Hi,
Thanks for the answers. See below.
You don't mention monitor luminance - it actually sounds like the luminance is too low.
(Just for clarification: there is no one luminance setting for everyone - it really does matter what the editing environment is like.)
As for being warmer that may be an issue of the luminance or something else.
Tony Jay
I cannot adjust luminance (or temperature for that matter) on my "shitty display", just brightness and contrast. One of the reasons I was thinking of upgrading.
Face it bud, you have a shitty display...and the Spyder 2 colorimeter ain't what I would call "bleeding edge" either. You have a very, very poor display environment...not at all surprised soft proofing isn't optimal for you. Odds are, you really have no clue what you are looking at on screen-let alone when you turn on soft proofing.
Thanks bud, but please don't feel you have to hold back...
Perhaps I should have made it clear to everybody that the comparison between print and on-screen is not hugely different and that all colors for a particular comparison image are in gamut for the print. In fact if anything the prints are more satisfying (more contrast, less flat) than the soft proof display. Moreover the print is closer to the displayed image without soft proofing than to the soft proof.
But, help me please to understand something about the quality of the monitor before I throw a lot of money I cannot afford at a new monitor.
Even if the Spyder 2 is not bleeding edge, it presumably gave relatively decent results when it came out several years ago, given that it was a less expensive version of the Spyder 3 (which I think was geared toward professional use) ie its not entirely a wast of money. I am able to adjust the RGB channels using the colorimeter to well within the specified tolerances of the colorimeter. (Adjusting brightness and contrast is somewhat subjective, but then again when I played with these as an experiment while comparing printed image and soft proof it did not change much in terms of accuracy).
So given that I can create an "accurate" profile what is it about the "shitty display" that affects the accuracy of the colors themselves? Otherwise said, I would have thought it would not be possible to calibrate a shitty display to within the tolerance of the colorimeter....otherwise what is the point? What is the combination of colorimeter/display that I am missing? This is not something I have found in the books.
BTW, can you recommend a reasonably priced display or display/colorimeter combination.
It won't make a huge difference yet still you have to custom profile your printer in order to have an optimal matching.
It should have been mentioned in that ton of books and articles at least ten times.
True. But it depends on how old the book is relative to the technology. I have seen it mentioned several times in these forums that "canned" profiles available from the manufacturer for relatively high end printers are quite excellent these days and so do not want to go down the custom profile route until I exhaust everything else.
Robert