Damien Symonds

That article references the X-Rite i1Display Pro, which is the big brother of your ColorMunki. Yes, it's better, but there's no reason why your Munki can't do a good job. Put that article out of your mind. Can you clarify this? It's critically important. Are you saying that your calibrated screen matches all your prints, except for the ones that you edit using the new techniques?

No, of course not. In this case, you would drag across the white and first two grey bars all together.

You don't click, you drag. If your version of ACR allows it.

Right. Therefore, they CANNOT be described as "great". Of course.

Then the next most affordable solution is to buy another monitor to plug in to your computer, and edit on that. What??? No they weren't!!!!! They were dark, you just said so.

Ah, crap. Well, it means you'll need to work in much brighter room light (while the screen is at its very lowest brightness setting) to achieve a visual match. Can you increase the brightness of your room lighting? And it also means you have very feeble basis to complain about this recent collage print. If you can't honestly claim that your previous prints match your screen, it's going to be a hard argument to mount. However, you should still contact them, of course, and see what they say.

Crap. So this raises a really important question, and I need you to answer it very honestly: Have you EVER achieved a print match with this screen? A really truly print match.

You don't have to reset. I think you're still reading the wrong instructions?

It can't be fixed, sorry. Just very carefully clone it out.

Trust me, it's a laptop. For all intents and purposes, it's a laptop.

Ok, so it's a laptop, essentially. As such, are these the calibration instructions you follow? https://www.damiensymonds.net/cal_S5P_mac.html

What? No, of course not. If your screen is too bright, it makes you edit darker to compensate. That's why your prints are dark. What screen do you have, and which Spyder?

How long has your screen been too bright? How long since you can remember actually checking with a print comparison?

Are you sure you're in good light?

This is something I don't know anything about. Is it a template made by your lab? Or is it some kind of generic template that can be used by anybody for any lab? I guess it goes without saying that there is always risk when using somebody else's template. Well, go ahead and recalibrate your screen with lower brightness to match those prints. For now, continue to ignore the collage, just concentrate on matching those prints.

Sorry to hear about this. The first thing you must do is dig out some previous prints from the lab, and make sure your screen still matches them. The second thing is to make sure your collage file was sRGB as usual. Did you design it yourself, or did you download a template to use?

We really need a bit of variety in the prints, if possible.

That's right. Put it out of your mind. It's not important right now. Got other prints?

Remind me which Spyder you have? Lots of people get confused by this. No, it's correct. In raw, the numbers are compensatory. As the temperature number gets higher and cooler in real life, the raw number gets higher and warmer to balance it. I hope this makes sense. For now, ignore the black-and-white one. You need a lot more than just one colour photo. Really? Surely you have others lying around?

Yeah, gosh, that software stopped being supported about a million years ago. What calibrator do you have?

First, this Levels layer: R 39/1.08/178 G 28/1.09/162 B 13/1.05/174 Masked carefully to the glasses. And maybe masked partially back off the glare parts. Then add a Solid Color layer and clip it to the Levels layer. Set its blend mode to "Hue", and choose a skin colour. I used R214/G171/B146. Then lower the opacity to your taste (I didn't lower mine very much).

Terrific!

Any improvement? Hang on. You said you'd "reset Essentials". That is nowhere near the same as resetting preferences. Did you follow the link I just gave?

*sigh* This is a known glitch. It's not just you (if that's any consolation). It's a hassle, but you might need to do this: https://www.damiensymonds.net/2013/10/how-to-properly-re-install-spyder.html

Yeah, well, you probably should ask him to undo that shit. But first, you should try resetting Photoshop's preferences. https://seventrumpet.com/how-to-reset-photoshop-to-default-settings/