Monitor calibration

[Ron in Mendocino]

I have an NEC Spectravision 269' monitor. I can use standard target settings for calibration, or create my own custom ones. Does anyone know if Adobe has recommended monitor settings for Lightroom 2 ? (white point, gamma, intensity, & contrast ratio) I would assume that if you use "color managed by Lightroom" then Adobe must have recommended monitor settings.

Thanks,

Ron

 

[Denis Pagé]

Welcome to Lightroom Forums Ron!

You are talking about two unrelated things here: Monitor profiles vs Printer profiles.

Where do you see "Color managed by Lightroom"? The closest thing to this I can think of is in the Print module where, under color management, you can choose between "Managed by Printer" or "Other...". In this case, we talk about print profiles.

Lightroom always use the monitor profile you set in your operating system. The recommendation is to create a monitor profile yourself as those coming with the monitors are generally of bad quality. The white point, gamma, intensity, & contrast ratio will be set and or suggested by the software that come with a device you have to buy separately such as a colorimeter or better yet, a spectrophotometer. Expect from 2''$ for lower end products to many thousands for high end industrial products. I have found a very nice, effective and extremely complete solution at 4''$.

 

[Ron in Mendocino]

Welcome to Lightroom Forums Ron!

You are talking about two unrelated things here: Monitor profiles vs Printer profiles.

Where do you see "Color managed by Lightroom"? The closest thing to this I can think of is in the Print module where, under color management, you can choose between "Managed by Printer" or "Other...". In this case, we talk about print profiles.

Lightroom always use the monitor profile you set in your operating system. The recommendation is to create a monitor profile yourself as those coming with the monitors are generally of bad quality. The white point, gamma, intensity, & contrast ratio will be set and or suggested by the software that come with a device you have to buy separately such as a colorimeter or better yet, a spectrophotometer. Expect from 2''$ for lower end products to many thousands for high end industrial products. I have found a very nice, effective and extremely complete solution at 4''$.

Thanks Denis,
What I meant to say is when you select "no color management by printer" then Lightroom does the color management. Then moving on to calibration: I am given several choices of targets with the calibration software, none of which seem to work when I go to print (prints are many stops too dark). That is why I was looking for the calibration settings. I have tried some, suggested on Photo.net, and still the images are too dark when printed.

Ron

 

[Replytoken]

What is your printer's color space, and what is the color space assigned to the image that you are trying to print?

--Ken

 

[Ron in Mendocino]

What is your printer's color space, and what is the color space assigned to the image that you are trying to print?

--Ken

In Lightroom the color space is Adobe RGB, with the Epson 6.1 driver for the Stylus Pro 38'' the color management is off.

Thanks,

Ron

 

[Replytoken]

In Lightroom the color space is Adobe RGB, with the Epson 6.1 driver for the Stylus Pro 38'' the color management is off.

Perhaps I was too brief in my question. I am assuming that your setup of Lightroom is working in its native space - Melissa/ProPhoto. And, I am also going to assume that your file is not a RAW file, and it has an Adobe RGB color space assigned to the image. If it was a RAW image, color space would not matter.

Now, I do not know the color space that your printer prints in, but for the moment I will assume that it is sRGB and not Adobe RGB. I would then be led to believe that you need to send an sRGB file to the printer so it can print what it receives and not need to compress colors. So, my next questions is, are you exporting the file for printing from another program, or are you printing from Lightroom?

If you are exporting, it would be best if you match the file's color space to the printer's, which I assumed above was sRGB. If you are printing from within LR, we will need some input from another forum member because I do not use LR for printing.

--Ken

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Let us take a step back here.

A few points:

Lightroom only uses it's internal colour space and this cannot be changed.
What ever the file colour space tag is on disk will not matter if you are printing from Lightroom.
To print from LR in the print module set up the page with the image settings, borders etc after you have set the "Page Setup" and "Print Settings" - for the print settings save as Standard in the dialog box.
Then in the "Print Job" pane on the right lower side on the first line select Printer, print resolution default of 24' is fine for your Epson, print sharpening you will set to what you think. You may change this after printng if your are not satisfied!!
Next come the important "Colour Management" area, here in the Profile select other and you will be presented (hopefully) with a list of the Epson paper profiles, check the one you want for the paper you are using.

You should now be ready to "Print" !!


Monitor profiles have no bearing on printing except if they are not reasonably accurate the colours you see on the screen and the colours of your print will not match.
First ensure that your screen is calibrated!!

 

[Replytoken]

Thank you for the "intervention", Geoff! I am used to printing outside of LR, and since that is anything but an automated process, I am used to ensuring that the color spaces are compatible.

--Ken

 

[Denis Pagé]

:roll: One shall not confuse "color spaces" with "color profiles"!

Color spaces are similar to the width of the light spectrum. A device that can see both in the infrared and the ultraviolet will have a broader colorspace than one filtering infrared and using a UV filter. There is no such thing as color space compatibility; They are just different.

Bit depth is simply representing the number of different single colors that you can represent in any color space.

Profiles are just translating tables used when you take a color on one device to be reproduced on another. Choosing a wrong color profile will result in a color translation error; A color mismatch between devices.

 

[Ron in Mendocino]

Let us take a step back here.

A few points:

Lightroom only uses it's internal colour space and this cannot be changed.
What ever the file colour space tag is on disk will not matter if you are printing from Lightroom.
To print from LR in the print module set up the page with the image settings, borders etc after you have set the "Page Setup" and "Print Settings" - for the print settings save as Standard in the dialog box.
Then in the "Print Job" pane on the right lower side on the first line select Printer, print resolution default of 24' is fine for your Epson, print sharpening you will set to what you think. You may change this after printng if your are not satisfied!!
Next come the important "Colour Management" area, here in the Profile select other and you will be presented (hopefully) with a list of the Epson paper profiles, check the one you want for the paper you are using.

You should now be ready to "Print" !!


Monitor profiles have no bearing on printing except if they are not reasonably accurate the colours you see on the screen and the colours of your print will not match.
First ensure that your screen is calibrated!!

Thanks Geoff,

I did what you suggested and got a near perfect print. I thought that the ICC profiles were chosen in the Epson drivers, not in Lightroom. As far as the monitor calibration is concerned, are you saying that it doesn't matter to what specs the monitor is calibrated, it only matters that it is calibrated accurately? From previous discussions on Photo.net people were linking printing problems (prints too dark) to improper calibration specs.

Thanks for your help,

Ron

 

[Denis Pagé]

I did what you suggested and got a near perfect print. I thought that the ICC profiles were chosen in the Epson drivers, not in Lightroom. As far as the monitor calibration is concerned, are you saying that it doesn't matter to what specs the monitor is calibrated, it only matters that it is calibrated accurately? From previous discussions on Photo.net people were linking printing problems (prints too dark) to improper calibration specs.

If you choose the icc profiles in the print driver, this mean Managed by printer. No color management in driver and icc choosen in Lightroom means Managed by Lightroom...

If you change your monitor calibration (OSD) or its profile (ICC), it won't change your print in any way. The only thing is that you will then see a larger discrepancy between the rendering on screen and the one on paper.

The idea of bad monitor adjustments linked to dark prints is from the fact that if ones' monitor is set too bright for example, one will lower the exposure of the image to compensate and effectively get dark prints. Here it is not the monitor influencing the print but the user who changed the exposure...