Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

I'm using a new xps dell computer with windows7,64bit.
I calibrated the monitor{nec},and my settings after calibration are:
Brightness=30.6%
Contrast=50%
Sharpness=16.6%
I bring the raw files into lightroom,edit them,in prophoto,then send the 16bit prophoto image, to Qimage

All of the images are printing about 1-11/2 stops darker, than what I'm viewing on screen
Prior to my getting the new computer,I had a perfect work flow,and all was perfect from monitor, to what came out of the printer.
Questions:
Is there some sort of change in windows 7, that I am not aware of?
Could the Spyder2express calibrator be off?
Should I be sending the converted images to qimage as Srgb jpegs??

This issue really has me bugged,basically ,my printer is worthless

It's an Epson R1800
All of my drivers have been upgraded to 64 bit.
The new Nvidia graphics card is using the latest driver.

AS I said before,the images look great on screen,but the prints are coming out a little dark.

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Mike

Mike Chaney has figured it out for us.
Below find his explicit instructions.
Followed precisely, not skipping any step should get the monitor profile that you made to work in W7.

I'm slowly discovering all the dances you have to do in order to get Windows 7 to work properly.  Sometimes it's a matter of making just the right face while praying.  My latest discovery was how (finally) to get the ColorVision Spyder to work with Windows 7 so you get a working monitor calibration and profile:

(1) Right click on the desktop and select "Personalize".
(2) Click "Display".
(3) Click "Change Display Settings".
(4) Click the tiny "Advanced Settings": link in blue.
(5) Click the "Color Management" tab.
(6) Click the "Color Management" button: only button on this tab.
(7) Click the "Advanced Tab".
[8] Click "Change System Defaults".
(9) Click the "Advanced Tab".
(10) Uncheck "Use Windows Display Calibration".
(11) Close out all open dialogs.
(12) Right click on your "Spyder2Express" icon on the desktop.
(13) Select "Run As Administrator": just opening it WILL NOT WORK.
(14) Go through the process of profiling your monitor.
(15) Repeat steps (1) through (9) above, then
(16) CHECK "Use Windows Display Calibration".
(17) Click "Start", "All Programs", and open "Startup".
(18) Right click on the Colorvision Startup and delete it.

When you're done, if you want to verify things, use Explorer and
open c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color.  Make sure there is
a Spyder2Express.icm with today's date/time from your above
calibration.  If so, you know the Spyder2Express software stored
the .icm profile in the right place.  If you don't run the
Spyder2Express as administrator, the profile will not go to the
proper directory.  You may also want to go through steps (1)
through (6) above to verify that the default profile is
Spyder2Express.icm.

Yep... seems pretty straighforward, eh?   Huh

Mike

Fred,I must say...when someone posts a problem on this website,your right there to help.
Many,many thanks to both you & Mike.
I tip my hat to both of you.
I don't even want to tell you how much paper & ink I've gone through in the last week, to try and correct this issue.
I will print out these instructions, and work on this tomorrow.

I'll get back to you ,with the results.

Thanks Again,
MikeS

Fred,
I followed the instructions ,and did another calibration.
Here are my results:
Brightness=100%
Contrast=50%
Sharpness=16.6%

The brightness seems a little high,so I ran another calibration
Same results.
I double checked to see if the newer calibration was listed and it is.
Also,I ran a test print,and the results are all the same as before,,prints were a little dark.

Do you think that I would be better off ,getting a better calibrating device???
The spyder2 express,is almost 2 years old???
I made sure the driver was updated to the 64bit version.
The original brightness level was 30.6%,which looked a lot better than 100%

Any Ideas??

Thanks
Mike

Hi Mike,
Excuse me coming in on this.
Does your calibration software allow you set set the brightness (luminance) to a specific value in Cd/M2 (candles per square meter)?
My iMatch software does this and recommends 120Cd/M2 for an LCD monitor and I find this works quite well. If prints are too dark, then the target value can be set lower.
The other way is to set the brightness on the monitor to match the print(s) and then re-calibate without adjusting the brightness, i.e. just make a profile in the "easy" mode.

The value of 100% on the monitor brightness seems very high to me; for reference, mine is 35% but the gain on each of the RGB channels is high at 84 to 91%.
Just to explain, I set these manually with iMatch to get the correct colour temperature so reducing the amount of adjustment required by the graphics card LUT. Obviously, each make of monitor will be different.
Terry.

I too run a Spyder Express, and frankly, I am not thrilled with it on LCDs. It was great on my CRT monitors, but the LCDs...
Here's what I did to achieve a great monitor profile.
I made a test print. It doesn't have to be a special test image, just something that has plenty of shadow detail and highlught detail too.
Not worried about color at this point as the Spyder does work well for that.
I let the print dry, and using a good light, try to make my monitor Brightness and Contrast match the print.
I take my time. I adjust one against the other until I have matched my print.
** Since the print was made using an Epson profile for the matching Epson paper, I assume my print to be reasonably correct WRT contrast and brightness.**

Now that the brightness and contrast have been reset, I must redo the profile using the spyder.
Then I get a good profile.
All the LCD monitors I have ever seen, out of the box, are far too bright.

Of course the better way would be a Color Munki type spectro, but that costs more than a decent monitor, and since LCDs are pretty stable, it wouldn't get the use to justify the cost for me.

Just a comment....  Most everyone knows this, but.... the monitor profile has no effect on the print.
All that might happen is that seeing the too bright image on screen, the user might darken it to look good, and THEN, you will have affected the print.

Hope some of this helps a little.
I see Terry has replied.  He has the best grasp on the monitor matching the print issue.  Thank you Terry
Fred

Terry,
Thanks for chiming in on this..
No,the spyder software does not allow me to set the brightness to a specific value.
What I did was to re-set it after calibration to the brightness level it gave me before{30.4%},which looked pretty good .
I will re-calibrate ,leaving the brightness level at 30.4%,and see what happens.

Terry,thanks again for replying.

I will try your suggestions on matching the print to me eye,but I must tell you,my eye ain't what they used to be??
I know,I can't get an exact match,unless I upgrade to a professional level calibrator,but I'll do what you suggest ,and see what happens.

Here is more fuel, for the fire,
I contacted Data color,and they referred me to an article,that Nvidia has some sort of program installed on their video cards called Nview,and datacolor says, that this Nview,has to be unchecked, for the calibration to work properly,I have a Nvidia video card ,but for the life of me,I can't find it, in the Nvidia control panel.

I'll get back to you guys ,with my results.

Thanks again,
Mike

No, Spyder does not really tell you where you are with Brightness or contrast, and that's the reason I used the method as outlined in my reply to do it eye ball style.
Remember, it is important that you do the profiling after you have selected the brightness and contrast level that is a close match to the prints.
Fred

Hi Mike,

wrt nview,  see here -  http://www.nvidia.com/object/nview_display_us.html

in small text at bottom of page, it depends on 1) video card type 2) os if it is installed, afaik

if you search for 'nview.dll', if you can find it, then you can rename it, to 'nview.dlx', say, and you will probably be good to go.

Best wishes,

Ray

Here is where I think you do it, I have an NVidea card 8400GS but on XP.
This may still help with W7 or not .....
See attachments below of screen snaps.
If you do not have an nVidea icon in your system tray, right click the screen and select nVidea Control panel. Go to the view menu and check Show Notification Tray Icon.
Right click the tray icon and select nView Desktop Manager & nView Properties.
On the Desktop management tab, make sure the features are not enabled - the button will say "Enable".
As far as I can see, the program nView is installed with the driver and it looks like the feature above is off by default. I've never had problems with XP but W7 is probably completely different.  :o

A late thought:-
I've just checked in Control Panel, Add/Remove programs; nView Desktop Manager is listed separately so it could be removed from there. If that causes problems, just re-install the nVidea driver.
Terry.

Terry,
I checked with Nvidia,and Nview is not supported on the Nvidia geforce 310 card,and windows 7
As far as I can determine,only the newer, Quatro cards have it.


I did however try to find it,using your suggestions and I could not..
Thanks for the info though
Much appreciated.

Mike

Ray,
Thanks for your reply and I ddi not find the nView file.

I should have checked before i posted this earlier

Thanks for the link.

Mike

I received the color Munki today,and after some time using it{ok,5 hours}..I must say ,the results are amazing.
The prints are an exact match to my monitor.

I profiled my Museo Silver Rag paper,and the results were very good,but the profile That Eric Chan made for me ,seems to bring out more detail,but the Munki profile is definitely usable.

I  never did pin point the exact problem ,or where it was coming from,my guess is that it might have to do with some issues from the vendors,datacolor?,windows7?,epson?,,might even been user error,,, I just don't know.

In any event,I want to thank all of you for your help/advise,and if anyone is having the same problem ,I strongly suggest looking at the color Munki  to profile your monitor.

MikeS

Hi MikeS
Interesting report back, thanks.
Have you tried the refine process with ColorMunki on the print profile where you read from a sample print, the areas where improvement is required, and the CM software makes a new target to scan, which then refines the existing profile?
Terry

Hi Terry,
No,not yet,just got it delivered, yesterday.

Will start to play with it, later on in the week...will definitely post back with results though.

Gotta say,I'm a happy camper!!!!

Thanks,
MikeS

I just read through this thread and I'm scratching my head...  I don't see any place where you mention the model of your NEC monitor.  It raises some questions for me-- Is this NEC monitor a wide gamut type that the Spyder2 Express simply can't handle? Why use a cheap obsolete calibration device like the Spyder2 Express, when NEC has the excellent Spectraview II system available? The Spyder2 Express was an adequate basic calibration tool back when the majority of us still used CRTs, but the new Spyder3 devices are designed to handle the newer LCDs, both wide and normal gamut.  Datacolor claims that the Spyder3 hardware is 83% more accurate than the Spyder2.

One more question... How did you calibrate "Sharpness" with a Spyder2 Express?

It's the NEC multisync 20wmgx2.

This particular model does not support Spectraview software.
When I had windowsXP,the Spyder2express,seemed to work fine,at least my prints matched the monitor.

When I upgraded to a new computer,with Windows7,and a new video card.....,that's when the problems began.
I decided on the color munki ,because it got good reviews,and has the ability to create  paper profiles.
Some of my friends  use Color munki and  strongly recommend it .

 

Mike, My apologies...  I knew this story sounded familiar and I realized later that you also had a conversation going over at the POTN forum.  I think you received more "Color Management" advice there, but very few of the CM regulars there use Qimage for printing. Glad you got it sorted out.

Chas,

Now ,I'm scratching my head????

What are apologizing about?