When to calibrate your pc monitor?

CaveDweller

CaveDweller

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I am having to do a bit of brain storming. I got given a printer today, an Epson sx235w. It's just a basic cheap thing until I buy myself a better one. I got given it with non genuine inks and strange paper made by HP and the pictures are turning out different than I see on my PC screen. The pictures printed are a slightly cooler tone and it looks like the WB was out slightly in the camera, but it looks fine on my screen.

Could this issue be that my screen needs calibrating or the printer isn't printing the true colours? If it is down to my monitor how can I go about calibrating it even further than the standard options with Windows 7 and no options on the monitor to adjust any settings? I'm new to all this sort of stuff so I'm pretty clueless.

Cheers.
 
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You need a calibration device and some software to do the job properly. I use x-rite colormunki and it's fine, they do one called colormunki photo which will also calibrate the printer, though I've never used it so can't comment on how good it is. The standard colormunki does a decent job though, and I calibrate once every two weeks - this is the one I have, but there are plenty of others that do a similarly good job http://www.wexphotographic.com/buy-x-rite-colormunki-display/p1526087
 
Cheers, I'll have a look into it. How can you get it to calibrate a printer?

I'm doing some test prints just now of the same picture over and over. I'm on my 5th picture now and I'm still having to slide the temp to a warmer tone. The picture looks completely wrong on my screen but just about right once printed. I've ordered some genuine Epson inks and glossy paper so I'll wait to see if that makes a difference before I buy any kind of calibrating stuff.
 
If it's anything like the one I've seen in use at a commercial printing place you print out a diagnostic sheet for the printer in question. Then run the spectrometer over the printout and it works it's magic from there and creates a custom profile :)

I don't do a lot of printing at home, but when I used non-Canon inks the colours were all over the place, downright awful I would say. When I put proper ones back in the problem resolved itself and I never looked back. Thankfully I don't do much printing because it's over £40 to fill :lol:
 
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andy1868 said:
If it's anything like the one I've seen in use at a commercial printing place you print out a diagnostic sheet for the printer in question. Then run the spectrometer over the printout and it works it's magic from there and creates a custom profile :)

I don't do a lot of printing at home, but when I used non-Canon inks the colours were all over the place, downright awful I would say. When I put proper ones back in the problem resolved itself and I never looked back. Thankfully I don't do much printing because it's over £40 to fill :LOL:
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Now that you say that I realised all my photos that I've had printed elsewhere (Tesco:rolleyes:) are actually fine. It must just be down to the inks and paper I'm using more than anything. Even having a printer at home I probably won't do a lot of printing. It's just a handy thing to have now and again.
 
Calibrating your screen is NO guarantee that your prints will be the same as your screen. That's not to say it's pointless calibrating your screen, as obviously there are lots of reasons to do so even if you don't print yourself. You still need to ensure that what you see is what others see on their screens (assuming they are calibrated as well) and what you send to a commercial printer will come back as you remembered it.

However, to get what's on your screen to match what comes out of your OWN printer, you also need to calibrate your printer... or more accurately, the paper and inks you use.

You need a calibrator that does both. The Color Munki Photo does just that.

Even if you change paper, you'll need to recalibrate the printer. You should have a profile created for every ink and paper combination you use.


CaveDweller said:
Now that you say that I realised all my photos that I've had printed elsewhere (Tesco:rolleyes:) are actually fine.
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Which is a sign that your screen must be relatively close to where it needs to be. Tesco will have obviously calibrated their equipment, so the only reason a print from Tesco comes back differently is your screen calibration. When you print your own, you have to calibrate both screen and printer.. unless you just get lucky.
 
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Cheers. When I buy a better printer for myself I'm going to look into getting that Colour Munki Photo calibrator you're on about. I might get lucky with prints turning out to be ok, but as you said it's a handy thing to have. I have to hand this printer back in a few weeks. The one I was looking at takes 6inks, this one I'm borrowing only takes 4. I heard the more inks in a printer the better the quality. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
 
That's correct... most decent printers have more than 4 colours. The Epson 9990 I do most of my printing on has 11 inks. Most home photo printers have at least 6 inks these days, and that's starting to look a bit dated. High end home printers like the Epson R2880 have 9 inks for example. The greater range of inks help tonal seperation and subtlety by having variations of the colours so they'll have Magenta, Light magenta, and even light, light magenta. They're also supplemented by ink colours other than Cyan, Magenta and Yellow and often have red and orange inks for example.
 
Pookeyhead said:
That's correct... most decent printers have more than 4 colours. The Epson 9990 I do most of my printing on has 11 inks. Most home photo printers have at least 6 inks these days, and that's starting to look a bit dated. High end home printers like the Epson R2880 have 9 inks for example. The greater range of inks help tonal seperation and subtlety by having variations of the colours so they'll have Magenta, Light magenta, and even light, light magenta. They're also supplemented by ink colours other than Cyan, Magenta and Yellow and often have red and orange inks for example.
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I won't have that much money to buy one of them, I think it will be 6inks max for me lol. As tempting as it sounds to get a really good printer I'm doing some gear upgrades first. I don't do a lot of printing at home really. Mostly just when I make cards and print some stuff off for the family.
 
CaveDweller said:
I won't have that much money to buy one of them, I think it will be 6inks max for me lol. As tempting as it sounds to get a really good printer I'm doing some gear upgrades first. I don't do a lot of printing at home really. Mostly just when I make cards and print some stuff off for the family.
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I'll be honest my home printing is limited to word documents, to do printing to a high quality that I like it would be a sizeable investment in both hardware Printer and Consumables, and for my annual print output honestly it's just not worth it, far better for me to leave it to the professionals to do :thumbs: if I was printing several prints a month I'd probably make the investment but as it stands its cheaper for me use a professional lab
 
CaveDweller said:
I won't have that much money to buy one of them, I think it will be 6inks max for me lol.
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More than enough.
MWHCVT said:
Personally when it comes to my calibration I do it every Friday, plus after each OS update/graphics update...I use a Spyder4Elite

http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder4elite/
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used to bug the hell out of me when I had to recalibrate after a graphics card driver update. The monitor I use now is hardware calibrated, so no longer affected by that. A good enough reason alone to look at screens that can be hardware calibrated, such as the Dell U2413 + Xrite i1 Display Pro combination if you've got the budget for it.

As for when to calibrate.. I do it every 200 hours use, and looking back through my calibration reports, it hasn't really drifted that much. In fact, sometimes it gets slightly worse after calibration it has drifted so little due to the natural differences and tolerances in the calibration process.

EPsIDLM.jpg


I'd say once a week is probably not necessary, even with software calibration (unless you've updated GPU drivers)
 
I have only recently perfected calibrating 2 monitors with a spider express (only the higher end software includes the feature).

My 2 monitors at home are now almost identical in colour despite being different ages technologies and manufacturers.

I have 2 brand new identical in calibrated screens at work and the difference between them is visible a mile off.
 
Thanks all. I'm going to get one soon. Are they easy to work out and instructions easy to follow? I've never used one before or anything like it.
 
Phil V said:
I have 2 brand new identical in calibrated screens at work and the difference between them is visible a mile off.
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Well.. then they're not calibrated :)

CaveDweller said:
Thanks all. I'm going to get one soon. Are they easy to work out and instructions easy to follow? I've never used one before or anything like it.
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yes... straight forward,,, depending on what you get. If you get the Color Munki or i1 Display Pro, disable all the features that alter the screen with ambient light. It causes more trouble than solves it.... apart from that, yeah.. pretty easy.
 
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Phil V said:
That's what I said, unfortunately Apple decided I meant in calibrated instead of uncalibrated.
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Auto correct is the worst invention ever.
 
Thanks all. Lots of helpful info. Will probably be back on this topic in a month or two to pick some more brains when I buy one:)
 
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