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I thought this may help someone that has monitor calibration problems. I don't know much about this subject so I don't know how reliable it is. Worth a try though.

http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php
Linda


Snowfall's Gallery
"struggling to learn"
That is a good starting point, but not the end in monitor calibration. Calibration is as much about getting the color balance (red, blue, green) of your monitor correct as it is the contrast and brightness. I use a Spyder2 colorimeter for calibrating my monitor. It wasn't all that expensive when I picked it up from Amazon (about $79) and it makes a world of difference on my monitor when comparing the before and after results. A colorimeter measures the actual color being output and allows you to adjust to get it right. Much better than "eyeballng" color since we all see color a bit differently.

Getting contrast and brightness correct is part of it, and if you look at that page and can't see all the shading differences on it, then you need to at least make those adjustments so you can see them all. One of the known issues with LCD monitors is that they generally are brighter than the the older CRT monitors. This is part of the reason why a picture may look really bright on screen, but looks much darker when printed.
GeneVH

My SmugMug
My PrestoPhoto
Now on Flickr

CS5/LR4/Nikon D300 & D70s/Win7
Thanks for the link. I used it and it helped, but I'm not satisfied yet. I don't have the money in my budget to buy a Spyder or anything like that to help with color management right now. I do have a question about colors though. Does anyone know why my images have slightly different colors when viewed in PSE as they do on PrestoPhoto?

Courtney
I certainly don't know the answer to the colour problem but it's worth remembering that most online galleries - PrestoPhoto and Flickr for sure - convert (if required) all images to the sRGB color space, so if you've been working in AdobeRGB it can look different. PrestoPhoto also increases the size for the 'large' version and that wouldn't help.

Your web browser (unless you use Firefox with a color management add-on) will display only sRGB. (Having said that about Firefox, I've tried to test this with two identical images, one in sRGB and one in AdobeRGB and still can't tell the difference).

Have you tried viewing your images online anywhere else, like Flickr or some other gallery? Is there a difference? If there is then maybe PrestoPhoto is doing something odd.

Without calibration tools, though, try to just upload a few pictures to an online gallery, then get as many people as possible to view it. If the majority find no problem with it, then the image must be ok, no? If a small minority have a problem then the chances are it's their monitor problem and not yours.

Looking through your gallery, I don't see a problem, though it's possible that some of them are very slightly pale.
PSE6 on WinXP, Pentax K10d...... and now a Canon G10.

Gallery
There are two ways to turn on color management in FF. Either via a download, or editing FF's configuration yourself. See this link for details. I would imagine the add-on does the same thing for you as editing FF's configuration does.
GeneVH

My SmugMug
My PrestoPhoto
Now on Flickr

CS5/LR4/Nikon D300 & D70s/Win7
Courtney,

A mismatch in colour space is the most common problem when this happens. WHat space are you shooting in and what are you doing in Elements.

Also, a Save for Web forces the colour space to sRGB which is what you want for web posting.
John
Thank you for your suggestions everyone!

I have checked my exif data and my cameras are shooting in sRGB. I've checked my PSE settings and I'm working in "RGB Color." That's a good idea to post the same image in a couple different places on the web and compare to see if it is only in PrestoPhoto I'm seeing a difference. I will have to do that.

I have not yet tried Firefox. I used IE exclusively until a week or two ago I tried Chrome. I like it except it doesn't work well with my Yahoo mail. Perhaps I'll give Firefox a try too.

It's a good thing I don't do my own printing, or I'd have even more color calibrating headaches. :roll:

Courtney
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