calibrating a screen for web-only?

PrintDriver · 05-29-2007, 12:24 AM

How are you going to calibrate someone else's monitor? Or more specifically the many someones who will be accessing your clients' websites?

The web is a very unstable medium to be worried too horribly much about color control...especially when you have no real control. It may be important to communicate with your client that yes their corporate colors are accurately represented within the confines of ability of the medium to reproduce them.

urstwile · 05-29-2007, 12:41 AM

What PrintDriver says is true, you won't be able to pin color down precisely for the web, however, you can get closer by making sure any graphics you work on in Photoshop are in the sRGB color space, which is the color space most browsers default to. In Photoshop, edit your color settings (if necessary) to make sRGB the default color space. You can also change your Photoshop preview to preview in Windows mode, which many of your end users will be viewing your website through. Typically, the difference between Windows and Macintosh previews makes the graphics much darker when viewed in Windows.

wolfestone · 05-29-2007, 01:10 PM

Thanks for the replies

Printdriver - That's essentially my question about calibration - if two different computers have been calibrated, does that mean they will both display any specific color the same, to an industry standard? The scenario I'm concerned about would be this:
- I design a site in which the colors look good to me on my screen (not calibrated)
- I (or someone else) view(s) it on a different system, which has been calibrated, and it looks washed-out, dark, or has a tint to it.

It's acceptable and seems unavoidable to me that the colors will look different than intended on the majority of site visitors' screens, but I'd like to know that in a best case scenario, it will look as intended. This kind of hinges on whether I actually understand what calibration is/does however.

I don't understand the difference between calibration and profiling either, any information on that would be much appreciated.

Urstwile, thanks for the tip!

urstwile · 05-30-2007, 07:36 AM

Just to clarify a bit: you can pretty much throw all thoughts of calibration and profiles out the window when working with the majority of web browsers, as they work with the sRGB standard I mentioned. Depending on the end user, your site is going to look one way or another, color-wise, when viewed on different monitors, using different web browsers, etc.

Your best bet is to try to look at your web work on a variety of different monitors, lighting situations, etc. It's not like print work, you can't predict how far up or down on the brightness/contrast button your end user has pushed. And Mac screens will tend to be a lighter gamma to Windows screens.

There are just too many variables for you to predict what things will look like, so any type of color assurance is pretty much out of the question. Which is why you need to view your web work through a variety of browsers on a variety of platforms. Working in Photoshop with the sRGB as a start will get you closer, however, from what I've read.

wolfestone · 05-30-2007, 02:31 PM

Thank you, sounds then like if I just check the progress periodically on a variety of systems that'll be good enough. I appreciate the advice.

calibrating a screen for web-only?

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