INNflight From Austria, joined Apr 2004, 3760 posts, RR: 66 Posted (3 months 2 weeks 6 days 20 hours ago) and read 1758 times:
Hi all,
I recently made the switch to an imac and am having trouble finding the right screen calibration software.
The main issue is, seeing an edited photograph on the imac and the old PC next to it I realize they look nothing alike, while being the same edit.
Now... considering imacs are widely used by photographers and graphic designers I am thinking they should be pretty accurate in colour and contrast, but can anyone point me to a good calibration software to verify that?
Also, I am having the highest brightness setting on it by default - would you recommend turning that down for editing?
Basically the files look richer in contrast and brighter in terms of levels on the mac, while on the PC they look too dark and too flat.
dvincent From United States of America, joined Jan 2007, 1710 posts, RR: 14 Reply 2, posted (3 months 2 weeks 6 days 8 hours ago) and read 1664 times:
Flo,
Buy an i1 display (preferably ones that have lion compatibility in the box) and go to town. Get it dialed in to 6.5K on both of your displays and you should be in the ballpark.
ckw From UK - England, joined Aug 2010, 324 posts, RR: 19 Reply 4, posted (3 months 2 weeks 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 1604 times:
Quoting INNflight (Thread starter): The main issue is, seeing an edited photograph on the imac and the old PC next to it I realize they look nothing alike, while being the same edit.
Bear in mind that macs and PC use different default gamma settings (1.8 and 2.2 from memory), so yes, all else being equal the same image on the two monitors side by side will look different.
If you are using Photoshop, there is a tool (forget exactly where) which will allow you to emulate the default settings of either display. So you could set your PC to emulate a Mac, and then see if there are any other issues to worry about.
As to calibration - well, any of the many tools available will do a decent job - but do be careful what you pay for. Some are designed to be used system wide, and will calibrate you scanners and printers as well as your monitor - if you only want to calibrate your monitor, you won't need an all singing and dancing package and can save yourself some money.
dvincent From United States of America, joined Jan 2007, 1710 posts, RR: 14 Reply 5, posted (3 months 2 weeks 5 days 5 hours ago) and read 1536 times:
Quoting ckw (Reply 4): Bear in mind that macs and PC use different default gamma settings (1.8 and 2.2 from memory), so yes, all else being equal the same image on the two monitors side by side will look different.
If you're running 10.6 or later this isn't the case anymore, the default gamma is now the same as Windows, and even then, if you calibrate, you can choose the gamma you want.
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