Post Calibration

[Svetlana]

Hi Damien,

I've purchased an Eizo monitor and Spyder 5 Pro, calibrated the monitor, set the target for printing (5000K white point) and compaired the result to some test prints I got done online. All good so far.

My question is, what do professional photographers do at this point with regards to handing over colour graded photos to a client?

I've colour graded a job containing a large number of photos which look terrible when viewed on any device running in Rec709 - 6500K white point which will include all laptops, TVs, smart devices etc.

The only options I can think of are;

Colour grade every job twice, giving the client the Rec709 version and asking them to come to me for prints?

Make a custom preset on my monitor at 5750K and grade all pictures in future as a compromise between to two?

I did wonder if lightroom could automatically make an adjustment when exporting but the white point doesn't seem to be changeable at that point.

[Damien Symonds]

14 minutes ago, Svetlana said:

I've purchased an Eizo monitor and Spyder 5 Pro, calibrated the monitor, set the target for printing (5000K white point) and compaired the result to some test prints I got done online. All good so far.

Which lab?

5000K is not correct.  If you have a screen-to-print match at 5000K you are either using a dreadful lab, or have dreadful lighting in your room.

[Svetlana]

The prints were done by Photobox. It's not an exact match but I never thought they would look the same but it's closer then 6500k which makes them look too blue. If 5000k is not correct, what should it be? The Eizo has this setting for 5000k built in for printing.

[Damien Symonds]

6500K is correct.

Tell me about your room lighting.

Eizo's "printing" setting is literally for printing.  That is, the commercial offset printing industry.  NOT for photography.

[Svetlana]

I was currently working with the lights off, I have the black shroud around my monitor so during the day it's shielded from most ambient light plus the spyder pro should take ambient light into account. I thought 5000k was closer to the white point of most paper but I can't find where I read that now?

When I ran the calibration in the ColorNavigator software, I had to do it for each target. When I switch between printing (5000k) and Web design (6500k), the printing target colour definitely is the closer of the two.

The second thing I've noticed is how different the contrast ends up comparing the exported jpg to the image displayed in lightroom, I assumed this is due to the conversion to sRGB as it's a much smaller gammut but thinking about it, that should just clip the colours outside the triangle to the closest available which shouldn't effect the contrast? Is there any way to see in lightroom how it will look when exported? I've tried googling this also but I just can't find a clear answer.

[Christina Keddie]

Lightroom settings.

And a defense of why you should work in sRGB from beginning to end.

And do read the room lighting article Damien linked for you, if you haven't already -- he was asking about your room light as you compare the prints with your screen.

[Svetlana]

I was using the soft proofing function assuming that if no colours fell out of range I was okay working in RAW. I don't use PhotoShop often but I've changed those settings now anyway.

I've tried exporting to sRGB, then re-import the sRGB file, exported again and I still have a contrast difference between the sRGB photo open in LightRoom and the jpeg I open from the desktop using Apples "Preview" software. I've checked there is no profile in Preview but I have tried a few just to check. Plus the sRGB jpeg in LightRoom seemed to match the RAW file for contrast. This is both on the same screen side by side. It seems to me that LightRoom simply isn't representing the image in the same way as Preview.

Going back to the colour problem I was originally having, I've tried to light the print using a few light sources while holding it next to the monitor but I'm still not convinced. I'll get some more test prints done, this time I'll do some test patterns rather than photographs.

Thanks for all the help. 

[Christina Keddie]

Preview isn't color-managed, so you can't use it as a point of comparison.

[Svetlana]

I didn't think Lightroom was doing any colour-mangement unless I apply a profile? According to Adobe, "Lightroom simplifies colour management by displaying colours using device-independent colour spaces. This means that all you need to do before working in Lightroom is to calibrate your monitor. Then, when you're in Lightroom, choose colour settings or colour profiles..."

It then goes on to say how it displays everything in AdobeRGB however, you can choose sRGB or a different colour profile. "In the Develop module, you can use the Soft Proofing panel to preview how colour looks under various colour-managed printing conditions."

Maybe this is where I'm having issues, when I toggle between sRGB or AdobeRGB the image doesn't actually change. I know it's applying the profile because the softproof allows me to use more colours before I get warnings but it's not actually displaying the image any different. Surely the point of Lightroom is to actually see what you're going to get? Once exported, no other devices would clients would be displaying images on would have any colour management either.

[Svetlana]

I'm going to research softproofing some more and I'll let you know what I find. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

[Svetlana]

Okay, so switching between these profiles should only change the colour gummut so IF I had colours outside the sRGB range they would clip. Therefore it's probably normal that I don't see a change however it doesn't explain why I see a difference in the contrast of exported images compared to viewing them in Lightroom.

Because I have a hardware calibrated monitor, I didn't go through the Mac monitor calibration but I thought I would take a look in case the profiles weren't working properly until that was done, I now have some aplle colorsync software that tells me the profiles need updating but typically the permissions are wrong and the damn sudo command won't work. I changed permissions on the important files individually and let the utility "fix" them but I think that's all a wild goose chase... When changing profiles using the system preferences, I can see them working how I'd expect. When I select them in Lightroom, I don't.

I'm wondering if Lightroom simply doesn't display any profiles correctly? I know it reads them due to my earlier test of seeing the difference in the warnings during the softproofing. I might also be looking for the problem in completely the wrong place?

I think my next move is to take this up with Adobe unless you guys can think of anything else I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for helping.

[Damien Symonds]

This is ridiculous.  You're WAY off track here.  Tell me about your room lighting, darn it.

[Svetlana]

Sorry, I thought I had. I have two large glass doors letting in natural light during the day, this is right next to the desk, direct sunlight never comes in through them.

So to recap, I actually had two separate issues. One was the colour, the other was the difference in contrast with exported images.

The first issue was a combination of the spyder not being that accurate, I've since checked it against a Minolta CS200 that was recently calibrated and the monitor looks closer now. Plus I think the "lab" print is probably slightly off but I'm being really picky. I don't know how to get a Spyder calibrated? I haven't had time to look into that.

The second issue with the contrast looking different seems to be an issue with Apple "Preview" in OSX. I haven't had time to look into how to fix this yet either. I know that I don't get this problem running LightRoom in Windows and I know that the files I export from LightRoom on OSX are fine when opened in Windows or on another device. Therefor it must be Preview that has the problem.

Thanks for all your help.

[Damien Symonds]

2 minutes ago, Svetlana said:

Therefor it must be Preview that has the problem.

Yes, of course.  "Dumb" programs like that aren't colour-managed, so they must never be used.

[Christina Keddie]

45 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said:

Yes, of course.  "Dumb" programs like that aren't colour-managed, so they must never be used.

...Like I said above, on March 28.  

[Svetlana]

I still don't understand that? As I said before, I'm not using a monitor profile and Abode say LightRoom does not colour manage.

Once it's been exported, all programs that can open a jpeg should open it the same right? Isn't it down to my monitor to colour manage? So in Windows, I opened the picture in various different programs all on the same monitor and found in Photo Viewer, Internet Explorer, Photos, Firefox, even Paint! all display the image exactly the same and all look the same as it does in LightRoom.

Then I re-started in OSX and opened the same image in Safari. I found that Safari displays it fine. This is an issue with Apple preview, the default program on all Macs for opening pictures. I haven't changed any settings on it, I don't know what the problem with it is but I now know not to trust it.

Thanks again.

[Samantha LaRue]

No, all programs don't view it the same.

 

And I don't know what you mean by LR isn't color managed. Their software would be completely useless if that was true.

[Svetlana]

I was quoting Adobe themselves, it's not applying any manipulation to your monitor. You manage the colour using the tools in LR and then what you export is what you expect to see what ever program opens it. Try it yourself if you don't believe me.

What would be the point of LR if LR was the only program you could use to view your image how you adjusted it?

[Damien Symonds]

Yes, of course Lightroom is colour-managed.

[Samantha LaRue]

15 hours ago, Svetlana said:

it's not applying any manipulation to your monitor.

Correct, it doesn't do anything itself. It just respects the profiles that your monitor uses. That's what we mean by "color-managed."

IE and Windows Viewer and Preview are not colormanaged. I don't know the ins and outs of the programming and why they don't work, I just know they aren't. Some people are lucky and they don't see a huge difference between the programs, but others not so much. The bottom line is, they are not reliable.

And yes, that's the risk you run when you deal with only digitals. You have no control over what your clients are using to view their images and what devices. The best you can do is calibrate to match prints and use that as your standard so that you know what to expect from yourself and allow professionals like Damien to critique your work.