The difficulty you are encountering revolves around the process known as
"color management", the science of which is both involved and difficult
to tackle. Literally dozens of large books and courses exist solely
to learn how to properly incorporate these settings. So, first off,
know that you are not alone in your frustration with this problem, nor
trying to find a reasonable solution
In a perfect world, all devices and software using color would use the
same standard, an agreed upon color space, be built in a tight spec and
work nicely with each other.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case and although things have somewhat
improved in the industry, there is still substantial variability in both
models and individual products. It is amazing how well things do
compare once you know how much can go wrong.
Even the standards aren't standards. The gamma level (a contrast and
brightness standard) for PC monitors differs from that recommended for
Macs, and this is why you may sometimes notice websites that seem too
dark or two light, because they were designed on a PC or a Mac.
And that's the tip of the iceberg. Every Monitor, scanner, printer,
digital camera, graphic card and OS uses slightly different methods are
managing color, and worse still, there is variation right out of the
factory and also almost all color peripherals "drift" with age, amount
of use, warm up time, etc.
So, what's a person to do? It depends somewhat of if you only require
managed color within your own location (so-called closed loop) or if you
need to be consistent with outside sources, like a commercial printer,
or your photo lab. It also depends on how close you need things.
If you access your videocard management (on a Windows PC it is usually
accessed through the device manager) and look at the advanced menus they
will often allow for some setting changes to provide a starting point.
Then the simplest (and least costly) way of dealing with this is using a
tool like Adobe Gamma. It is a small program that comes with Photoshop
and probably Lightroom, which allows you to make adjustments to your
monitor using a "wizard" and instructions, which sets up your monitor to
a close to correct brightness, contrast and color setting. Be sure to
read the introductory information regarding how to place the setting for
the monitor before running Adobe Gamma. At different points in this
program, you will be asked to either have your room lights on as
normally used, or have them off completely. This is because things like
color balance, and brightness are effected by ambient lighting (the
amount and color of it).
If you set Abobe Gamma up correctly, it at east gets your monitor into
the ballpark. Adobe Gamma actually runs a little application as the
computer is booting up to "correct" the monitor to a more standard
contrast and brightness.
If that doesn't help enough, you may need to buy a monitor calibration
tool. These are hardware and software kits ranging between about
$80-$300 US. They literally read the monitor through a photo
spectrometer that is placed over the top of a section of the screen, and
then a profile and program are made to standardize the monitor's gamma
and color performance. Some of these kits (the more costly ones) will
also allow you to test and correct scanners, printers, and other color
peripherals. Some will even standardize your color output so it will
match industry standards which should allow you to provide a file to a
commercial printing company and they will print what you see on your
screen. Some can even make paper profiles so that your printer will
reproduce accurate colors on a variety of paper types.
The way these work is by creating something called an LUT, or Color
Lookup Table. This program takes a color that is showing on your
monitor, and translating that to a set of printer ink colors which when
mixed in certain proportions will reproduce that color on your screen.
On Windows PCs, color management is a bit of a mess because they never
incorporated it into the OS (Mac's have a basic one internal to the OS
even before the Mac had a color screen). As a result, every piece of
hardware or software dealing with color input or output has built into
it some form of color management, and if you turn the wrong ones on,
they will fight one another by "double color management". Your best bet
is to read any tutorials on color management on line or via Abode's
website or manuals.
How deep you want to get into this is basically determined by how deep
your pockets are, and how much time you devote to it.
Art
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