Calibrating a Monitor for Color Correction

Edit your videos. Upload them to the web. Burn blu-rays and DVDs. Colors look odd maybe? Fix'em in post, then!
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DouglasAraujo
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Calibrating a Monitor for Color Correction

Post by DouglasAraujo »

Hello firends!

Well, I don't have a professional monitor to work with color correction. My workstation is an iMac LCD with FCS 3 and Adobe CS3 Prod. Premium. I'm using Apple Color.
Please, someone can help me to calibrate my monitor, to be a little bit professional?

Thanks!
steve
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Re: Calibrating a Monitor for Color Correction

Post by steve »

Have you looked at the Spyder range of monitor calibrators? You don't need a professional monitor, just one that will stay the same once set.

Steve
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Stephan
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Re: Calibrating a Monitor for Color Correction

Post by Stephan »

DouglasAraujo, there are 2 very different steps:
  1. Calibrating the monitor is only about adjusting the monitor settings (such as contrast, luminance, color temperature).
  2. Ideally, you also want to build a "custom color profile" for your monitor. This is something that works inside the color management features of your computer's operating system. The purpose of the custom color profile is to cancel your monitor's color errors, so that what you see as a result is as close as possible to a perfect reference. This requires a hardware probe.
I have an X-Rite i1Display 2 which achieves both objectives:
  1. Calibration: it measures the monitor's output while you are adjusting contrast, luminance, and color temperature, so that you can set optimal settings for these.
  2. Profiling: it automatically measures the monitor's restitution of a whole range of colors, then it calculates how accurate they are (or not), and finally automatically builds the custom color profile into your computer.
Very nice results. Faithful colors on the monitor, very reliable. What You See Is What You Get.

It comes with special software to guide the calibration and do the profiling, you need to check which versions of OS are supported. But then, i1Display 2 is an old model now (although it's been very popular) and there are also newer models like ColorMunki (more expensive).

About Spyder, they accomplish the same function. But when I researched into these a couple of years ago, they weren't as much appreciated compared to GretagMacBeth (later bought by X-Rite). X-Rite has a whole range of diverse hardware probes, from the very affordable to the very pro / expensive, and they've seemed to me to enjoy undisputed reputation (YMMV).
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DouglasAraujo
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Location: Brazil

Re: Calibrating a Monitor for Color Correction

Post by DouglasAraujo »

Stephan wrote:DouglasAraujo, there are 2 very different steps:
  1. Calibrating the monitor is only about adjusting the monitor settings (such as contrast, luminance, color temperature).
  2. Ideally, you also want to build a "custom color profile" for your monitor. This is something that works inside the color management features of your computer's operating system. The purpose of the custom color profile is to cancel your monitor's color errors, so that what you see as a result is as close as possible to a perfect reference. This requires a hardware probe.
I have an X-Rite i1Display 2 which achieves both objectives:
  1. Calibration: it measures the monitor's output while you are adjusting contrast, luminance, and color temperature, so that you can set optimal settings for these.
  2. Profiling: it automatically measures the monitor's restitution of a whole range of colors, then it calculates how accurate they are (or not), and finally automatically builds the custom color profile into your computer.
Very nice results. Faithful colors on the monitor, very reliable. What You See Is What You Get.

It comes with special software to guide the calibration and do the profiling, you need to check which versions of OS are supported. But then, i1Display 2 is an old model now (although it's been very popular) and there are also newer models like ColorMunki (more expensive).

About Spyder, they accomplish the same function. But when I researched into these a couple of years ago, they weren't as much appreciated compared to GretagMacBeth (later bought by X-Rite). X-Rite has a whole range of diverse hardware probes, from the very affordable to the very pro / expensive, and they've seemed to me to enjoy undisputed reputation (YMMV).
Hmm! Very nicee!
Can I create a NTSC profile too? Simulating the television.
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Stephan
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Re: Calibrating a Monitor for Color Correction

Post by Stephan »

No, for Windows it only takes sRGB as the target reference. For Macs I don't know, I understand the reference is different on Macs (gamma value essentially).

If you're going to color-correct different kinds of video, like:
  • HD (Rec. 709 color space),
  • SD NTSC (Rec. 601),
  • DSLR (is that sRGB or AdobeRGB??)
then only your Non-Linear Editing software (Final Cut) knows which type of video it is. So, once you have profiled your monitor correctly to the right reference, it is the duty of your NLE software to do the right colorspace conversions for you, depending of the video format.

[ PS : please don't quote whole messages, it's kind of annoying - thanks :-) ]
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