asjohnston3 Loc: Irving, TX

My old ACER laptop screen does a terrible job when it comes to post production work. I can get a file looking reasonably good but when I upload it or get it printed it looks terrible. I have another monitor that I use occasionally at another location (19" ViewSonic HDMI 1080p) that does a much better job. Is there any way to do color correction on my existing laptop screen or should I just start shopping for a new one?

Lundberg02

At least do a monitor calibration using the Windows builtin.

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

Look at the resources pages on monitor calibration I am sure someone will have gone on about lap tops.

my take is to work with what you have got - calibration starts at your camera and finishes at the paper via every flaming stage of production- and its all subjective...you like it or you don't....

keep printing and adjusting till you get the finish that you want - after a while you get a feel for how it will print. As for sending off for prints well that's another pain in the you-know-where as their gear won't be the same as yours either.

or you could ask santa for a new lap top anyways after all its 2014 shortly and everything is now a year older

jethro779 Loc: Tucson, AZ

Since a laptop screen doesn't open to the same exact spot every time it opens you are always going to have variations in color. You also will have different light shining on it as well. It will never be the same coloration.

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

What operating system are you using? Can you calibrate the monitor?

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop with a 17" screen. I don't consider it big enough to do PP work so connect a Dell 21" monitor to it for PP. Once calibrated it works well for me. I can also hook it up to a netbook or notebook I own if I want to but rarely do. I use them in my trailer or explorer if I am out and need to download my memory cards before I get home.

I love using a laptop, don't think I will ever go back to a full size desktop computer. However I don't think anyone makes one with a big enough screen to do proper PP work. If I were you I would watch the sales and get a separate monitor to hook up to your existing computer and then calibrate it to use.

Jim D

asjohnston3 Loc: Irving, TX

[quote=oldtool2]What operating system are you using? Can you calibrate the monitor?
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I'm not sure I even want to try it with my old one. (w/Vista) I have my eye on a 17" Toshiba but am NOT a fan of Win8!! Still, it may be time for my old ACER to be afflicted with the "Pepsi Syndrome'. ;) I've been keeping my eye out for a separate monitor. I was looking at a nice 21" Sony the other day. I've been shooting a lot since I got my 5100 in Nov. and sooner or later will HAVE to invest some money in this end.....

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

[quote=ajohnston3]

Whatever you end up with for hardware, I would STRONGLY suggest getting a colorimeter and calibration software.
Whether it's Spyder (which I have) or ColorMunki, isn't as important as the fact that you're actually trying to do color management at all.

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

[quote=ajohnston3]

Yes, I am sure you will. I also agree about Windows 8, I don't know of anyone that is a big fan of it. My brother just bought a copy of Win 7 from Adorama to replace his operating system. IMO, it is a much better system!

Jim D

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

This is something I should do but never have done. I take a photo of my back yard, and while I am looking at the screen and the yard with the photo up, match the colors. I have had good luck doing this. How ever you match the colors is up to you, but you do need the bigger screen.

Jim D

asjohnston3 Loc: Irving, TX

[oldtool] How ever you match the colors is up to you, but you do need the bigger screen.
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Thanks for the idea. As a diesel mechanic/supervisor with 30+ years in the bucket I'm a big fan of using what works.... :)

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Notice that the desktop monitor is clearly superior to the laptop monitor. That's a key factor. Laptops are NOT optimum for post editing because the angle of the monitor to your face changes according to the location you're at, the light behind and beside you changes, the type of light changes, and then to make it worse some laptops are worse than others because of the LCD technology they use. I had a 15.4" H-P laptop with a pretty nice screen that I used to do some family photo post editing on and you couldn't ever make me go back to that again.

An Apple Retina anything from tablets to desktop monitors will blow away almost any PC monitor except Samsung has come up with some that are supposed to be as good as Retina and have even higher resolution. I haven't done a direct comparison personally.

I use an Acer 23" LCD monitor that was $169 when I bought it and what I have printed at Costco is exactly what I create without ever having calibrated it or adjusted anything except brightness and contrast to match the room I work in. That's not always true of all monitors but I'm quite happy with Acer.

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

Part of this is the reason I use an external monitor, the other being that you do need a larger monitor than laptops have. The lighting is not an issue. It can change in any room. As for the angle that you view a monitor at, it can change whether it is a laptop or an external monitor. They make a device that fastens to your monitor so that you always look at it from the same angle. You can easily make your own though so that the lighting and shadows remain the same each time you use your monitor, no matter what type you use.

Jim D

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Well... I wasn't talking about miniscule angle change. I was thinking in terms of sitting in a chair with the laptop on a kitchen table, sitting in a restaurant booth with the laptop on a slightly elevated tabletop, sitting on a bed with the laptop sitting on it too, sitting on a sofa or recliner with it on your lap, and other situations where the monitor being parallel to your face could vary by 3 or 4 inches to a foot, not a partial inch. And situations varying from florescent lights to tungsten, to daylight, to tinted windows adding a blue cast, to variations in brightness of the room light, and other such lighting variations, not just the lumens happening.

I personally try to do all editing in my same office chair sitting at my same office desk with the same lamps in the room turned on at their same locations and the monitor facing at me with a dark wall with no window right behind it. I lean back while doing some editing functions but then my final check of the finished product is always while I'm sitting upright parallel with the screen.

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

Under those conditions you are right, a laptop can not hold a candle to a desktop. However it is tough to those things or be in those places with a desktop.

While sitting in my trailer at night, or while sitting in my explorer and taking a break, I have looked at many photos using my notebook. I have even done some PP a few times while doing that but if I do it is very minor PP. If anything I delete photos I know I am not going to want but I limit myself to that. I normally shoot in continuous mode so might keep one or two photos out of fifteen or twenty and delete the rest. Often at a quick glance you can see shots that have movement causing blurriness in a shot you know you are not going to be keeping so you can get rid of them right after downloading.

Any serious PP is done after I get home on my larger screen under the same conditions. I never take my large monitor with me, in fact, rarely take my laptop anywhere. Things like I described above are done on my notebook that I do take with me when I know I will be away from the house for a day or two. I come back to my trailer and download my cards so I have clean cards to start my next time out, say the next morning. I find my old notebook very convenient for this. I can then transfer the photos I am going to keep to a small external HD ( a Toshiba 320 GB ) which I can take inside when I get home and transfer these photos to my large laptop.

All my cameras use the same type of card (compact flash) and I always have spares with me, but I like them to be clean when I go out shooting.

Jim D

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Clean cards every time is a very good idea. I do that as well. In the real estate work I do, I shoot RAW and I don't want shots from another home mixed in with my brand new shots, so I format all cards every day before I go out.

I come home each day and download them all to their newly created proper directories and I check at least once if not more than once to make sure they're actually there on the drive, then leave them on the cards too for the rest of the night while I post edit. Then the next morning before going out I do the format thing.
Doing the formatting in the camera just before leaving has another advantage - you're absolutely positive the cards are in the cameras and you didn't leave them laying on the desk by accident!

I've had just one situation where a RAW file didn't download through Lightroom properly, and I have no idea why, but it was a good thing the RAW file was still on the memory card until the next day and I could re-retrieve it.