how do you calibrate your screens?

[jase]

Since i got a Apple Thunderbold Display next to my Macbook Pro i am having issues with the colors on both screens. My Thunderbolt display has a much more yellowish tint (or its the other way round: my Macbook has a bluish tint?) which makes it very hard to grade since on other screens it looks much different. What i tried is going into the settings and choosing the sRGB profile for both screens - however this does not really help. Still different colors.

Then i compared the colors to my iphone 5 as well as to the Macbook Air of my girlfriend and guess what.. all screens look different, but my external display is much different to the 3 other screens.

I get that no screen looks exactly the same, still i want to generate content that doesnt look way off on other screens. So i am wondering how do you guys deal with that? What do you set, what do you use to set?

 

[Mattias Burling]

I use a Colormunki calibrator. Works really nice in matching screens for me as well as keeping it fresh to current light changes.

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

http://www.xrite.com/i1display-pro

I have a MacBook Retina and an old Dell 23", they match pretty well after calibration. I am waiting for a cheap but good 4K monitor to buy someday soon!

[jase]

Appreciated, will check those solutions.

One question remains: i get that you get calibrated monitors using those devices. But do those devices also ensure that you calibrate towards a certain standard so that your (my) typical audience, that watches my stuff on vimeo, smartphones, etc... see the same i do?

[liork]

Try the BenQ BL2711u, its not expensive.

I use also the i1 display pro.

[Mattias Burling]

This is the one I have, http://www.xrite.com/colormunki-display

[kaylee]

3 minutes ago, jase said:

But do those devices also ensure that you calibrate towards a certain standard so that your (my) typical audience, that watches my stuff on vimeo, smartphones, etc... see the same i do?

lol i wish. im afraid that no matter what you post on vimeo, youtube, or your own website, people are going to have different experiences on different devices both due to the devices themselves and the settings theyre on

[jase]

Just now, kaylee said:

lol i wish. im afraid that no matter what you post on vimeo, youtube, or your own website, people are going to have different experiences on different devices both due to the devices themselves and the settings theyre on

for sure! i am totally aware of the fact that there is no "solution to rule them all", but: maybe there is a solution that gets us quite near to that  Anyway, when @Mattias Burling shows screencaps of his fantastic french bulldog, we all think/say: "awesome" so apparently we think the colors look good, which in turn means that our screens maybe comparable. or maybe not and we like what our screens show us? confusing.

[Mattias Burling]

What they primarily do is calibrate the screen for your room so that you see what's corrects. Others are just gonna have to live with it. But, most phones and tablets are actually very good at representing what the image should look like. So all in all its not that big of an issue.
I had an external screen once that was showing me to low contrast. It was a pain. Since then I always calibrate and match external monitors.

[AaronChicago]

2 hours ago, kaylee said:

lol i wish. im afraid that no matter what you post on vimeo, youtube, or your own website, people are going to have different experiences on different devices both due to the devices themselves and the settings theyre on

I've thought about this too, but...even if people's monitors are uncalibrated it's all relative to the original color. They're used to seeing quality films/series/music videos in a certain "shift". When you calibrate your color correctly they'll associate the "look" as being correct. Just my theory.

[Mattias Burling]

Exactly, other people are going to assume what they se out of Hollywood is correct. And calibration makes your image relatively closer to that.
The very few that have extremely bad monitors don't know it themselves anyway.

[Axel]

I use Xrite i1 with i1 Profiler. For the Resolve monitor via Decklink mini monitor, I had a friend help me choose a cheap monitor (LG somewhat), with which you can change RGB levels individually, then it was first hardware calibrated with assistance of DispCalGUI (free) and i1 Profiler (the Xrite measures the color, then the software says i.e. add green until this mark is reached)  and a monitor LUT was generated for Resolve. Complicated procedure. Funny, the colors on my program monitor look the same.

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

Nowadays tolerances are tighter. NTSC was called Not Twice the Same Color. By calibrating you bring your own monitor(s) to the correct colors as much as possible. At least you can color correct with a minimum confidence that what you see is more or less true. 

If someone has a tablet that gives too much blue, they will be used to it, anyway. It's not our problem!

[kaylee]

2 hours ago, AaronChicago said:

I've thought about this too, but...even if people's monitors are uncalibrated it's all relative to the original color. They're used to seeing quality films/series/music videos in a certain "shift". When you calibrate your color correctly they'll associate the "look" as being correct. Just my theory.

oh absolutely. im just saying that a lot of us (me) would love to have an obsessive level of control over *exactly* what people are seeing online – like what is possible in a theatrical environment – and thats not going to happen any time soon if ever. in that sense if youre just releasing online, creating a happy medium across devices is the best one can do. calibration is super important so you know empirically as much as possible what youre working with, but beyond that if your footage looks too blue on apple devices thats something to consider in your final grade, if that matters to you. to be fair tho, what do i know? 

*i just really wanted to use that cookie emoji i love cookies

[cpc]

The (relative) tint you see comes from the difference of native white color temperature between the displays. This can usually be matched fairly well to the 6500K standard even with cheap displays, although you will limit the brightness if the native white is way off (low brightness is rarely an issue anyway). The more challenging problem is getting the various colors in the ballpark. First, the display needs to be able to cover (almost) all of the color space you target, otherwise doing calibration is pointless. It is best to have a display with hardware calibration LUTs, this limits banding. The cheapest displays don't have any hardware LUT support. Moving up, you get 1D LUTs (I think some Dells are the cheapest you can get with 1D LUT support). Better displays will have hardware 3D LUTs. 

It should be noted that calibration doesn't guarantee correct colors, especially with 1D LUTs. In my experience with various low-mid range LCD displays, blues are usually the biggest problem even after calibration. Some calibrated displays oversaturate low saturation blues and push them to cyan, some undersaturate high saturation blues and push them to magenta. It seems that there is an inherent issue with blues and LCDs; I recall reading an explanation about this issue somewhere by an HP guy talking about the Dreamcolor (but it is related to all LCDs).

[AaronChicago]

1 hour ago, kaylee said:

oh absolutely. im just saying that a lot of us (me) would love to have an obsessive level of control over *exactly* what people are seeing online – like what is possible in a theatrical environment – and thats not going to happen any time soon if ever. in that sense if youre just releasing online, creating a happy medium across devices is the best one can do. calibration is super important so you know empirically as much as possible what youre working with, but beyond that if your footage looks too blue on apple devices thats something to consider in your final grade, if that matters to you. to be fair tho, what do i know? 

*i just really wanted to use that cookie emoji i love cookies

Yeah that is frustrating. I always wonder how irritated the hardware designers of iPhone feel when most people cover the case in a piece of rubber.

[sam]

 You can give the best possible calibration money can buy to any display.  You are still limited by the hardware capabilities of the display. (for example, calibrating a monitor that displays a single color.)  Like cpc mentioned, calibration doesn't guarantee correct colors.  Most so-called “calibration” is altering the video cards data, not the display itself. Thus “calibrating” an Apple display or equivalent is not calibration at all, but a relatively crude approximation by the video card to emulate the target, and can even make things worse. 

 

[Axel]

7 hours ago, AaronChicago said:

I've thought about this too, but...even if people's monitors are uncalibrated it's all relative to the original color. They're used to seeing quality films/series/music videos in a certain "shift". When you calibrate your color correctly they'll associate the "look" as being correct. Just my theory.

Yes, exactly. People whose monitors have a blue cast will still be able to distinguish a well-graded Hollywood film from uncle Harry's wedding video. Because he has so many pin-up-centerfolds on the wall behind his desk with the monitor, he subconsciously drags all colors towards blue in Resolve. So the bridal couple will be too blue on the said people's screen.

[jase]

I just toyed arround with the kelvin settings of my display. Weird enough, when i set it to 7000k it matches my macbook at 6500k quite well, also my iphone looks now much more similar.

See the attached screencap that looks "good" (subjective) on my screen - how is it on yours? Again, I am aware that this is all very subjective, but are the colors off in your perception?

 

[blafarm]

I have adopted an alternate approach that is capable of turning any good quality monitor into a very nicely-calibrated display.

And it does not require first purchasing an expensive HD calibrated display, then purchasing an expensive 4k calibrated display, and then purchasing an expensive 4k HDR calibrated display.  And I can even use it on the large format client monitor in my edit bay.

I use SpectraCal CalMAN Studio, with the completely automated Virtual Forge pattern generator, and the C6-HDR Colorimeter.

With this combination, I create a massive 65-point 3D Cube LUT that I use as a "Display LUT" with various pieces of post production software.  The 65-point LUT compensates for non-linear deficiencies in the monitor and allows me to achieve very good results.  More importantly, I can test the LUT for accuracy before a grading session.

Is this SpectraCal solution inexpensive -- no, it is not.  Is it as good as buying a dedicated, high-end calibrated display -- no, it is not.  

However, this solution is immensely flexible, works with myriad monitors (as long as they are reasonably linear and display all, or the majority, of the sRGB colorspace), and it has prevented me from running after the "monitor of the week" -- in an industry whose technical standards are changing a bit too quickly.

The way I view it, this approach has already saved me money.