Monitor profiling, whats the best brightness setting for home printing

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Paul-H

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Hi all

Another quick question, I hope

When profiling a monitor, on a system used for home printing with a profiled printer, what's the best brightness setting to use.

I have mine set to 90 as recommended in the Spyder software but I still find my prints are darker in the shadow areas than I would like.

Should I be going with a lower setting than that 90 recommended by Spyder.

Logic says yes but I don't do well when I rely on my logic hence the question

What figure do you all use for your monitors.

Thanks for any help with this.

Paul
 
I don't think there is a "best" setting, rather one that works for you and where the monitor is situated. I'm surprised though that the spyder s/w suggests 90 (I'm assuming cd/m2) as most I've seen suggest 120, and that works fine for me - the 120 setting that is!
 
Currently my Spectraview 2690 is set to C.90 cd/m2 which allows the monitor to match the print. As Paul says there is no 'right' setting so why not try 80 cd/m2 and see if that allows a better match? You can always tweak the setting to say, 85 cd/m2 if you want something in-between. Certainly you cannot do any harm and if you don't like the result you can easily revert.

Anthony.
 
There is no correct setting.

90CD/m2 would be ideal for a fairly dimly lit room. Odd that is the default setting, or recommended setting for the spyder.

On average, I'd suggest around 70CD/m2 for a dark room. 90 to 100 cd/m2 for a dimly lit room, and 120cd/m2 for an "average" lit room. Bright daylight streaming in? Forget it.. that's a crap environment to work in.
 
I use 120 (calibrated with ColorMunki Display) and my prints come back matching what I saw on the monitor.
 
You will need to do some tests yourself, to find the optimum brightness for your monitor. Start by setting the monitor to say 120cd/m2. Make a small test print.OK is the print too light or too dark. Now adjust your monitor brightness in the direction of the prints brightness ( or lack of it). A good guide is that when the monitor closely matches the print you are close. make another print and see how close you are. If it's a good match fine, if it needs a bit of a tweak, then try again.
 
Chappers said:
Start by setting the monitor to say 120cd/m2. Make a small test print.OK is the print too light or too dark. Now adjust your monitor brightness in the direction of the prints brightness
Click to expand...

Careful here. I wouldn't just adjust the monitor via it's controls. I'd recalibrate to a different luminance point with the calibrator. Simply adjusting the monitor may have adverse affects on gamma.

Once you've calibrated, you should never adjust the monitor controls.
 
Hi All

Thanks for all the replies

Managed to solve the problem and it turned out not to actually be a calibration issue (well sort of)

I have like many two monitors attached to my computer, one for the main editing window and one for all the tools.

The Main one is a 24inch Samsung T240 and the secondary is a 22inch ACER AL2202W.

In one of those what if moments whilst I was pulling my hair out over this I moved the workspace window over to the second monitor and bingo it was displaying exactly as it printed.

So had a quick shift around on the desktop and now using the smaller ACER as the main screen and all is now displaying as it should.

Both monitors are not very good with both only just being able to display the sRGB gamut but would never have guest that the ACER that cost less than half what the Samsung cost would end up being the better of the two.

Thanks again for all the help

Paul
 
Pookeyhead said:
Careful here. I wouldn't just adjust the monitor via it's controls. I'd recalibrate to a different luminance point with the calibrator. Simply adjusting the monitor may have adverse affects on gamma.

Once you've calibrated, you should never adjust the monitor controls.
Click to expand...

Sorry I should have clarified. My suggestion was to change the brightness by changing the target value for the Spyder, not using the monitor controls. :)
 
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