Basic PS CS monitor settings

Hi folks,

I bought a new 20 inch ViewSonic flat screen monitor and am having soem weirdness. On two laptops, photos look good, but when I put them on the big screen they are way blown out by reds, looking way over saturated with ugly red casting. So the first question is, what are the 'basic inductry' setting under Photoshop Color settings.

The two laptops and the desk top are all set at:

North America general purpose defaults

sRGB Web coated (SWOP) 2.1

Gray Dot. gain 20%

Spot: Dot gain 20%

RGB: Preserve embedded profiles

CMYK off

Gray" Off

Engine: Adobe (ACE)

Intent: Perceptual

Black point compensation clicked

Use dither clicked

Desaturate monitor unclicked

Blended RGB unchecked

Aside from that what other calibration methods might I try aside from external software? As in Adobe Gamma perhaps? If Adome Gamma, any hints on how to execute?

Any and all help most welcome. Right now, editing is at a hault until I get some good color that is believable.

Thanks for the help.

Joe

I use ColorVision's Spyder on my 19" Dell LCD, my Dell laptop, and even the Hitachi on my "guest computer".

It's the only way I can get consistent results and not worry about how my pictures will appear on the web for folks with calibrated monitors. For the rest of the www folks, I shudder to even think about how my pictures look.

As for which version of Spyder, if you are using Windows computers, probably the least expensive Spyder will do fine.

I think the main differences between the offerings is the software. On my version I have only limited choices for Gama and color temperature. Specifically,

When using my version of ColorVision there are two options I can select. Per the manual and on screen prompts;

* "Choose the Gamma to which you would like to calibrate. 1.8 is the standard for Mac and 2.2 is the standard for a PC. If you are not sure which to choose, select 2.2."

* "Select the Color Temperature to which you would like to calibrate. 5000 is the traditional standard for print. 6500 is the preferred standard for PCs and digital imaging. If you are not sure which to choose, select 6500."

I use 2.2 and 6500 since most of what I publish is on the Internet and most of my audience is using PCs.

Based on what I can see on the ColorVision site, the least expensive offering does not offer the above options and my guess is that it uses 2.2 and 6500. For me this would be fine. YMMV

But it's scary to think that Mac folks are using a Gama of 1.8 and I'm optimizing all my pictures for 2.2 as there is a big difference on how pictures look at these two settings.