Calibrating the Cintiq Topic is solved

[JQuinn]

Hello TVPers,

I wonder if anybody out there has advice on how to calibrate the Cintiq. We've twiddled with all of the display settings but still not great. Does anyone use a calibrator like Spyder?

Thanks for your help

Joanna

[slowtiger]

I assume you mean colour calibration? I only used the in-build OSX calibration just by eye. I've found it's much safer to decide on critical colours on a different monitor, so I just take my rendered stuff to a friend's calibrated system. But this doesn't happen often. Most times I just open stuff on my other machine which has a brand-new monitor.

[JQuinn]

Thanks @slowtiger that's useful to know. Yes I do mean colour calibration.

[slowtiger]

Do you already include compositing in your workflow? I never did, I just made my 24bit RGB videos and sent them straight to DCP (or 35mm before). But I'm planning to learn about compositing, fortunately found someone willing to share his knowledge. So far I've learned that professional compositing software (of which you could get some completely for free) can tweak my stuff so far beyond imagination, that any attempt of calibrating my Cintiq is more or less a waste of time.

I've noticed that most of my films have a lack of contrast and are a bit on the light side. As a quick check I render one BG image and use Photoshop's automatic tonal value correction (cmd-shilf-L), if there's a bigger difference I re-adjust my colours in TVP.

[JQuinn]

Well I think the reason it is important for me to get the calibration right is that I am importing scanned drawings into TVPaint and cleaning the drawings. What looks clean on the Cintiq is not clean when I take it onto my Mac monitor. I just want to be sure I can make my Cintiq as true as possible and wondered if anybody uses a calibrator over and above the display settings.

[slowtiger]

Ah, for this I always use the histogram function in Photoshop, the same cmd-L thingie.

scanhistogram.jpg (42.78 KiB) Viewed 20286 times

The red oval shows the amount of gray in the image (paper white) which should be completely white. I just push that right slider to the left until I've put all the grays safely into the white. This will be pefectly transparent in TVP after Scan Cleaner.

(I'm sure the same operation is possible in TVP, but I admit I've never managed to get a result with the colour curves or the histogram.)

[schwarzgrau]

I used an old Spyder 3 on my Cintiq 22", but the result isn't that good. Unfortunately the 22" models seem to have a far limited color space, especially compared to the 24". I'm not really educated on this topic, but I guess you can't get really accurate colors on them.
Since I'm used to have a second screen for animation/drawing reference and stuff like this, I bought an old 19" Eizo, which seemed to be a pretty good color reference monitor back in 2006. It was something like 50 € on ebay. Everytime I need to be sure about the colors I drag the image on this screen, which seems to have a far better color range.
It's not optimal, but it works for me.

Oh by the way I just saw your BAF 2013 ident (actually a few minutes ago), cause I listen to the Skwigly Podcast with you and I have to say it's really lovely.

[JQuinn]

Thank you so much @slowtiger for all the information. @schwarzgrau thanks that is most interesting and exactly what I needed to hear. After much playing with all the colour settings on the cintiq, I now realise I can only change the screen so much. It is never going to match my Thunderbolt completely, so I will just have to do as you say and use a second monitor as my colour ref and make sure that is calibrated correctly! The one thing I have done is set it up so a gray scale matches on both computers, so at least I know secret grey dirt wont be missed! Thx also for your kind words about the BAF trailer. It was fun to do

[slowtiger]

A word of caution: I should note that I use that histogram adjustment to eliminate any greys in my drawing because all I want are black lines. But your artwork includes delicate shades and smears which would get lost this way. If you adjust the white point of your scanner to paper white it should be perfect.