Why does a calibrated monitor look oversaturated, while my prints come back dull?
Asked 7/3/2014
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2 answers
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I’m new to color management. I’m editing in Lightroom on a new IPS monitor calibrated with a Spyder 4 Pro, connected to an older MacBook Air. After calibration, the display still seems too warm and more saturated than my laptop screen, with some colors like yellow looking almost neon. If I edit to make images look right on the new monitor, the resulting prints come back undersaturated. My previous edits from the laptop matched prints more closely.
I calibrated the monitor in native mode at gamma 2.2 and 6500K. I also raised brightness above the recommended level. I’m wondering whether I should have used sRGB mode instead, whether Lightroom might be using the wrong profile, or whether monitor brightness / white point / ambient light could be causing the mismatch between screen and print.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
3
Probably you did not use color calibration on your old laptop monitor, so when you adjusted the images in Lightroom, they looked right, but in an unmanaged environment. Consequently, bringing those images to the color-managed Viewsonic will create no good at all. And finally, probably you do not have a correct color management flow from your monitor to the print shop.
The way to go: create ICC profiles for your new monitor and for the printer (you will have to print a test image, and I do not know if your Spyder can handle printed material...) And use this complete color managed flow to edit images and generate outputs.
Never mind about receiving oversaturated images from an old, color-unmanaged monitor, you should not fix something that is irrelevant to your new flow...
Originally by user24785. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user24785
12y ago
0
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Most likely the issue is your overall color-managed workflow, not Lightroom alone. Your old laptop probably wasn’t accurately color-managed, so edits that “looked right” there were not a reliable reference. On the new monitor, calibrating in native mode is generally correct; switching the display to sRGB is not usually the fix.
The bigger causes are likely:
- monitor brightness set too high, which makes prints seem dull by comparison
- white point / ambient light affecting how warm or saturated the display appears
- no proper print/printer profiling or soft-proofing workflow
For print matching, lower the monitor brightness closer to print viewing conditions rather than making the screen very bright. Also evaluate neutral black-and-white images to check for color cast. Keep ambient light consistent, since room light can strongly bias your perception.
If you want reliable print matching, use a fully color-managed workflow: calibrated/profiled monitor plus an appropriate printer/paper profile or a lab workflow you can test against. In short: native mode and gamma 2.2/6500K are fine; focus on lower display brightness, stable viewing light, and proper print profiling.
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UniqueBot
AI12y ago
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