Beginner Can my monitor be calibrated for printing purposes?

[Pmba]

Morning, my experience of printing has been limited to snaps on the home printer and posters via the usual mainstream online photo printer services.

I now want to get some images professionally printed on to canvas, for display in our cafe (for when we are allowed to open indoors ).

I've run some test prints on photo paper at home and results have been ok-ish - eg the image on screen differs to the printed image, either brightness, muddy whites or over saturated colours.

Have read all sorts about proper monitor calibration and have a "wanted" ad in the classifieds for a Colorimeter.

My question is, can my monitor be calibrated? I'm guessing so.

Dell U2412M monitor
Windows 10
GeForce GT705 graphics card

Under Color profile in W10 settings I get the option of:
D6500 color profile or
sRGB display profile with display hardware configuration data derived from calibration

Thank you
Paul

 

[droj]

You can set up your screen in a pretty functional manner w/o any hardware devices.

Monitor Calibration for Photography

www.cambridgeincolour.com

www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/colour_management/prints_too_dark.html

Try a run-through of this: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Screens ex factory are often far too bright for printing - about 50% might be a better starting point.

And that's the screen - but since the responses of different print media vary, the next step is to consider 'soft proofing' - which can be done in P'shop, L'room & their equivalents. Do some reading. You have opened a can of worms...

 

[Box Brownie]

IMO short answer yes!
Edit ~ I have looked at the spec on the monitor and though the gamut is average at 82% it is an IPS technology screen and they AFAIK are the best in class when it comes to responding to calibration.

Without a calibrated monitor there is no real way to know just how 'accurately' the image will print e.g. I often seen posts over the years of "my prints come out too dark....." the commonest (if not the only cause) is that the screen is too bright.

FWIW I rarely print at home and use pro 'labs' to get my prints and all those places will have their own FaQs guide as to how to prepare the image file for printing. BUT having said that of the few (test) prints I have done at home I have been very happy with how close they look to the ones I get printed commercially.

 

[ah5168]

You probably want to calibrate your monitor but for accurate prints you want to use the correct colour profile for the media/printer you are using. Large media manufactures provide these profiles and they are downloadable from their websites. If look in Photoshop/edit/color settings to see what profiles you already have.

 

[Harlequin565]

In my experience, media choice has a much bigger impact on image quality than screen calibration. Cheap photo paper has always given me terrible results, with bad responses to shadow detail, weird colour shifts and other strange phenomena. When I moved onto decent photo paper, my output was significantly improved. My experience of soft-proofing is that it just doesn't do a good job of representing the media.

If your results are still terrible after calibration, try some decent paper. Or try some before you buy a calibrator.

Of course, if you're using decent paper, I'll go away now

 

[Pmba]

Many thanks all - more reading up it seems! And the hunt for a colorimeter continues....

 

[4wd]

That's quite a good if somewhat older monitor in fact I have it on my #2 PC from 2010
You can calibrate it to suit your own printer but I'd say be wary of messing things up if you are getting reasonable results.
What profile is it on now you might be best sticking with sRGB if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[Pmba]

That's quite a good if somewhat older monitor in fact I have it on my #2 PC from 2010
You can calibrate it to suit your own printer but I'd say be wary of messing things up if you are getting reasonable results.
What profile is it on now you might be best sticking with sRGB if you don't know what you are doing.

I definitely know that I don't know what I am doing...

As for profiles, does this give a clue?

 

[4wd]

It's been calibrated at some time and is using sRGB with slight modifications
The default will be the sRGB IES61966-2.1 you can switch between them but note which one it's on now to change back easily.

 

[Pmba]

It's been calibrated at some time and is using sRGB with slight modifications
The default will be the sRGB IES61966-2.1 you can switch between them but note which one it's on now to change back easily.

Thank you