We all know that calibrating our monitors is something that’s very important, right?
But how do we calibrate?
Well there is a lot of talk around the web about this and also a lot of problems that can happen when you do it wrong.

For example did you ever notice a difference in brightness between Lightroom and Photoshop?
In other words, the images in Lightroom look great but when you open them up in Photoshop they are a bit too bright and there sometimes is some banding in darker areas?

 

Chances are that you have a defective colorprofile for your monitor.
“But Frank I calibrated with a great color analyzer so how can that happen?”

 

With most analyzers you can set 2 different kind of profiles, a V4 and V2.
If you experience the brightness differences between Lightroom and Photoshop make 100% sure that you are using a V2 profile, if you use a V4 profile chances are that Lightroom is showing everything correct and Photoshop makes a mess out of it, the problem is that with most images people won’t see a lot of difference, but when you open up something that’s really dark and barely has detail in Lightroom you will find out that in Photoshop there is a lot more detail, this is when you know that there is a problem. Now check your software settings and make sure that you are using a V2 profile. You can find this in the preferences or settings.

 

Other settings I use for photo editing  :
Gamma 2.2
Colortemp D65
Brightness 120-130cdm
Profile V2

Today, as the title says a “this is how we do it…” post.
Saturday it was time for the Small flash workshop with our model Carmen.
Now during these workshops most of the time I will use the flashbender products, and as you already know I love these products, they are without any doubt a whole studio packed into a very small package, and when traveling this is a great thing as you can imagine.

 

Now because some of you ask me to show some setup images I thought it would be fun to show you a very simple setup you can do yourself with the portrait lighting kit from Rogue. In this case I used the grid with red gel and the new striplight. Strobes are the Sony’s triggered by the Phottix Odin system. So let’s start with the end result.

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