I am looking to buy a new computer monitor for my dad, who is an amateur photographer who puts very high importance on color correction. I am unsure how to get his screen to match his color inkjet printer without spending gobs of money on the super high-end stuff.
He has used both the built-in color adjustments (basically just RGB sliders) in the monitor itself as well as the ATI video driver, and no amount of adjustments get close enough to his prints for his satisfaction.
In buying a new monitor, I want to make sure he has better color control. On his old monitor we used a Huey device, but it didn't seem to get any closer than what he had manually done. The Huey seemed flawed in that it was only ON or OFF. The ideal solution would be to use a device like the Huey to sample the actual colors and make adjustments, and THEN allow you to fine-tune it from that point to match the prints. But, it is either 100% automatic, or 100% disabled.
It occurs to me that the main challenge in color correction is that the color components are probably not shifted linearly. If you need to do correction on a curve, for example, the controls in ATI's driver as well as most monitors are inadequate, since they only control the overall color, rather than adjusting it so that, for example, you give more adjustment to the Red in the lighter part of the spectrum than the darker, etc.
Any ideas on how to proceed? I could get an LED-backlit screen, which I understand has better color reproduction, but I'll likely still need some way to fine-tune it in a non-linear way to correct it. Even with a calibration device (like a more powerful version of the Huey), I'd still want a lot of control. Finally, maybe there is a piece of software that will allow more precise color correction than what you get with most ATI/NVIDIA drivers.
No matter what, we need to stay on the cheaper end of the spectrum, and are willing to save money by getting something that requires a lot of manual control over something that is really expensive and is intended to do everything "automagically".
Thanks for any help!
He has used both the built-in color adjustments (basically just RGB sliders) in the monitor itself as well as the ATI video driver, and no amount of adjustments get close enough to his prints for his satisfaction.
In buying a new monitor, I want to make sure he has better color control. On his old monitor we used a Huey device, but it didn't seem to get any closer than what he had manually done. The Huey seemed flawed in that it was only ON or OFF. The ideal solution would be to use a device like the Huey to sample the actual colors and make adjustments, and THEN allow you to fine-tune it from that point to match the prints. But, it is either 100% automatic, or 100% disabled.
It occurs to me that the main challenge in color correction is that the color components are probably not shifted linearly. If you need to do correction on a curve, for example, the controls in ATI's driver as well as most monitors are inadequate, since they only control the overall color, rather than adjusting it so that, for example, you give more adjustment to the Red in the lighter part of the spectrum than the darker, etc.
Any ideas on how to proceed? I could get an LED-backlit screen, which I understand has better color reproduction, but I'll likely still need some way to fine-tune it in a non-linear way to correct it. Even with a calibration device (like a more powerful version of the Huey), I'd still want a lot of control. Finally, maybe there is a piece of software that will allow more precise color correction than what you get with most ATI/NVIDIA drivers.
No matter what, we need to stay on the cheaper end of the spectrum, and are willing to save money by getting something that requires a lot of manual control over something that is really expensive and is intended to do everything "automagically".
Thanks for any help!
