Can two different monitors be calibrated to match for photo editing?
Asked 7/8/2015
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2 answers
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I’m getting more serious about photo editing and bought an external monitor and a Spyder 5 Express to calibrate my setup. After calibrating both my laptop screen and external display, each seems to end up close to an sRGB profile, but the two screens still look very different in color and contrast.
My gear:
- Asus VivoBook S550CA laptop
- BenQ GW2255 external monitor
- Spyder 5 Express
Is it actually possible to make two different monitors look identical, or nearly so? If not, what’s the best way to set them up for editing? Should I rely on the external display and use the laptop screen only for secondary tasks, or is there something else I should adjust first?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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Is it possible to calibrate correctly and identically (or nearly) 2 monitors?
Only if they're identical display types. There are many different types of LCD display, and several non-LCD display types besides. Two different display types may simply be incapable of producing the same color gamut, brightness levels, evenness of illumination, contrast, etc.
ASUS doesn't say what kind of LCD your laptop has, but it's probably TN. Your external display is a VA type LCD, which is contrastier than TN, and more even in terms of lighting, but not as good as IPS. Most touch screen technologies also affect image quality, because they put arrays of microscopic stuff in between the actual LCD and your eyes.
You might feel that these difficulties make calibration pointless, but it isn't so. Proper calibration brings your monitor as close to the objective ideal as its technology makes possible. If you edit your photos on a properly-calibrated monitor, they will also look good on other calibrated monitors, even if they don't look exactly the same as on yours. On uncalibrated monitors, your photos may not look as good as you would like, but that's unavoidable; this was true before you calibrated your display, too.
I find that the result on each monitor is exactly the same as the sRGB ICC profile.
Are you setting the per-monitor ICC profile? Simply building the profile with your calibration tool may not be enough. You might have to install it manually, or manually select it in the OS's display settings, depending on how the calibration software works.
which makes it impossible for me to work on my photographs
Nonsense. Your external display is almost certainly a better display, objectively speaking, so do your actual photo edits on that monitor. Use the laptop display for auxiliary things, such as app palettes, email, a web browser, etc.
I don't really "trust" it, seems even after calibration, manual and with the Spyder, it's still really bright and saturated. My pics look really good straight from the camera, it seems really weird to have such quality from my old camera to be honest. Also it looks like all my old pictures suffer too much contrast due to my former photoshop editing - but they dont look so contrasted on the prints i used for an exhibition a while ago. I'm lost!
Out of the box, most displays are too bright. Manufacturers do that to make them "pop" under bright fluorescent retail store lighting. Home and office lighting is typically much dimmer, so you need to turn the display brightness down quite a bit.
Calibration should have taken care of saturation; it should now be correct. If your previously-edited photos look overly saturated on the new, calibrated monitor, it's because you (or your camera) punched the saturation up to compensate for the poorer capabilities of the old display. You might want to go back and recheck your best photos, to see if their adjustments should be dialed back a bit. It's happened to me, too.
As for the rest of your frustration, I offer this bit of wisdom: A man with a watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
Originally by user4141. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4141
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
You can calibrate both displays, but two different monitors usually will not look identical. Exact matching is only realistic when the displays are the same type and quality. Different panel technologies, screen coatings, viewing-angle behavior, contrast, brightness range, and laptop touch layers can all make them look different even after calibration.
That doesn’t mean the Spyder is useless. Calibration helps each screen get closer to accurate color within its own limits, but it cannot make a weaker display behave like a better one.
Best practice here:
- Use the external monitor as your color-critical editing display.
- Use the laptop screen for tool palettes, browsing, or other non-critical tasks.
- Adjust the monitor’s own brightness/contrast/settings before or during calibration if possible.
- View both screens straight on, especially if either panel shifts color with angle.
If the external display looks more natural and consistent, trust it more than the laptop panel. A different calibrator is unlikely to solve fundamental differences between the displays.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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