Re: using a color reference card and a photo camera to calibrate a monitor

[Pascal de Bruijn <pmjdebruijn pcode nl>]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:47 PM, Edmund Humenberger
<edmund humenberger onsitebroadcast at> wrote:
> I was fascinated by the complexity to get good colour out of computers.
>
> At Cebit 1995 (the biggest computer fare in the world) I saw the result
> of research to calibrate a printer.
>
> They did essentially the following.
>
> a) Scann the color-reference sheet.
> b) print a color-patch sheet
> c) scann the printed color-patch sheet
>
> do the math and you get a color-profile for the scanner and the printer.

As far as I know this method is fairly unreliable and inaccurate. Most
people don't think it's worth while.

> Then I was thinking if that would be possible for monitors?
>
> And I found the following solution:
>
> a) put a color-reference directly on top of the LCD pannel of the
> monitor.
> Each colorfield on the color reference does have a hole where the color
> of the monitor can be seen. Let the software display the color of the
> field.
>
> b) make a picture of the monitor with the color reference and the color
> displayed by the monitor in the holes with your ordinary digital camera.
>
> Compare the color of the color-reference with the color displayed by the
> monitor and do the math. You get a color profile of the monitor.
>
> This should do away with the need of separate hardware. But for sure it
> is not the most accurate method, but better than nothing.
>
> just my 0.02 cents
>
> All my thoughts might be wrong.

This all would need an accurate color reference card, and if you look
those up, they easily cost as much as a colorimeter. With only a few
cheaper exceptions.

In any case, GCM uses Argyll as it's engine, so a better place to
address this would be on the ArgyllCMS mailing list, but (to be
honest) I doubt they would be interested.

Regards,
Pascal de Bruijn