Color Calibration and Consitency

[NeoDreamer]

On my laptop's shiny screen, a certain element of my website looks blue. On my home's normal LCD, that color looks purple. How do you deal with this inconsistency? Do you just design for the most common screen type? And what is the most common screen type, by the way?

[iLikePie]

it's yukky... something that we all have to deal with, because even if we calibrate our monitor correctly, other people most definitely won't.
for you own use, there are some calibration hardware devices that will help (they actually sit on your screen and run a test) and there's also Adobe Gamma which i think comes with photoshop.

I know that CRTs give better color reproduction than LCDs which is why a lot of printing places still use them, but i suspect that nowadays LCD is more common... no reason to say this except that pretty much every NEW computer is LCD and a lot of people would have bought a new one in the last few years (although when i think about it now i know a lot who haven't, too...).

Anyway back on topic, the only thing i can suggest is that you test your design on a few different monitors and try to find something that works decently on all those, then just be satisfied with that.

[Templarian]

I test on a CRT like most when after design work. Most of the time the colors come out pretty close. If you colors are that off I would seriously adjust your monitors settings (comparing them to a CRT).

Most of the time if its good on CRT its goon on LCD (not the other way around).

[mlk]

Most of the time if its good on CRT its goon on LCD (not the other way around).

Aye!

LCDs have then tendency to band colors as well (you see 'bands' in smooth gradients) because the color depth is often not as good.

[=guinness=]

I've had the same issue but mostly when trying to do print work. As said above there are hardwares ( the one off the top of my head is a Spyder? usually in a device called a "puck")... it pretty much adjusts your screen so that it displays even amounts of R,G, and B == a neutral gray.

Also, most people have a screen that is HORRIBLY callibrated... most often tooooooo bright and toooo much contrast.

the best idea is to callibrate and just assume its descent after testing on a few monitors because everyone's is different. professional studios callibrate several times a week because monitors can shift colors day to day (just how it goes). The biggest thing is that print studios are the ones who have to worry if theyre not using pantones (but continuous tone) colors and its only super effective if you use the same substrait and brand paper/ printer etc.

ideally it would be perfect, realistically its a crapshoot.