External Monitor color sync?

[MEMPER]

<also posted in the lounge, but trying here too>

I just got a 22" Sceptre LCD monitor to use with my G4 laptop. I have both monitor profiles set to "color LCD" and Photoshop is set to the same.
The problem is that colors seem washed out on the bigger screen when viewing images in PS. The brightness is all the way down and the contrast is all the way up. I have fiddled with both as well as the RGB balancing in the new monitor to no avail. Images still look better on the G4. More contrasty with richer colors.
Perhaps I have had crappy colors with my G4(old, not very bright display when compared to newer models) and have adapted my working to them in PS. Perhaps the new monitor is more on point but I cant see it cause my eye is used to the G4...

A pal of mine said he has access to one of those color calibrators you hook up to your monitors. I suppose this may be a solution.
Any thoughts?

[Metsys]

I actually don't mess with the Photoshop color settings at all. I leave it at default which is sRGB, but some would argue in favor of Adobe RGB. What you want to do is to do your color correction set up only on the display.

First you'll want to make sure you have your brightness and contrast settings on your display correct. Make sure that your white is as bright as possible and your black is as black as possible without blowing out or burning any grays in between. This will take some practice and you'll want to make a test file with a big dark area, a big white area, and a gradient to test this. Look through a hole in your hand at the white areas when you adjust the brightness so you just barely bright enough. Do the same with the blacks.

This is important because Adobe Gamma (and even the software that comes with a colorimeter like the Spyder) can only calibrate the inbetweens of what your monitor displays. If the extremes are wrong (black and white) you won't have the best color coming out of your monitor.

To calibrate your monitors you can use Adobe Gamma (in Windows you can run the program from Control Panel > Adobe Gamma) to calibrate it. It'll do some tests and from there it'll create an ICC profile that you can use in Windows for color correction.

[Metsys]

And I just realized your are on a Mac. I'm not sure if there's something like Adobe Gamma or some other application that will let you calibrate your monitor.

Well, for all you Windows users who want to calibrate your monitor, the tips are still there. :)

[MEMPER]

Thanks Metsys.
Yeah, OS X has a color calibration app. Its okay but I would rather have the assistance of a machine-a pal of mine is letting me borrow a Spyder.
I get everything you said except the part about "burning" any grays inbetween. Dont know what you mean..

[MEMPER]

One major issue that I see is that when an image that has color blending, say from a blue to a yellow, on the laptop the blending is fine. But on the big monitor the blending is not smooth. Its more "patchy".
What gives?

[Metsys]

Patchy as in banding? That's just the color correction at work I'm afraid. I know on my machine banding will happen because it sets and independent gamma for each color channel, and if you graphed that out you'd see how banding would happen, even thought the overall temperature and value of the images are more correct. However, a hardware solution like the Spyder colorimeter will give you better results and less banding because it makes a very accurate ICC profile for each shade of color.

[KoShiatar]

Without opening another thread, I think this is similar enough to my problem that I might be able to get some help here.
I have two different LCD monitors hooked up to my desktop pc, but obviously they don't have the same colors. Which is the best, most reliable way to calibrate them so I can use them together? Is it Adobe Gamma? Nvidia card settings? I don't have the slightest clue, I only recently switched to having two monitors.

[Metsys]

Both Adobe Gamma and the Nvidia monitor calibrator generate an ICC profile that you use in your display settings, so you'll have to run it again on each monitor to create a profile for both. I haven't tried it yet, but I did find this page ( http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/dual_monitor_calibration.html ) on dual monitor color correction in Windows that might help.

[MEMPER]

well it turns out that the monitor was a crap 6bit monitor that couldnt handle the millions of colors PS was producing. I sent it back. Thanks for all the helpful info tho.