Got a new Colormunki Create, but running it produces a too-dark profile—what am I doing wrong?
November 19, 2010 8:52 PM Subscribe
Got a new Colormunki Create. Trying to calibrate a 3-month old Apple 24" LED monitor, and a 2009-era MacBook Pro 15". Running the Colormunki produces a too-dark profile. Why? What am I doing wrong?
I bought the Colormunki this week, updated it to the latest version of the Colormunki software, and I'm using a properly updatec MacOS 10.6.5. There's nothing particularly funky about my external monitor setup. I let it run, and after it finishes, the result is something like 30% darker than my normal (uncalibrated) profile for the monitor (which is basically the stock Apple profile for their 24" LED display). I can't stand the result; it's too much too dark for my tastes, and it appears to be too red too, though the color shift is harder to judge.
Do other people experience this too? Does profiles on bright monitors always end up much darker (maybe because the extreme brightness affects color rendition)?
A couple of years ago I tried a Spyder (on a non-LED Dell 20" monitor at the time, also on a Mac laptop, though a different one), and it also produced a crazy result (waaaay too red), which makes me think I might be doing something wrong in general with the color calibrators.
But for the life of me, I can't understand what I could be doing so wrong. There is really very little opportunity to do anything differently in the procedure.
I bought the Colormunki this week, updated it to the latest version of the Colormunki software, and I'm using a properly updatec MacOS 10.6.5. There's nothing particularly funky about my external monitor setup. I let it run, and after it finishes, the result is something like 30% darker than my normal (uncalibrated) profile for the monitor (which is basically the stock Apple profile for their 24" LED display). I can't stand the result; it's too much too dark for my tastes, and it appears to be too red too, though the color shift is harder to judge.
Do other people experience this too? Does profiles on bright monitors always end up much darker (maybe because the extreme brightness affects color rendition)?
A couple of years ago I tried a Spyder (on a non-LED Dell 20" monitor at the time, also on a Mac laptop, though a different one), and it also produced a crazy result (waaaay too red), which makes me think I might be doing something wrong in general with the color calibrators.
But for the life of me, I can't understand what I could be doing so wrong. There is really very little opportunity to do anything differently in the procedure.
I had this experience whe I first started calibrating my screen. It was way too dark and the colours were completely out of whack.
Then I looked at some photos I'd taken recently, and the colours seemed far more natural. I also then had some stuff printed (working with the printer's colour profiles), and the results were very close to what I was actually seeing on screen, which was much more useful for obvious reasons.
I think there's some adjustment period needed. I have my brightness set fairly low (15 on Samsung's arbitrary scale) and by this point i think every other monitor is too bright.
However, if you want it brighter, make it brighter, especially if you don't send stuff to print. You can do that with the inbuilt brightness control (right? I haven't used the Apple LED monitor...) or by setting the target brightness, as Pinback mentions.
I only have experience with the Eye-One Match software, which allows you to do a before and after comparison, which is a really useful sanity check. If the Colormunki software doesn't have anything similar, it may be worth finding a good colour chart and trying your hardest to be totally objective.
posted by Magnakai at 4:19 AM on November 20, 2010
Then I looked at some photos I'd taken recently, and the colours seemed far more natural. I also then had some stuff printed (working with the printer's colour profiles), and the results were very close to what I was actually seeing on screen, which was much more useful for obvious reasons.
I think there's some adjustment period needed. I have my brightness set fairly low (15 on Samsung's arbitrary scale) and by this point i think every other monitor is too bright.
However, if you want it brighter, make it brighter, especially if you don't send stuff to print. You can do that with the inbuilt brightness control (right? I haven't used the Apple LED monitor...) or by setting the target brightness, as Pinback mentions.
I only have experience with the Eye-One Match software, which allows you to do a before and after comparison, which is a really useful sanity check. If the Colormunki software doesn't have anything similar, it may be worth finding a good colour chart and trying your hardest to be totally objective.
posted by Magnakai at 4:19 AM on November 20, 2010
Response by poster: Thank you, everyone, for your helpful suggestions.
I've solved part of my problem by the following trick: before running the ColorMunki calibration, I set my monitor's brightness lower than I have it normally. The color calibration seems to do its job with that, and then when it's done, I can increase the monitor brightness to a level I prefer.
I'm still not using the calibrated profile on a day-in-day-out basis, but now I can switch to it when I want to, and it's usable.
posted by StrawberryPie at 3:26 PM on January 5, 2011
I've solved part of my problem by the following trick: before running the ColorMunki calibration, I set my monitor's brightness lower than I have it normally. The color calibration seems to do its job with that, and then when it's done, I can increase the monitor brightness to a level I prefer.
I'm still not using the calibrated profile on a day-in-day-out basis, but now I can switch to it when I want to, and it's usable.
posted by StrawberryPie at 3:26 PM on January 5, 2011
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Having a target brightness set too low will also affect your colour rendition somewhat, but on an LCD I'd expect it to give more of a cyan cast than red. However, the US preference for a colour temperature of 5000K might account for that differing from my expectations.
(* With CRTs you can set both the black and white levels - somewhat counterintuitively, black level is affected by the brightness control, while white is affected by the contrast control. One of the failings with LCDs is that you can really only set one or the other because of the limited contrast range compared to CRTs. You can set for black blacks and light grey whites, or white whites and dark grey blacks, but not black blacks and white whites…).
posted by Pinback at 10:23 PM on November 19, 2010