've been on monitors that look good, and then discovered my white balance is way off or the contrast is too high.  Once you fix your color, you'll want to make sure your contrast/gamma is accurate, too.
> 
> Keep in mind, you're likely going to have to adjust your brightness and contrast through your video card.  To do this, right-click on your desktop, and there should be a control panel for your video card (mine says "NVIDIA Control Panel" as an example).  You may have to select "Use NVIDIA settings" in order to unfreeze the controls.



According to that, my monitor is worse than I though :C
My whites and blacks are a bit blown out, EXTREMELY shallow viewing angle. Response time was bad. Clock and Phase and Inversion were perfect though. And sharpness was almost perfect.
I've been concerned with my screen actually being warped or something, I've noticed some discoloration towards the bottom. I thought it was from my cat sitting on my closed laptop. (not like I let him but if I leave it out he does sometimes) And when it's closed I do notice a bit of a gap in the corners where it seems to be bowing up. This is pretty normal for a laptop of this age (actually in pretty good condition considering)

I tried calibrating, I really did, but it just hurt my eyes a lot and ended up looking worse than before. Apple does not give you a lot of options in System Preferences, basically just a few tests to change your gamma and white point and that's it. And it's a step by step process, once you finish if you don't like something you have to start over or go back several steps which erases your progress. Honestly to my untrained eyes it looks perfectly fine and more than good enough for everyday use. But for drawing (and gaming) I'm planning on getting this ViewSonic Display and I'm really counting on it to be massively superior.


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## Windfalcon (Dec 26, 2011)

Apple displays are usually pretty well-calibrated.  It's PC monitors that tend to be all over the place in terms of calibration.  I'm not too familiar with how to calibrate Macs, but there should be ways of doing it, particularly because Macs are so widely used for graphics.


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 28, 2011)

Windfalcon said:


> Apple displays are usually pretty well-calibrated.  It's PC monitors that tend to be all over the place in terms of calibration.  I'm not too familiar with how to calibrate Macs, but there should be ways of doing it, particularly because Macs are so widely used for graphics.



It depends on the color profile, actually. People tend to just use the old line "apples have good displays" when a gamut map has proven it to be a little less true. They may be a bit consistent (like you're not going to jump from one monitor and see something completely different - unless it has an IPS display or better gamut) vs getting different brands of monitors and noticing the shift right away. But of 

When you do gamma calibration, you need to first RESET EVERYTHING TO DEFAULT.
When you do color management calibration you first need to RESET EVERYTHING TO DEFAULT.

I use a Spyder Express (plan to get the Pro version sometime) for monitor calibration. A lot don't have the time nor patience to do it because everyone has a different display. It's just more important to have the following:

A display that gets as many colors as possible to the sRGB profile (some may lack, and some may have more than the sRGB profile)
A display that is calibrated consistently (probably using the Adobe 1998 profile) if you're going to do print. - Note: If you're not going to print, don't bother with this profile.

Why do you you want to know what colors you view/print? Because why work in colors your monitor can't display - you can't see it so why bother overreaching?

This post shows a problem with the blue in Macbook Pros. So we're going to easily say "Apple Monitors are calibrated?" Not if it's missing quite a bit of the color space 

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3304428&postcount=28


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## Windfalcon (Dec 29, 2011)

Arshes Nei said:


> It depends on the color profile, actually. People tend to just use the old line "apples have good displays" when a gamut map has proven it to be a little less true.
> 
> ....
> 
> This post shows a problem with the blue in Macbook Pros. So we're going to easily say "Apple Monitors are calibrated?" Not if it's missing quite a bit of the color space



The ironic bit is I've used PCs my whole life and sworn by them   I've never owned a Mac before, but I will admit, I'm pretty impressed with their displays.  I suppose the safe thing to say is their _monitors_ are good at displaying color.  I've owned an LCD that was physically not capable of displaying proper color or contrast (a lower end ASUS), whereas the Apple monitors and laptop displays were very good.  Again, as you said, it all depends on the color profile.


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## Arshes Nei (Dec 30, 2011)

Windfalcon said:


> The ironic bit is I've used PCs my whole life and sworn by them   I've never owned a Mac before, but I will admit, I'm pretty impressed with their displays.  I suppose the safe thing to say is their _monitors_ are good at displaying color.  I've owned an LCD that was physically not capable of displaying proper color or contrast (a lower end ASUS), whereas the Apple monitors and laptop displays were very good.  Again, as you said, it all depends on the color profile.



Consistency != Accurately

You don't even understand what I was talking about because you didn't understand what I'm talking about in terms of color profiles and gamut. It's nothing to do with "what kind you have" because you need to set it for a STANDARD. That's what these colorspaces are about.

This is a very confusing misconception. I've already shown examples where Mac can't properly display the colorspace. I don't know how this is "good" I'm not saying PC monitors are better, but you have to think of several things.

There are many different monitor manufactures and Apple is consistent because they're...well pretty much for Apple. Whereas Dell has their own set of standards, HP another, Samsung does different types Viewsonic etc. So yes, trying to group "PC" monitor vs Mac is just a very skewed argument given the vast amount of available monitors and manufactures.

But if Apple can't display a proper colorspace where like someone has an IPS Dell monitor with a wider gamut and does it right. Then well Apple sucks in this comparison. Just because you have a bad monitor, and liked the Apple one doesn't mean "Apple is good at displaying color". If it can't display a proper range of colors available, short of it is - it's NOT good at displaying color. It will try to overcompensate and cause color shifting. 

I'm a PC owner as well, and I have Apple products as well. I used Apple/Mac in labs and had varying results as well. Older ones used a different Gamma and it made it irritating to work with. I've had some with better success. I just stand by a good ol' IPS monitor to any "Mac vs PC" argument any day.  I may love the output/display of my Samsung, but I know very well, this is not the best. 

It's not just about "Brightness and contrast" ....


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