Wasted $60 on a high-contrast monitor profile that ruined my print colors

I bought this fancy monitor calibration tool online last month thinking it would help me nail color contrast for my design projects... turns out the profile it installed made all my reds look like muddy browns on screen. The prints I sent to the shop in Boise came back looking totally washed out, cost me an extra $45 to redo the whole batch. Anyone else ever have a calibration tool totally mess up your contrast settings like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

james_butler12d ago

Man that sucks. I had almost the exact same thing happen with a budget color calibrator off Amazon. What finally worked for me was completely wiping the factory profile from my system and using the manual adjustment tool in Windows instead of the app that came with it. I still use a physical calibrator but I only let it do the brightness and white point now, not the contrast or saturation stuff. Red turning into mud is usually the tool cranking the contrast too high and crushing the shadows. Hope you can get your money back or at least find a fix that doesnt mess up your next batch.

wyatt_fox6812d ago

Wait, you're saying the calibrator itself can cause the red muddiness? That makes a lot of sense actually. I always figured it was just my cheap monitor being junk. I never thought about the contrast getting crushed like that. Might be worth a try to just wipe the whole profile and start fresh like you said. Could save me from buying another thing I don't really need.