How can I calibrate my Moniter and PS the same...??

[CaptCarty]

OK, What I want to know, is how can I make the colors I see in LW and PS be the same as what I print? cause when i look at my renders from LW, they look a little diff from PS, and when I print renders, I really notice the difference. I use a Samsung flat panel LCD, and dont have an external calibrater.

CaptCarty.:thumbsup:

[badllarma]

Well it depends what your doing if you are doing print work then all you need to do is cal PS and your printer because I assume you will render a still image from Lightwave work on it in PS and then print it.

The basic way without any fancy gadgets is set your printer and PS to the same colour space for starters and then once that is done print off your PS image and see what the difference is adjust the printer settings save them as a new setup then print the sample again adjust then save the setting it really should not take you long then once it's done save the setting on your printer and job is done. I'd say you should get something like after 3 runs.

It's not actually the image in photoshop that your caling it's the image you see on your monitor of the artwork in PS

BTW if your using cheap inks expect BIG changes when you change cartidges.

So thats the quick and dirty way you need it better than that it's off to the shops :thumbsdow :)

As for Lightwave, PS AND your printer your just asking for bother and the odds get way longer stick to worring about two and you should be ok.

[CaptCarty]

tnx for the help. what I want is for my renders to look the same printed, as they do on my monitor. I use a good HP printer with photo quality ink and paper.

[kopperdrake]

I would say set photoshop's colour space to one of the pre-press colourspaces ( I use Euro as I'm in the UK), print a test image with your standard inks, then tinker with the monitor's colour settings until the onscreen image matches the printed image as close as you can get it. You'll never get it dead-on, but mine are so close as to not cause me any worries when handing them over to a client (my printer matches litho printers quite well I've discovered, which is great).

[Red_Oddity]

Well, you'll need to calibrate your monitor, you can do this with the Eye One devices from GreTag Macbeth or Lacie's Blue Eye device, and use that color profile all through your system (on PS, on your videocard, or your gamma panel and your printer)

[CaptCarty]

Tnx, but is there any free software out there I can use, kindda have zero budget atm, :(

-O'yea, forgot to mention, Im a total PS noob, so how would I set up PS to match my monitor, or visa versa?


CaptCarty. :thumbsup:

[serge]

Don't you have "Adobe Gamma" on your computer? This is a monitor calibration program. I have it, and my guess is I got it automatically when I installed Photoshop CS. On my computer it's installed under: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Calibration\Adobe Gamma.cpl".

I had the same problems you had. The colors in Photoshop didn't match with my renders or any imageviewer. Monitor calibration did the trick.

[Red_Oddity]

A safe bet is using the standard sRGB profile throughout your entire system.

You could then try to tweak your monitor using the color bars/calibration pattern that comes with your videocard (for nVidia this is the 'Calibration Screen' button, you'll find it under the Tools tab on the Desktop Manager (either via the nVidia Panel or in the videocard Properties panel))

[R Haseltine]

You could always profile your monitor, then when you open your renders Assign the monitor profile to them before converting to the working space (or just leave them with the monitor profile - especially if it's one generated be Adobe Gamma or the like, since that won't have very complex transfer curves to give odd results as a profile generated with a colorimter would). As long as you are printinf to a profiled printer you should get something close to what you saw on screen.

[Sekhar]

CaptCarty, to get what you want, you'll have to create a color profile for your monitor - there's no escaping it. I'd recommend one of the ColorVision products (http://www.colorvision.com/profis/profis_search.jsp?op=search&department_id=401). Adobe Gamma (already suggested) also creates a profile, but is much less accurate (it's free though). Either way, you get a profile. You then assign it to the monitor so you can trust what the monitor displays.

Then, you need to create or get a profile for the printer. This is easier said than done, because it depends on so many factors like printer, paper, and ink. For bigger print manufacturers, you can download the corresponding profile from their websites; for others, you'll have to create one yourself (tricky to do) or have a pro do it by sending them a print ($$$). But once you have the profile, you can assign that profile to your image in PS and send that to the printer. Basically what that does is to compensate for the printer's limitations so that the print looks as close to what the monitor is showing as possible (PS allows a preview to see what you'll get).

[Sarford]

Wow, you've stumbled upon one of the biggest problems in the proffesional print industry.

What you're asking for is a color-managed workflow. What this means is that your image will be recalculated to match the colorspace of your destination device (for instance your printer)

Just so you know... you will never be able to match the image on your monitor to your prints... not exactly anyway. This is because a monitor transmits light while a printout uses reflected light. Another reason is that the colorspace of a (color)monitor is larger than the colorspace of a (color)printer. Especialy blue's are difficult for a printer.

The solution people thought up is to transform the colorinformation of your image from one colorspace (your monitor) to another colorspace (your printer). There are several ways of doing this but I guess thats a bit too complicated for this post.

To correctly transform from one colorspace to the next, your colormanagement software must know what the different colorspaces are. That means, it has to know wich colors your devices are capable of producing. To know that it looks at the color profiles assigned to those devices.

To get those profiles you can do two things. Look at the manufactorers site to see if they have profiles for your device or make them yourself. You can make your own profiles with special hardware. There are also companies who can make profiles for you.

Once you have your profiles, you can softproof in photoshop, that way you can see on your monitor an estimation of how your print is gonna look. Using color-management you can eliminate most difference between your monitor and printer. Remember though that a printer can't produce all the colors that a monitor can show.

To have a reasonable color workflow:
First, set the working space of Photoshop to Adobe RGB this is quite a big colorspace (even bigger than monitors can show, except special ones, around $2000,- a piece) so you don't lose color information from your images.
Don't use sRGB. sRGB is a limited colorspace, designed to be the colorspace of the average PC-monitor and is a lot smaller that adobe RGB.

The problem here is ofcourse your printer. Adjusting by hand is mostly not an option because most of the time you can only ajust the total amount of the seperate colors, making the whole image a little more (or less) cyan or magenta etc. So if your using your printouts for comercial work I would sugest to let a company make a profile for your printer and paper.

I'm afraid there is no other way around it... If you want a better color-management you'll have to invest.

[CaptCarty]

Tnx you All for the very helpful info, I will try of few of the ideas, and see how it goes, :D


CaptCarty :thumbsup:

[Digital Hermit]

Read my post on some nifty and affordable calibration devices I found.

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61603&page=2&highlight=color+calibration

DH

PS sorry for the link artifacts... I did a search on "color & calibration" - heh

[Andyjaggy]

Well this doesn't help much for 'free' but the Color Spyder is great. I love mine. It's still not perfect but it helps a lot.