White Balance - Eye Dropper and Monitor Calibration

Does the eye dropper correctly set the white point even if the monitor is not correctly calibrated? I do calibrate monthly with the XRite but I'm not sure that the calibration is perfect.
I use a grey card, and the eye dropper in LR. So even though I calibrate - must the monitor be correctly calibrated for the eye dropper to work?
... and now tell me what monitor you love for photo editing.  Thanks

Thanks for this answer,
I am using a Dell LCD monitor and have been happy with the color, but can not get skin tones right in my prints,  they look washed out after I do a grey card white balance.  So I just ordered a Eizo CG222WBK,  now I'll only have myself to blame if my images don't look right
Dan

Similar Messages

  • Camera Raw crashes with use of white balance eye dropper.

    Using PS CC2014.2.1
    Since this update, whenever I use the white balance eyedropper in Camera Raw, if placed over an over exposed region, instead of the dialogue box popping up to warn that the area is too bright, the system just freezes. Have to launch task manager and close PS.
    If eyedropper is placed on non-over exposed (not clipped) area, it seems alright. Anyone else experiencing this?

    Due to the current unavailability of clairvoyants and mind-readers in the forum, we respectfully request you supply sensible, complete details.
    BOILERPLATE TEXT:
    Note that this is boilerplate text.
    If you give complete and detailed information about your setup and the issue at hand,
    such as your platform (Mac or Win),
    exact versions of your OS, of Photoshop (not just "CS6", but something like CS6v.13.0.6) and of Bridge,
    your settings in Photoshop > Preference > Performance
    the type of file you were working on,
    machine specs, such as total installed RAM, scratch file HDs, total available HD space, video card specs, including total VRAM installed,
    what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far,
    what error message(s) you receive,
    if having issues opening raw files also the exact camera make and model that generated them,
    if you're having printing issues, indicate the exact make and model of your printer, paper size, image dimensions in pixels (so many pixels wide by so many pixels high). if going through a RIP, specify that too.
    etc.,
    someone may be able to help you (not necessarily this poster, who is not a Windows user).
    a screen shot of your settings or of the image could be very helpful too.
    Please read this FAQ for advice on how to ask your questions correctly for quicker and better answers:
    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/419981?tstart=0
    Thanks!

  • In Module, the Basic panel (white balance, color saturation and tonal scale) disappeared.  How can I restore these tools?

    In Develop Module, the Basic Panel (white balance, color saturation and tonal scale) disappeared.  How can I restore these tools?

    When you say the Basic panel has disappeared, do you mean the whole right side panel or individual tools such as the White Balance tool is gone? If it is the whole right side panel that is missing, you may have hidden it. Using the Tab key, you can cycle between hiding and showing the side panels. You can also move your mouse over to the far right side of your screen to get the panel restored but it will disappear when you move your mouse off the panel. There is also a small triangle on the left edge of the right panel that you can right click on in order to determine the show/hide behavior (I personally use the manual mode).
    Regarding the individual windows contained in the left/right panels, they can be opened and closed by clicking of the triangle that is displayed next to name of the tool in its header bar. While you can elect what modules will be shown on the LR Top panel, I am not aware of any mechanism to completely hide individual tools in the left/right panels. If all else failes, you can hit the Shift/Tab key combo a few times to restore all of your windows the the default behavior.

  • Cs5.5 eye dropper and boris chroma key issue

    Hi all, I know we have issues with the eye dropper in cs5.5 ultra key and osx lion. Hopefully adobe with correct this ASAP. In the meantime does anyone know if the eye dropper works with third party plugins such as boris chroma key?
    This may be an expensive fix if it will work but me being colour blind is causing a few problems using the swatch tool. If anyone can shed some light on this that would be great, also any views on the boris keyer would be helpful.
    Any other suggestions for a good keying plugin would also be useful.
    Regards
    Dave.

    Hi Todd as you can see from above I found that out the hard way,however I am experimenting just in case I fall across something that helps. In my case for now I am doing all the keying in AE then replacing the clips in PP with the rgb and alpha from rendered vid  out of AE. Bit more time consuming but at least I can carry on with my project.
    Regards
    Dave.

  • Eye strain and monitor types

    Hi folks,
    first of all, i am a big fan of IBM/Lenovo T series thinkpads 
    Last week I bought a used T500 (22434EG) 15,4", 1280x800, and after using it for a few hours, i get eye strain and headache. My previoius machine was a T60 (1951FEG) with 15,1" 1024x768 and i could use it for days without any issues. I works in IT business, so i spend a lot of time with my computer.
    Are there any further infos about these two monitors? I would like to compare them to identify what type of monitor/notebook sholud i buy, that fits my eyes. (I read a lot of PWM, LCD displays, LED/CCFL backlits)
    The T500 monitor type is LEN4050, connector type: LVDS, device type: LFP, gamma : 2,2
    I dont have any info about the T60, because i dont have it anymore. (I am working on it to get it back.)
    Thanks,
    Gellert
    Solved!
    Go to Solution.

    Just suggesting if you have not already done so.
    Increase color dept to 32bit? or reduce to 16 bit?
    Increase refresh rate to 60Hz? or reduce to 50Hz?
    *Non Lenovo employee*
    I have a Y2P (i5) ... Feel free to ping me if you want me to test some applications with your Y2P if you have the same model. I don't mind keep doing recovery on it if needed .... =)

  • Colour management in PS and monitor calibration

    I've calibrated my monitors colours with an Eye One Display 2 colorimeter, and for photoshop i've assigned the monitors colour profile it has created to the work area (Edit > Assign Profile).
    But for photography i take photos with AdobeRGB colour profile setting on my camera... should i be using this colour profile instead when working on the photos in PS? They look a little washed out. I'm guessing i should keep using my calibrated monitors profile instead?
    And when saving photos a jpgs for the web, should i tick the "ICC Profile" box that lists my monitors colour profile when saving? Because i've noticed that now some browsers have started supporting ICC profiles. So in Firefox 4 BETA for instance, if i dont use the ICC Profile setting the colours look washed out on other monitors.
    (Note that the ICC Profile setting for jpg is only available in File > Save As... if i go to File > Save for Web & Devices it has Embed Color Profile which is basically the same thing).

    Beany3001 wrote:
    ... after doing this and testing the images on other monitors this does not happen, dont know why it does it on my monitors but as long as the colours are ok on other peoples monitors, and the closest to my displays i can get them, this seems to be the best option.... When opening any sRGB or AdobeRGB images in PS CS5 they always look washed out (like the saturation has been turned down), i can directly open a RAW image taken with my camera that uses AdobeRGB and it will still look washed out.
    This only now happens after calibrating my monitor. Before this i could view any sRGB or AdobeRGB and they would look fine, not washed out in any way. I dont know why this happens, but i've seen other people mention this about PS as well after calibrating there monitors with a colorimeter (not sure if it's just with wide gamut displays). Do you have any explanation for this?...
    This is not normal and indicates a bad monitor profile. I have a wide gamut monitor too and I had some problems before properly profiling my monitor, after that images look perfect - in fact way better than any sRGB monitors that I've seen. This is especially obvious with sRGB photos from digital cameras because the manufacturers create algorithms that save the captured images with colors using the ideal sRGB color space which can be more accurately displayed on a wider gamut monitor when it is working properly.
    Beany3001 wrote.
    ...I've calibrated my monitors colours with an Eye One Display 2 colorimeter
    I'm not an expert with using these devices and I can't tell what could be the reason for generating a wrong color profile - it could be the device itself or wrong settings or probing. When choosing a colorimeter, I searched a lot for feedback and found various links like this one saying that Eye One colorimeters are not very accurate yet with probing wide gamut monitors. But I also read a lot of comments saying that they are fine and some people claim they are better. However only the manufacturer of Spyder 3 claim officially on their web site that it is wide gamut capable, so I got that one and so far it's working fine.
    Beany3001 wrote:
    ... It's why i would have liked to use my monitors profile as it's the only way i can get colours looking properly saturated and not dull...
    As I said earlier, by working on an image with a monitor profile, you are in fact turning off the color management and if you don't like the results when the color management is on that indicates that the color management is not set properly and is so wrong that you are better off without it. I think you should start the troubleshooting with properly generating an accurate monitor profile. Unfortunately I'm not a big expert with that as I got my colorimeter only several months ago and also ColorEyes Display Pro which is a profiling software from a different company. I set the calibration and probing settings following the instructions from the tech support of the profiling software and since I liked the results, I never spent time to understand in depth all settings and options.
    Beany3001 wrote:.... 
    I've read multiple times that the AdobeRGB colour space can do more colours than sRGB? I thought that only when you save in a limited format like JPG that the amount of colours are the same....
    Wider gamut does not necessarily is more colors. When you see those charts plotting gamuts as different 3D volumes or 2D cross sections, this is not the number of colors but saturation. You can have millions of colors on a narrower gamut than, let's say 10 colors with a much wider gamut. Think of the numbers as steps between colors and the gamut as how intensive the saturation can go. The number of colors depends on the bit depth 8 bit, 16 bit integer, 16 bit float, 32 bit float. JPGs are limited to 8 bit but the limit is to the number of colors (shades) not gamut. Check this link - it has jpgs saved with different profiles of various color spaces (gamuts)

  • White Balance differences Nikon and Panasonic RAW

    Sorry if this is an idiot question.  On recent holdiay my wife and I shot similar photos but I was using a Nikon D200 and she a Panasonic G2, both in RAW.   We combine our photos together afterwards and print them in photobooks. It is therefore important that photos of the same thing are the same colour!  I naively assumed that if I set the colour temp and tint to be the same, assuming the photos were taken in the same light, that this would be the case.  Using the WB dropped on the same white shirt on each photo I am coming up with Nikon settings 4,000 lower in temp and -10 in tint to get a similar colour.
         Could some one exlain easily why white isn't the same temp? Is this just that Nikon and Panasonic use proprietary RAW that will always be different? Would it help to convert everything to DNG first?
    Thanks
    Mike

    Nikon and Panasonic use different sensors. If you ever shot film, this is like using differnt film stock.
    Sensors require a calibration for how they reproduce colour. These calibrations differ, you are offered a choice built into LR for many cameras and can make your own using the free tool from Adobe.. Setting a the same WB across files from different sensors will not in itself produce the same colour response. It may offer a starting point for what is called in the world of film making colour grading.
    Other factors also effect colour reproduction, the lens being just one of them and you will be usually using different lenses on a Nikon than on a Lumix camera (although Nikon lenses can of course fit m 4:3's cameras, so you could use the same lens for all the shots which would help).
    In the end you will have to colour match the images yourself by eye. You can then create a pre set.
    Matching colours taken by different cameras or in different light situations is an art form in itself.  In film and video production colour grading is a full time job.

  • VISTA color management and monitor calibration

    Elements 7.0
    VISTA Home Premium SP1
    Nvidia 8600
    Samsung SyncMaster 213T
    Canon XSi
    Multiple printers
    Since getting new system with Vista, I haven't been able to get a print that looks like my screen. I tried Costco today and everything was much darker than I expected, but the reds were much richer. I read a lot about calibrating my monitor, but it is possible that there is more do it than that? Learning to adjust skin tone etc. in Photoshop, only to have the prints look bad is pretty frustrating.
    Is the other option to invest in a quality printer, or go to a real lab instead of Costco?
    Please use small words, since I'm not a professional.
    Regards,
    Michael

    Michael, color management is certainly a difficult issue to perfect. My monitor is color calibrated but it doesn't guarantee that the prints will match. With the same image, I get different results from different printers and labs. I get the best results from labs in the local camera/photo shops, and the pricing for enlargements is still on par with like Snapfish or Kodak.
    Check this setting in PSE: Edit>Color Settings...>Always Optimize for Printing. I would suggest color calibrating your monitor, then try different labs until you find the best results.

  • CS2 Eye dropper and clone tool not picking up correct colour from image.

    Hello everyone, Can anyone help me please. I have an iMac with 0SX 10.4.4.
    Plenty of Ram and hard drive space. In using CS2 the eyedropper and clone tools will not pick up the exact same colour from the image that I require. It is always lighter in shade and has on occasion been white. Any help in solving this problem will be much appreciated.
    Yours in anticipation, Geoff Walter.

    >The eyedropper is picking-up the color as rendered in RGB on your Monitor...
    Really? Not from the pixels in the file? So the same pixels are reported with different values depending on monitor setup? This is about how the eyedropper reports pixel values, not about how they are rendered to the screen, is that correct?
    Just to be sure here, this is so even with the eyedropper set to point sample?
    Al
    Edit: Or do you mean that this is a known problem with 0SX 10.4.4. and Photoshop, in which the values are picked up from the monitor and not from the file data?

  • Color Bars and Monitor Calibration

    Hy,
    Trying to calibrate my monitors using the FCP internal color bars is completely different from using the camera's color bars...!
    What is your experience in that?
    I absolutely dislike the image I get on my monitors when I try to calibrate it with the internal Bars. Actually I almost can't get the lower right, light gray stripe come visible. I have to push the brightness to the maximum and the image is terrible.
    On the other hand, using a recorded camera's bars, it looks nice.
    What's up?
    I'm using a PAL sequence by the way.

    Luis
    Are you saying you are using PAL clour bars to adjust your Mac computer displays?
    If you are, then that is wrong
    You can only calibrate computer monitors using a computer display profiling system using a probe.
    such as:
    http://www.gretagmacbeth.com/index/products/productscolor-mgmt-spec/products_cm-for-creatives/productseye-one-display.htm
    If you are adjusting a PAL monitor, you should use, preferably a test signal generator, or the bars connected direct from the camera to the monitor
    Dont use Final Cut Pro or bars recorded to tape as the test signal, you must iliminate any interference to the signal caused by misaligned electronics.
    G

  • Eye dropper vs. Temperature slider?

    Is using the White Balance eye dropper and clicking on different parts of the image the same thing as moving the temperature slider??
    Thank you.

    More or less.
    Clicking with the eye dropper tries to "correct" that spot to greyscale by moving Temperature and Tint sliders for you.

  • Aperture 1.5.2 white balance broken and render it totally useless!!!

    I really like Aperture a lot. However, Aperture is totally screwed up in white balance. I have been using Aperture for a few months now, but I don't seem to have found any work-around for its erratic white balance.
    I shoot using a Nikon D200. To verify my concern of its erratic white balance setting, I shot a piece of white paper under controlled and commom lighting.
    1. 6500K light source. D200 set to 6700K for one shot. Calibrate using the white paper using the custom preset setting and take another shot My D200 always nail the white balance with the custom preset function.
    2. About 2650K household incandescent light. One shot with Auto WB setting. Another one with Tungsten -1 setting. Yet one more with 2650K setting.
    None of them came out right in Aperture. The white-balance eye-dropper is totally useless. I never can equalize the RGB channel. I open them up in Nikon Capture NX and they are all accurate.
    Now how complicated can shooting a white piece of paper get? Is Apple reinnovating white balance? Aperture seems to be the only RAW converter in the world that gets this basic RAW functional totally wrong. Is Canon user having the same problem?
    Mac Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   3G RAM

    The same images out of my D200 looks accurate and fine with Nikon Capture NX. So I doubt that it's a problem of the camera itself.
    There are really multiple problems with white balance in Aperture. First, it doesn't interpret the WB setting from NEF raw file correctly. It displays a wrong WB setting to begin with. That asides. Let's assume I don't mind that and have learned to live with it. However, the WB eye-dropper is too erratic. It just refuses to neutralize the point I click on. What's up with that? Lightroom and Capture NX both did it spot on.
    I have to admit that Aperture's rendering is slightly better than Lightroom's, but only when I don't need to correct the WB. As soon as I use the WB eye-dropper, it screws it up! This is driving me nuts. I just wasted $300 and a few months of time.
    I have started to pray and I'll start going back to church on Sunday if it means it will get fixed...
    Can someone from Apple confirm that this problem is being addressed? Switching RAW processor is as expensive as switching camera system. Apple, please, if you're really listening to your customer.
    Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9) 3G RAM
    Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9) 3G RAM

  • White Balance In "PS" Or In "LR"

    Hello Everyone I have a question please.
    1- Shooting with my Canon 5D, Mostly shooting with Strobes, Usually I choose a Custom white Balance shooting a Gray-Card. Or some-times I set it at:  5200- 5500 K.
    2- Later I shoot a Color-Checker with the same Lighting that I shot my Images In that day, and I Import the color-checker Image into Lightroom.
    3- I select the Eye-Dropper Tool, and I choose a white balance by clicking on one of the neutral colors inside the Lightroom .
    4- I export the Color-Checker As a DNG file.
    5- I Drag and Drop the DNG file into the Color-Checker, and I save my profile.( I can also export it as a Preset of Color-Checker from File-Export-Preset- Color-Checker Passport )
    6- I go to the Photoshop and I go to the Camera-Raw, and Open the Images and I apply the preset Manually to each Image one by one.
    Here Is my question:
    some people say: It Is better to go to the Lightroom and export the Color-Checker as a preset and later apply the Eye-Dropper Tool for White Balance..
    And, Some people say It Is always better to apply the Eye-Dropper Tool for white balance at first Inside the Lightroom and then export the color-Checker as a preset.
    and some other people say It is better to export the Color-Checker as a Preset and open it Inside the Photo-Shop Camera Raw, and then Click on the White Balance Eye Dropper Tool Inside the Camera Raw, and select the white Balance and then save It as the final preset and apply that preset to the Images..
    I worked with Photoshop for many years, But, I am very new to Lightroom.
    Please let me know what is your recommendation.
    Thank you very much

    Hello Everyone I have a question please.
    1- Shooting with my Canon 5D, Mostly shooting with Strobes, Usually I choose a Custom white Balance shooting a Gray-Card. Or some-times I set it at:  5200- 5500 K.
    2- Later I shoot a Color-Checker with the same Lighting that I shot my Images In that day, and I Import the color-checker Image into Lightroom.
    3- I select the Eye-Dropper Tool, and I choose a white balance by clicking on one of the neutral colors inside the Lightroom .
    4- I export the Color-Checker As a DNG file.
    5- I Drag and Drop the DNG file into the Color-Checker, and I save my profile.( I can also export it as a Preset of Color-Checker from File-Export-Preset- Color-Checker Passport )
    6- I go to the Photoshop and I go to the Camera-Raw, and Open the Images and I apply the preset Manually to each Image one by one.
    Here Is my question:
    some people say: It Is better to go to the Lightroom and export the Color-Checker as a preset and later apply the Eye-Dropper Tool for White Balance..
    And, Some people say It Is always better to apply the Eye-Dropper Tool for white balance at first Inside the Lightroom and then export the color-Checker as a preset.
    and some other people say It is better to export the Color-Checker as a Preset and open it Inside the Photo-Shop Camera Raw, and then Click on the White Balance Eye Dropper Tool Inside the Camera Raw, and select the white Balance and then save It as the final preset and apply that preset to the Images..
    I worked with Photoshop for many years, But, I am very new to Lightroom.
    Please let me know what is your recommendation.
    Thank you very much

  • Real Problems With White Balance Tool

    I attempted to white balance an image I took using the White Balance eyedropper tool, and selecing an area on a Grey Balance Target. Well, Aperture is doing a horrible job of white balancing the image. With Aperture, I exported the image to Photoshop and white balanced it using levels.
    You can see the side by side images here along with the corresponding RGB values. The image on the left, is the one that Aperture "thinks" is white balanced. Since there doesn't seem to be a way to check RGB values within Aperture I can't say what they really are, other than to use OS X's Digital Color Meter, which shows exactly what Photoshop is telling me...the image has a definite blue cast to it.
    http://www.johnburdick.us/WhiteBalance.jpg
    I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if Aperture's white balance function is not working as advertised..
    Any suggestions? Has anyone else had these issues?
    PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3 4.5Gb RAM   Mac OS X (10.4.2)  
    PowerMac G5 Dual 2.3   Mac OS X (10.4.2)  

    Apple are being deliberately deceptive on this issue.
    I have been to a couple of demo's at their store and watched the demonstrator use the same wedding photo each time to highlight the power of the white balance eye-dropper. I think this is the only photo on the face of the earth to give a half-way decent result from the eye-dropper (and even then it's still a little blue).
    When I cornered the demonstrator on this specific issue he tried to use another image (one of the Tibet portraits) and the results were horrible and he was forced to concede that this tool was lousy.
    I simply don't believe the software developers weren't aware of the shortcomings of this and yet they still decided to release and insult their customers with it.
    But this is a minor issue compared with the overall quality of the images coming out of the RAW adjustments.
    I can't understand why photographers are still fighting to make this application work. Sure, as a image selection/management tool it's very nice but beyond that it's garbage.
    I've returned my copy to the Apple Store where I purchased it and received a full refund thankfully.

  • White Balance in Color

    I have been using Color for my first short film and I wanted to get feedback about my process in balancing the white balance. Color is absent the easy white balance eye-dropper. So this is my process in the Primary In room.
    1. Balance the contrast - crushing blacks and boosting the highlights.
    2. Balance skin tone using the mid-tones color wheel.
    3. "Eye-ball" the white balance by moving the Highlights color wheel until I achieve whites I deem white.
    Do the scopes help me balance the white better? Is this a proper process? After I complete these steps I move to saturation and secondary CC.
    Thoughts?
    cja

    If you were airline pilots, I'm not sure I'd want to fly with that carrier. Instruments are there for some reason, I guess, but you don't need 'em on ultralights, but on second thought maybe that's why there are so many stall-spin fatals. Hmmmmm. Well, anyway...
    COLOR does have an auto balance, but it needs something in the frame that really wants to be R=G=B, because that is what it does, after sneaking a peak at where the corresponding Y-luminance sits. Sometimes its a reasonable starting point. But if the brightest thing in the picture really is a brilliant blue, then it won't work.
    COLOR is concatenated Primary In, Secondary, COLORFX, Primary Out deliberately. The opening premise is to achieve a balanced, non-clipped, non-crushed image to send onwards for qualified-area corrections, look enhancement, and then overall final contrast, overexposure and black crushing at the end in Primary OUT. That was the idea. Its how Silicon Color trained the first round of Final Touch operators. You are free to pursue any avenue that achieves the result you desire.
    Use of instruments. It is possible to use the scopes to achieve balance, especially using the vectorscope display. One of the simplest concepts is to learn to "lay the furball over the origin". Eventually you will figure out what part of the furball corresponds to the white point, the black origin, and how to guide the values into a particular area, especially when hue matching scene-to-scene in the still store. One of the egregious drawbacks of the COLOR scopes is the omission in the RGB parade of the Y signal. That would be most helpful (to people who pay attention to that stuff) and its why its the default on most outboard scopes. I'm particularly fond of the Tektronix Double-Diamond gamut display... makes getting a grey scale as simple as "standing up" the two trees.
    Strictly speaking you don't really need to know what the exact numbers are, until you try to get a project past a QA somewhere. Those people have no sense of humour.
    jPo

Maybe you are looking for