|
Blog Home
My
best photos
Monitor choice, calibration, and color
management made EASY
Recently, I wanted to purchase a new LCD
monitor for my photography needs. After spending a lot
of time choosing the monitor, the calibration device,
and testing various options, I am writing this article
in order to help someone else going through this
process.
MONITOR:
I already had a 22" LCD (Samsung 2220WM),
but it is a TN panel, which means that its brightness
and colors depend on the viewing angle. Not really
suitable for photo editing. After much research, I
settled on
Dell 2209WA (very different from 2209W). This is an
IPS monitor, which is suitable for photo editing for
various reasons I won't go into. It is also
significantly cheaper than other IPS monitors.
COLOR CALIBRATION DEVICE:
After much research, I settled on
Pantone Huey. I do not recommend this device, since I
have had a lot of frustration with it.
The main problem is that it does not fully adjust the
brightness/contrast on the monitor, but there is more
(read below).
COLOR MANAGEMENT:
This was the most painful part, but it
worked out well in the end. Pantone's customer
service (via e-mail) was worthless. I had to go through
two iterations of ordering prints before figuring out
exactly what to do. Here is the summary of what to do:
1. Go to your Dell monitor menu (bottom
right side of the monitor), select Color Settings, and
select RGB, Graphics, Multimedia modes.
2. Select 50% for Brightness and 25%
Contrast setting.
3. Calibrate your monitor following
Huey's program (select Photo editing, and do not select
room light adjustment).
4. When you are using your monitor to
prepare photos for printing, leave it as such. However,
for web browsing, increase the Contrast to 50%.
ORDER PRINTS:
If you order prints from Adoramapix,
EZprints, or SamsClub (in-store pickup), they will come
back looking EXACTLY the way you see them on your
monitor. If you order from MPIX, you need to add 5
points to the blue channel in the color balance option
in Photoshop. Then the prints come back perfect.
PrintRoom prints came back too dark and magenta (not
sure why).
My choice from now on will be MPIX, even
though they are the most expensive. SamsClub photos that
I picked up at the store were printed on larger paper,
so I would have to use a paper cutter to cut each photo.
Adoramapix photos came back with white bands at the top
and bottom, due to poor cutting technique. That was a
bit frustrating, since I liked the photos a lot, but
cannot tolerate white bands. EZprints photos looked good
too (and are cheap), but they took 2-3 weeks to get to
me, and were tightly rolled up (which makes framing
difficult).
If you need poster prints (20x30), I love
EL-CO Color Labs. They print posters for $10 each, as
long as you order two or more. Shipping is reasonable
and the quality is superb. Try this link for poster
specials:
http://www.elcocolor.com/poster_special.htm
Please feel free to
contact me if you have any questions.
|
