Photo JONG Needs Calibration

[StormRider]

I have 3 monitors I view my pictures on.
1- Circa 2000 Dell laptop (Home - Where I do the little PP work I know)
2- Circa 2003 desktop with a flat screen (Home – Mostly just for uploading to the IntraWeb)
3- Circa 2005 Dell desktop with a circa 2006 flat screen (Work Machine – used mostly for desktop wallpapers)

On all three machines my pictures look different. This would be a clear indication that my monitors need to be calibrated. Ergo this post. How on Bill Gates’ earth do I go about calibrating my monitors. I’m asking the maggot collective first just in case any of you Photo Cool Kids feel like drop the knowledge.

And since “Photo” is in the thread title I’ll drop a few flying shots on ya:

[cj001f]

How much are you willing to spend? Something like this, will probably serve your needs if all you care is that the pictures look similar*
http://www.colorvision.com/profis/pr...iew.jsp?id=581

If you want to color manage a workflow for publishing, etc. that's another ball of wax.

*they may never look "the same"

[MeatPuppet]

^^^^^What he said.

I use the Spyder 2 Suite and it meets my needs.

[upallnight]

i chose the monaco optix xr pro over the spyder system when i got mine 2 years ago. if you do some web searches, you'll see some good comparisons. the spyder is priced right but didn't quite rate as high in many areas.

they're pretty easy to use.

[altendky]

I would like a piece of monitor calibration hardware, so don't take this as me saying they don't have significant advantages. Anyways, you can calibrate your monitor 'manually' with Adobe Gamma (comes with Photoshop and maybe other of their software) or totally for free (for personal use) with QuickGamma.

http://quickgamma.de/indexen.html

For detailed reference/instructions:

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

Since both Adobe Gamma and QuickGamma are configured by you adjusting sliders until the test patterns look right, there is plenty of room for your eye to screw things up. Regardless, you could at least make all of your monitors look similar to each other.

-kyle

[upallnight]

a big factor is also how much ambient light is in your room. There is a standard for how much direct & indirect light there should be to get things right. If you're in an area with direct light (and even daylight coming in), then that definitely screws things up.

For what it's worth, the hardware devices are far more precise (but they also won't work in situations with lots of light -- just as your eyes won't work for setting gamma in the same circumstances) than a visual check...but they're also far more $$.