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C
Christ-Guard
Known Participant
February 4, 2013
Question

How to calibrate an LCD Laptop monitor for Photoshop work

  • February 4, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 51950 views

Hey guys,

   So in a recent post I found out my laptop's monitor is not calibrated correctly =( I am working from home, in a foriegn country, so getting a proper monitor is out of the question at the moment. Can anyone give me advice on how to properly calibrate my monitor? Thanks!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Noel Carboni
    Noel Carboni
    Legend
    February 4, 2013

    One thing:  If you see a distinct change in the colors of your display depending on your viewing angle it's probably futile to try to calibrate and profile the monitor.  Think about it - you'd have to ensure your head is in the exact same position relative to the screen every time, which is practically speaking unlikely .

    For checking your gamma response, sans equipment, you can view the following test chart at 100% original size (click on it to see it in the browser at 100%, but bear in mind your browser may not fully implement color-management).  If the vertical bars look pretty much like smooth gray gradients your calibration is good. 

    It's supposed to look like this, essentially:

    But even with proper calibration your colors may not be just right - that takes profiling, which involves a hardware measurement device and software that will create and install a profile for your monitor - which then only SOME of the software you use (like Photoshop) will honor.  It's kind of a complicated mess, and WELL WORTH reading up on before trying to embrace.

    -Noel

    G
    gator soup
    Inspiring
    February 4, 2013

    Noel, that's an interesting test chart, I am showing my tests below in Ps CS6 and my OSX Safari browser.

    As you can see (if you click on the preview thumbnails to show my original screenshot) both gradients sets have lines in them.

    What might that mean?

    Apple 30" Cinema Display on Mac Pro, monitor hardware profiled a couple weeks ago at 2.2 gamma using EyeOneDisplay2 hardware and i1 Profiler D2 Lion Edition software

    Noel Carboni
    Noel Carboni
    Legend
    February 4, 2013

    The horizontal lines are supposed to be there.  They're successive rows of pixels of opposing colors, which (if the gamma is close to right) should mix visually to form what appears as very close to a neutral gray color to our eyes.

    Are you speaking of vertical colored lines (kind of like what we see when the image is downsized by the forum above)?  Those should be minimal if your monitor is displaying with 2.2 gamma.  I think everyone sees them a little, though if you convert the test chart document (or your screen grabs)  to a gamma 1.0 color space, then reduce the image size to 50% in each dimension, you do see that the colors mix just about perfectly into gray (that's what I did to create the second image I posted above).

    Your specific calibration cannot be captured with a screen grab, since it's generally accomplished via parameters and/or lookup tables loaded to your video card.  In the screen grabs we only see the effects of the color profile transform, not the effects of the calibration.  The only place you can see the entirety of the color-management, including both calibration and profiling, is on your monitor visually.

    Here's how the chart looks here (this is a photo of my monitors, with sufficiently low resolution that the colors mix visually - essentially what I see):

    -Noel

    G
    gator soup
    Inspiring
    February 4, 2013

    there are a ton of how to web articles out there, but if you don't have access to a hardware profiling package or the skill to effectively use one of the eyeball calibrators -- on a laptop panel -- i might recommend setting sRGB as the default monitor profile and see how that works out

    a simple test is to open an RGB image, select all and Image> Adjustment> Desaturate

    if the result is a pure visual b&w tone (no color cast) that's a good sign

    any color cast in a desaturated RGB image is a bad sign (your monitor profile is off)

    also downloading a copy of the Whacked RGB PDI image is great reference tool for evaluating both monitor and print spaces and workflows

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