I often hear this complaint. I received my prints back from the lab and they were too dark! Or, the printer I got for Christmas always prints my images underexposed. Most problems with dark prints come from having your monitor too bright. Here’s a solution.
Why profile your monitor?
You can’t depend upon your eyeballs for color and density because they will automatically adjust to make light white. In addition, your pupils will adjust to allow for changes in brightness. In most computers and monitors, brightness is set quite high. Many are used in an overnight workspace and need to be able to be seen in that environment. That’s all well and good when you are working on Word documents and spreadsheets; not so good when editing images. When you use a monitor that is too bright, you are making adjustments that will end up printing dark. You need to have a predetermined profile and brightness setting on your monitors that is standard for the industry. Enter profiling.
Brightness
Brightness is number one of the reasons to profile your monitor. Light is measured in cd/m² (candela per square meter). It is a unit of measurement for luminous intensity used to calculate the light emitted by a source in a particular direction. One standard in the photo industry is 120 cd/m². That can still end up with print images that come out dark. I mentioned that Professional Photographers of America (PPA) use that as their viewing standard for image reviews and competition.
A photographer friend said he always uses that brightness setting. I said that I also have a second profile for printing with the monitor at 80 cd/m² to keep my prints from being too dark. Then, I heard him slap his head and say, “Man, that’s brilliant! I often have to make adjustments to keep my prints from being too dark!” Hence, the reason for writing this article. If my friend, who is an accomplished commercial photographer of many years, didn’t already do this, it’s time to share.
You’ll need to do some testing to find the correct brightness level for your monitor and printing set up. But once you have finished testing, you can recall the proper profile and be good to go. One more caveat for those in PPA: If your monitor is set for printing brightness since it is darker, your images will come out too bright on the jurors monitors. I see this a lot as a judge. Use multiple profiles.
Color
Brightness is a major factor as long in getting your printing in order. Additionally, if you have your monitor color corrected, it will improve your output as well. A color calibration unit will run a series of colors while reading them. It knows what those colors are supposed to be, and it sees what they are in reality. The profile takes that discrepancy into account and makes adjustments. It can make a huge difference in the consistency of your output. Again, your eye will always make an image appear white to you. But if you monitor is off, you see yellow or overall blue color casts in the final print.
My device
I use the Display Pro HL from Calibrite (powered by X-Rite) as my monitor profile device. It’s pretty much plug and play. Download the software. Tilt your monitor back a bit so the device rests squarely on the screen. Plug it into your USB slot and activate. Follow the directions and you are good-to-go. In addition to profiting your monitor, other devices like projector may be profiled as well.
Display
When you’ve created and saved the profiles they need to be applied. Find your system settings and look for Display. In there you will be able to apply the profiles you have created. Depending upon what work you are doing you can change those profiles at the push of a button. Different monitors and operating systems use slightly different terminology so I’m not going into a full tutorial here. The profile device and company that makes it can give you all the information you need.
Here are some other devices and articles on color correct monitors:
Yours in Creative Photography,
Bob