Help with monitor calibration

[troron]

I am having trouble with a few giclee printers who insist that their Epsons are spot on. I have Adobe Gamma the profile and also have Spider that physically calibrates my monitor. Would you mind replying here how you see the difference in these two shots? one brighter one darker. Thanks a bunch
(view them here http://www.pbase.com/troron/monitor

I thank you

Ron

[dougj]

FWIW, I prefer the darker of both shots, however preference is often a matter of individual taste. I'm using an eye-1 calibrated monitor

[prinothcat]

To my eyeball 1.1 the lighter look washed out. House rock is lacking dynamic range, wherein it looks flat. The darker look better to my eye, but may also be suffering from a limited range of light values. It might help to know what the printer is saying after you get some preliminary feedback.

[troron]

well we three see the same thing then.
I like the darker one on the screen but to get a quality print I have to lighten them a tad as shown.
Maybe a monitor and a printer will never handshake exactly.

Just a a follow up... are you satisfied that your giclee prints are true to your monitor image always? Luminosity cant be printed I assume.


Thanks for your input

Ron

[prinothcat]

Since I believe you (and I) are in Utah which print labs are you using? I haven't made a trip down to get anything printed yet since I haven't really fallen in love with anything I've shot so far... There are a couple of contenders though The two labs I hear best things about are Borge Anderson and an outfit in the 7th east 33rd (or is it 45th??) south area....
I suspect that what we see on our monitors is never going to be exactly the same when printed on opaque media.

[dougj]

Have you tried sending your print lab a test image? this might be useful to compare the monitor to printed image. Norman Koren has decent writeup on monitor & printer calibration, which you've probably seen.

http://www.normankoren.com/printer_calibration.html

He points to a test image from DigitalDog which is nice for checking calibration, and another from InkJetArt for the same purpose.

[prinothcat]

This is a fair can of worms I'm seeing from some preliminary reading...
If I get the gist, you need to start with the monitor using a calibration tool. Generate an .icc profile (which is an industry standard or wants to become one?), then feed that to your printer and your photo suite.... and that's only if I'm reading it right, which heaven knows I may not be doing.
I would assume that your .icc would be of some value to the print lab as well. Or not... It appears to me that you want to have all of your equipment seeing the same thing, which is then some how correlated to every other machine out there???