# Calibration for laptop display?



## Rich in Michigan (Dec 5, 2013)

Have lurked for a long time and have learned a lot from you folks. Time to jump in with a question of my own.

I run LR from my laptop. I used to use a (now 6-ish year old) Samsung monitor but carpal tunnel issues have caused me to abandon my mouse and use the laptop as-is with its trackpad and display. The display on the laptop is not calibrated.

My typical workflow calls for developing my images and then making a few 4 x 6 test prints, tweak development settings as necessary, and then move on to larger final prints once I feel comfortable with the small scale results. Truthfully, this does work for me and in reality it is what I did in my old darkroom days. However, I am aware that it is not the most efficient use of time or paper and ink.

I have decided to buy a calibration device and software but I have read a few articles that seem to suggest that laptop monitors are not easily calibrated? Is this a general consensus? Your thoughts would be much appreciated. 

- Rich


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## Selwin (Dec 5, 2013)

Hi Rich, welcome to the forum! Sorry to hear about your wrist problems.

I can tell you that even my Apple Macbook 13" display, which is considered to be not bad at all, is not quite it for PP work in Lightroom. And it isn't even the calibration itself, because that went very well using my new i1 display pro profiler. I had a pretty accurate grey and white.

However, tilting the laptop screen only a little bit turns the colour to yellow/red or other varieties. As long as you know what you're doing and really are used to setting up your screen angle correcly and consistently, you will be able to produce fairly accurate prints without the need to preview using 4x6's. 

As I've only ever used my Macbook (never owned any other laptop) I don't know about other laptops, be they Win/Mac platform. If you state which brand and model you own, maybe some fellow users may chime in.

I would say just try to close and open up your laptop a couple of times to see if you get the angle right consistently. If so, you can get a calibration tool (a basic <100$ one will probably do) and go ahead.


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## Mark Sirota (Dec 5, 2013)

Here's a handy page for adjusting monitor tilt, for those monitors that don't have a wide angle of view:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php


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## Rich in Michigan (Dec 6, 2013)

Thanks Selwin for the kind words and advice.Mark, thanks for the link. I will check it out


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## quantum (Dec 6, 2013)

*macbook vs windows for calibration*



Mark Sirota said:


> Here's a handy page for adjusting monitor tilt, for those monitors that don't have a wide angle of view:
> 
> http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php



Now that's useful!

Picking up on this thread and a slight aside can anyone think of a current windows laptop that rivals Macbooks for screen quality and ease of calibration?
Thanks

John


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## sizzlingbadger (Dec 6, 2013)

My17" MacBook display does pretty well on those tests.  I think HP and Samsung have some nice laptop screens.


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## Jimmsp (Dec 7, 2013)

quantum said:


> Now that's useful!
> 
> Picking up on this thread and a slight aside can anyone think of a current windows laptop that rivals Macbooks for screen quality and ease of calibration?
> Thanks
> ...


I am very happy with my HP Envy 17 Notebook. The 17 in screen is 1920x1080 px, and is sharp and colorful. I calibrated it (along with a 22 inch Dell monitor) with a Xrite Color Munki. 

Jim


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