Colour correction in Adobe Premiere – How do I calibrate my monitor?

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Keith,

I apologize for the late reply. Again, this is all based on broadcast grading as I’ve stated in all my previous replies and I’m willing to move aside if anyone with more experience has a better argument.

I use a pair of matched $200 Acer monitors connected with DVI through a nVidia GTX card and calibrate with a Spyder 2 system.

There are a few things to consider:

1. Oddly enough it seems like the iDisplay doesn’t play well with your monitor. ZDNET did a calibration comparison and gray scores are better with a Spyder 3 (The first run of these monitors were also packaged with a Spyder 3 so it seems like Asus favors the combo for a reason). https://www.zdnet.com.au/asus-pa246-339316728.htm

2. If your calibration software has it, I’d turn off ambient light compensation.

3. Concerning ambient light, your eye is imperfect. What I mean by that is that is it’s easily influenced by ambient light. I don’t know what colors are invading your grays but I use to have issues with seeing what I thought was too warm grays. I ended up changing my lights to D65 bulbs and it neutralized screen perception.

4. Are you calibrating to 2.2 gamma? I think it was Snow Leopard that switched Mac to 2.2 from the previous 1.8. sRGB and, in conjunction, Rec 709 both have a 2.2 reference gamma.

5. Of course color correction comes with knowledge as well. I come from a deep background of photography and retouching (some of my clients include major US magazines and the marketing department of a German car company who I’ll leave ambiguous).

Sometimes you may need to put a little more reliance on your scope measurements and stick to fundamental adjustments. The Color Correction Handbook by Alexis Van Hurkman is a pretty amazing resource.