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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Calibrating for color

T

Tommi Hares

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I'm having this problem with a person, who does not understand the need to calibrate his monitors for color grading. I've tried everything! He still insists that his view of things is correct, the standard is not.

What can I do? What in the world can I do! Firing him is not an option. :mad2: The closest I got, was with "Garfield is orange, but only Jim Davis knows what color Garfield is". But still... He just doesn't get it.

If you can, help. :)
 
Kwan Khan said:
Hummm..... (LOL)
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I know! Would it make a diffrence if I said he's my father?
Just now I got this response from him:

"Did you hear about the 83 year old woman who talked herself out of a peeding ticket by telling the young officer that she had to get there before she forgot where she was going? Makes perfectly good sense to me....."

I know it's a circulating joke, but that's what I mean "the closest I got to him" on this issue...

He has this magic methodology of taking several pictures with his olympus DSLR and changing his monitor settings accordingly to represent the color he perceived "correct" for reference...
 
UGH! Is there an engineer who can technically talk sense into him? Is there a a protocol you can put in place where by an engineer comes in and calibrates the monitors "and that is the way it's going to be"? Is he really your father?

His "technical" reasoning is backwards. Maybe try to separate the science of it from his eye. In other words... he can still like and make things look a certain way, but with a technically sound starting point, the way he sees things will look that way for everyone, not just in his world. Can you show him examples of how it looks different out side of his suite, like on a properly calibrated monitor elsewhere? Do you have the appropriate hardware/software calibrator to do this job?

Just some ideas...
 
Are the projects primarily funded by you or him? If it's you, then order him to do it right cause it's on your dime. If he's backing them, then you can do nothing other than keep trying, maybe send him to a class if he refuses to listen to you.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Is he really your father?
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Can't be sure, need to talk to my mother on that.. ;)

I've tried to show him the difference it makes (I've calibrated his monitors several times but he still doesn't buy it).. The only thing he has, is this thing when he makes prints of his pictures via a 3rd party, they look similar in color but with a "just a little too much magenta" (his words), So he thinks his settings must be correct because he says the magenta flood is due to the (digital) printing process... (which might be true, but just a coincidence).

To be honest. This thread is the last thing I have. Talk some sense to him!
Oh: He's working with a 21" iMac.
 
Tell him it's easier to adjust the image in Photoshop than it is to meddle around inside monitor calibration menus. Appeal to his laziness.

EDIT: Also it sounds like you need to calibrate his printer to match a standard. Otherwise mis-calibrating your monitor to match the printer (if print is your most common deliverable) is perfectly reasonable.
 
DCC Erickson said:
How much of your job is he going to ruin? Fixing things gets spendy.
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Well, it's not an issue of "ruin", because his job looks amazing (on his monitor and he has a perfect eye for color). I just need to adjust the curves accordingly, but it's the principle.
 
Right... but if print is not what you do, then that is a recipe for disaster.

I'm guessing it's not print, given the forum your on. And... is he really grading on a CPU monitor? Please don't tell me this is broadcast work. You need a HD SDI or component HD broadcast monitor to grade with. Calibrating the CPU monitor is a good start... but beyond that, you need a real reference monitor if your doing broadcast work. Well, that is my opinion anyway.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Tell him it's easier to adjust the image in Photoshop than it is to meddle around inside monitor calibration menus. Appeal to his laziness.
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I've tried. He said, it's easier the adjust the medium (his monitor) to apply to his views, rather than grade each shot individually. Kinda agree, but it's not right. It is just wrong. Why the hell I and the rest of the world need to adjust our monitors twice a month if I we really don't need to... He just thinks we're a bunch of idiots and a victim of marketing people... :D
 
Tommi Hares said:
He said, it's easier the adjust the medium (his monitor) to apply to his views, rather than grade each shot individually.
Click to expand...

I finally found a post to use this emoticon on...:emote_head_explode:

Good luck with that.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Calibrating the CPU monitor is a good start...
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Well, that's the budget we're constrained to. I know it's lame, but that's what's available. I have a 24" iMac, a Cinema Display and a 47" HDTV and I think thats a reasonable stack of different kinds of monitors? Am I my father? My god! :D Anyway, it seems I've tried everything. Let's see if this thread makes any diffrence.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
EDIT: Also it sounds like you need to calibrate his printer to match a standard. Otherwise mis-calibrating your monitor to match the printer (if print is your most common deliverable) is perfectly reasonable.
Click to expand...

But that's often the way it is done in the print world. Typically you start with a supplied ICC profile for the printer, ink and media to be used and then you calibrate your displays to be an accurate representation of the output.

I have various color profiles for my displays and juggle between them depending on what I am doing. As an example, The REC-709 calibration for my 30" LCDs and plasma connected to this Mac Pro don't work worth a crap for showing me accurate Pantone colors. And for printing photos, I go for a 2.2 gamma 6500K sRGB profile. I use a Spyder3 Elite for calibrating all my systems/displays. For the plasma and DLP, I have someone come out and calibrate. Too expensive to buy the gear myself just to maintain two displays.

As for dealing with the problem employee/father... I know exactly what Tommi is going through. Best approach is to tell him that the monitor and other hardware need to be calibrated to as close to a recognized standard as possible so that everyone else who views the work will be viewing close to the same color. But I'm guessing that conversation has already happened and didn't make a difference.

Could always give him a monitor that has no user controls or lockable controls and lock calibration settings in the OS after calibrating everything. Then he can't change it and has to tweak color within the image itself.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I have various color profiles for my displays
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Oh, agree 100% when the delivery chain is in one's control. We need a "print to vimeo" in FCP. :D

Why shouldn't we be able to manipulate the whole delivery chain in the world we live in? Actually... WAIT. Why not?
 
Tommi Hares said:
Well, it's not an issue of "ruin", because his job looks amazing (on his monitor and he has a perfect eye for color). I just need to adjust the curves accordingly, but it's the principle.
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Tell him... Jean-Luc Godard does exactly the same thing as him... But has the money to tell the laboratory "I want exactly what I saw on my monitor!".

:thumbup1:

Good luck... BTW I tried to persuade the colorist of JLG to calibrate on broadcast standard but it didn't help much...

Patrick
 
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