monitor calibration is something you probably heard me bang
bang on about rather a lot, a lot of you have got in touch
and asked me to explain why it's important what it's all about
colour profiling sounds kinda scary doesn't it
but in reality is actually just a few takes in a little bit of software
why is it important
well, have you ever stood in front of a tv shop window and the lunch time news is on, well say ten
different tellys
each one of those look slightly different that ones a bit blue that's a bit
yellow that's a big green that's a big dark
and that's the same with monitors
they're calibrated to an industry standards
buy that i mean
all the colours you can imagine all the billions of colors
they all have content
there is an industry for each one, and if your monitor doesn't form to that
then how on earth do you know you're seeing it correctly
if you wanted to put pages into an image library and your monitor is displaying let's
say pink
you either don't notice it because your brain colour corrects
or maybe you think you've got a bit of a pink problem going on with the camera
you colour correct it on your computer
by adding a bit of cyan and green
you send it off, to your photo library
who may be will reject your picture
because on their calibrated equiptment
it will appear cyan and green colour, the same if you go to the printers,
what you'll print will look like when it comes back from them is cyan-y green
it wont match your monitor and you will complain to the printer, its the
monitor which isn't the same color as the rest of the industry
so how do we go about calibrating a monitor, well the first thing to do is to look
at the environment you're working in because you need to make it neutral
the colour here, is a very sort of
flat neutral color there are no loud reds will blues or anything like that which
could affect the color of the light in the room
and then make my brain think that im seeing a different colour to on my
monitor
you'll probably say but mike theirs a big yellow spot right behind you
that's not the colour of the room that's the desk lamp, this desk lamp produces, it
leeks yellow light
so it's absolutely hopeless and when colour profiling or working with
colors
i switch it off
the light in the room now is coming from one of my studio lights
this thing here is balancer at six thousand five hundred calvin its actually
a video
but i know the color from it is neutral, it's a daylight balanced bulb
now you might not want to buy studio light, but you can go online look for day light
balance bulbs you can stick it in a
desk lamp or something and and shine it against a bit of white card or a
plain colored wall
the other thing is the window
the blinds are close
because i don't want to day light coming in here because daylight
levels change if the sun's going in and out
the light levels and the room is changing
the rooms getting brighter
and as it does that my pupils get smaller to counter act it
but the monitor isn't getting brighter along with the rest of the room it
which is staying exactly the same which is the effect of making the monitor appear
dark to me
and so i compensate it by brightening up any pictures that i'm working
on
this is really noticeable if you do something like a wedding if you've got sauy
three hundred images
and the light level is changing in the room all the time you were doing it
will find as a block of really bright ones than a block of dark ones when the
suns go in and a block bright ones when the suns came out
so make sure the light levels in the room stays constant
i know on pretty annoying about this, but then im doing this for a living
its whatever degree you want to take it too
so what the first step in actually calibrating your monitor, well you need a bit of
software
you'll need a bit of hardware its called a monitor spider, I've got one lying around here
this one
is the spoiler pro 2
this is probably three or four years old and the reason i'm using this is instead of an
brand spanking new one
is i suspect
several of you have got one or if you haven't you can find one on ebay really
relatively cheaply
if you want to buy the latest and greatest great cause i expect you'll find a
software is a bit easier to use
but the principles the same, but what i want to get across is what's important
so we've got our yellow-y light turned off, we're in daylight balanced colour light
the doors closed because i don't want light spilling in from the other room or
anything like that
first thing i do is i take a little bit of tissue paper and i just very gently
wipe any dust off the monitor
something else i do is go absolutely mental if someone puts a
finger on my monitor so i don't want smerry marks, one cause i find it annoying and two
because its just dirt on the monitor
i want to see everything nice and clearly
good
now lets
first of all
plugin
our monitor spider
it's just a usb, once you've installed the software, its ready to
race really
there we go, a little bing bong
and if you heard it
when we laughed the software the software will ask questions, and will possible ask me to
possibly make adjustments to my monitor
now this is important your adjusting the monitor
not the computer
I've got a touch here to show you what i mean
now
along the bottom here
there are buttons on this monitor and on this one
the way i have mine setup is that i have two monitors, this one i use for tool pallets
i have stuff like windows on there, leaving
this one free in Photoshop for me to work on, so i've got a nice big, clean,
uncluttered space
that's a fifty quid monitor and that's a seven hundred pound monitor
it doesn't matter the cost of your monitor if it's more expensive it will
give you more options but don worry you can still calibrate
any changes you're going to make
are in the menu of the monitor
i get this little box down here with all the different monitor controls
for example these are the picture controls i can alter the brightness the
contrast
these are the different color balances you'll notice they're calvin prefixs
six thousand five hundred degrees
is thought of as
the white as daylight
there use the prefix where i can
tell the computer to change the content of the different colour guns sorry not
the computer, i meant the monitor, set to change the content of the different colour guns
don't go into melt down with all this because a lot of it you dont need, in fact im going to
show you
so lets launch the software first
now first off you'll get a wizard
something that is going to ask you to set up the software according to the
controls you have on your monitor
let's have a quick look so next
it talks you through it, its tells you the information about whats going on
and what you need to do
just
follow what your specific spider and monitor software tells you to do
i've already told this that i have
l_c_d_ monitor
that i want to use a white point of six thousand five hundred calvin because
that's kind of an industries standard for where white lives
so i'm gonna say continue with these settings
if you want you can go back
actually lets do it, lets just
change the settings
here we go, its asked me if i'm an L-C-D or an C-R-T , this is an L-C-D monitor
it's saying
what is your target white point, and all the information is there, and if you need
help you can click down there, and here we go it explains it all for you
i'm using
six thousand five hundred calvin
and something called it a two point two gamma
windows is two point two mac is one point 8, im not saying anymore about that
click next, its now saying, right
l_c_d_
six thousand five hundred calvin two point two gamma click next
now its asking me if i have brightness controls contrast controls tool backlight
controls
brightness and back light are very very similar things
i'm just going to show you how you find out
you press your
menu button to bring the menu up,
you then go into the brightness control
and you can brighten it up
and as i bring the brightness levels up
can you see
my monitor is getting brighter
but the little box of tools is staying exactly the same
what that means
is that i have a back light control
let's just put it back
to fifty percent
forty-nine
fifty
so i tick the little tick box that say's back light control
and i have contrast controls just there
here, that's that little thing there
move on to the next stage,
since this display has back light contrast its always important for the contrast to set to its
factory default settings
i've already done it
but all you do is, you go into your menu
and you go along until you find factory default and press set
there you go, job done
if i wanted to i could tell that i have calvin presets and sliders but i
to be honest with you if i thought i'd get a better result leting the software
get on with it rather than letting me fiddle with it
which suits me down to the ground
go next
you may have seen the screen colour change very slightly then, thats because
it's just discarded the old colour profile and went back to the monitors
standard
it will ask you a few things can you see that
the the different tones in in the grey scale there, if you cant, it might ask
you to change it, i find its best to leave it alone, i'll tell you that that's what i do
its asking me about R-G-B spiders that i've mentioned calvin spiders
i'm saying i've got a calvin preset
because i have, i use six thousand five hundred calvin
such as that
now we get to the exciting bit
you see, we've got a little thing on the screen saying you can put your spider on here
so theres a little
counter wait
i literally hang it
over the back of the monitor
and dangle it down over the screen so that its touching the front of the screen
there's one last piece of this puzzle
when working with colour
and accurate
image manipulation
i use one of these, its called a monitor hood
its like a lens hood on your camera
i don't want stray light in the room
glancing off the screen because it will affect how i see it, it will reduce
the contrast of the monitor
this is just held on with Velcro, you can buy them, have a look online
its called a monitor hood, i just literally
pop that on there, give it a squeeze
now my monitor is beautifully shaded its like looking down a tunnel at it
next part of the thing
i've got my spider in place, and i click
continue and it says put the spider in place, which I've already done
we're off, it's initializing the sensor
what's happening now
is the software is firing
different tones at the sensor
the sensor is reading those tones
comparing the information it has in its database in the software
to what the monitor actually producing
when it's finished doing this and it takes a little while
it will then
take the two pieces of information what it knows it's producing and what it knows
it should be
it makes like a little digital filter which sits between the graphics card of
your computer and the monitor
and it just filters out all the impurities how cool is that
and then your monitor is exactly the right colour
but all we can do now
is wait while it gets on with it
there we go we've reached the end
it even tells me i can move the spider so, i can lift the spider
out from there like that
there we go
i'm going to keep my shade on
though
lets move the web cam out of the way
click next
and its going to ask me do i want to give it a name, well i do because
i want to give it the date, todays date is the
i think its the tenth
uh... january no its february
2011
he we go that dates the film doesn't it, the reason i use the date is
because you do have to regularly calibrate, this isn't
something you just do once and forget,
you need to do it every so often
the more costly your monitor is
chances are the longer it will go
mines cheaper so it will need doing sooner, but im not suggesting you need to spend
that kind of money
if you've got a less-expensive monitor say for a hundred quid or something
you might just need to check it once a month, it's well worth doing
the software will warn you that the intervals you want
now next
this is the interesting bit
you see we've got a nice
picture of kind of, this is the test image of all sort of
different colours and tones
and it's going to give us a before and after calibration,
now if i go to before
look at the difference
and this is also a great way for you to realize how your
eyes lie to you
if i stare
at the before one which is actually wrong, if i look at it
for long enough
and then switch it to the calibrated accurate one
the calibrated accurate one will look wrong, its like putting on a pair of say,
yellow glasses
after you've been wearing them for ten minutes everything will look normal
because your brains filter that out
always trust your software
click next
and it says do you want to quit? click quit, next
job done, now with your monitor calibrated, pretty pictures