icc profile problem after monitor calibration

[Pietrach]

Ok, i finally invested in monitor calibration device (colormunki display) and went ahead with calibration of my laptop and the main screen. The calibration process created two new icc profiles, one for each monitor. This is all fine. however, I am now looking at the pictures i edited before, on my C drive, and they look overly contrasty with very dark shadows. But when I view the same images on Alamy (exactly the same copies) they look fine. This confused me. So I went back to Capture One. The image looks good on the screen while editing, then I exported using sRGB and came out very contrasty (monitor still set to new custom profile). From this I gathered that it must be the difference between the sRGB and the custom profiles. So I went back to Capture One again, and this time exported using the custom profile. Exported image look good. My questions I have now:

1) Why do sRGB images look poor when viewed using custom profile?

2) What is the way forward? Should I be exporting using sRGB to upload to Alamy?

3) If I need to use sRGB for export, I will see all the images on my C drive over-contrasty, all the time. Surely this is not a way to go. What is the way to go?

4) If I export in custom profile, how will Alamy deal with it?

 

EDIT: Just noticed that during export I can select a profile called "sRGB display profile with display hardware configuration data derived from calibration". When exported using this image also looks ok, but being sRGB gives me hope it would look ok in Alamy. is this correct?

 

Thanks for any advice.

[Martin P Wilson]

Also make sure you have colour management enabled in your browser, operating system and any other application that you use to view/edit photographs. I think Capture 1 and the like will default to colour management but other less "pro" photo applications may not.

[MDM]

You should be exporting as Adobe RGB but that is not likely to be the problem in terms of a difference with sRGB. You should definitely not export using a custom monitor profile as your color space. The monitor profile is for your viewing purpose only. 

 

The important thing is that you need to view your images in a colour managed application so presumably Capture One is ok for that (I am not familiar with it - I use Lightroom and Photoshop). You can't trust what you see with a non-colour-managed app. However I don't know why you are seeing such a difference in contrast - it would normally be a difference in colour. Is  it midtone contrast that looks out or are your images clipping at the highlight and shadow ends - use the raw histo to check this in the first place.

[Pietrach]

Thank you @Martin P Wilson and @MDM this was all very useful advice. However, i still did not manage to resolve the issue. What i did manage to establish is that the images which always looked ok, now viewed in standard windows viewer are much much darker and contrasty. Intrestingly when seen as large icons in windows explorer the darknes and contrast are normal. It is ONLY when viewed in windows viewer that they are wrong. When I open them in any other program, be it Capture One or Affinity Photo they dont suffer the same problem - they look ok.
The difference is big, generally darker, with shadows very very dark and much more contrast throughout.

I would like to be able to use windows viewer with normal results, therefore I want to get to the bottom of this.
Later i will post some screenshots of my settings, maybe this will help.

 

EDIT: Following an advice from other forum I re-calibrated using version 2 profile, as opposed to version 4. All works great now. However, the Colormunki Display Tray does not work - hasn't worked before too. Simply does not start up when I click it. I would like it to work to change display profiles between my office work and photo editing profile, Any experience in this field? (windows 7)

[Martin P Wilson]

Does this help? As suggested it seems Viewer may not be colour managed by default. https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3901921

[Chuck Nacke]

Pie,

I have been working on laptops and desktop PS's for a decade and have been using Datacolor calabration.

I do not export in sRGB only aRGB.  I do no spend much time looking at the image on my screen.  I pick

a white point and black point and try to make them as chose to 255 or 0 as I can.

 

[M.Chapman]

22 hours ago, Pietrach said:

Thank you @Martin P Wilson and @MDM this was all very useful advice. However, i still did not manage to resolve the issue. What i did manage to establish is that the images which always looked ok, now viewed in standard windows viewer are much much darker and contrasty. Intrestingly when seen as large icons in windows explorer the darknes and contrast are normal. It is ONLY when viewed in windows viewer that they are wrong. When I open them in any other program, be it Capture One or Affinity Photo they dont suffer the same problem - they look ok.
The difference is big, generally darker, with shadows very very dark and much more contrast throughout.

I would like to be able to use windows viewer with normal results, therefore I want to get to the bottom of this.
Later i will post some screenshots of my settings, maybe this will help.

 

EDIT: Following an advice from other forum I re-calibrated using version 2 profile, as opposed to version 4. All works great now. However, the Colormunki Display Tray does not work - hasn't worked before too. Simply does not start up when I click it. I would like it to work to change display profiles between my office work and photo editing profile, Any experience in this field? (windows 7)

 

I had the same problem with X-Rite i1 pro display calibration on Windows 7. Version 4 profiles aren't correctly interpreted by Windows 7. Not sure if the same problem applies to other versions of windows. Version 2 profiles were fine.

 

Mark