tkerr:

I think this thread has taken a new direction and has been somewhat hijacked

Absolutely

tkerr:

That diverseness of the members and their opinions can most often be very helpful,

Both sides of a discussion, pro and con, regardless of the personal opinions of (any) individual members should be aired, in a civil fashion, for exactly this reason. As close as possible to full disclosure of those pros and cons will allow readers to decide for themselves, whether it's worth any effort to further pursue.

(I'm not loosing any sleep over my monitors being a couple to several months out of calibration.)

Robert

Yes, most newer monitors have built in calibration software, and test strips that allow the user's eye to perform the calibration "sensor" function.

I like to be VERY careful when using the word most. I don't think it applies here, nor do I think it would be easy to determine when this will be true. What percentage of the monitors sold today are entry-level quality? I think this percentage is very high. The mass-market is what it is, and it's not great. But, again, how do you determine this ... and who determines it?

But that's not the point: I think it's easier to guess that most monitors today are not newer models. I own four monitors, not one of which is newer than 4 years old. Am I average? I don't know, but I find it a stretch to believe that the average user has a monitor with this capability built in. It might be true now. It is more likely to be true as time goes on.

Robert:

I appreciate what you are saying, I truly do...and I don't totally disagree.  I just think it's one of those things that's that comes a little later...for most hobbyists, it can take years to generate images of such quality that you'd be concerned about consistency from monitor to monitor.  For me, it wasn't really a concern until I started putting my work into print, at which point I got picky about color management.  But even then, I tended to trust my tools and didn't allow what I saw on the screen to dictate what I did with an image.  

I agree that, in time, even the hobbyist can and SHOULD seek to learn the benefits of proper color management, particularly if your goal is to take your images to print.   I also don't mind it from the standpoint that a.) if you are technically savvy and are quick to understand and b.) you've already nailed down the million other variables that make for good images. 

Like I said earlier, there are several things you can do to calibrate a monitor so that you can see authorial intent...and no matter what monitor I'm on, it's never kept me from understanding what an author is trying to do...as I've given a lot of advice over the years to a LOT of people.   In my opinion, using hardware calibration tools just isn't a necessity in this hobby.

There is no cost excuse for not implementing full color mangaement. There are only missinterpreted colors,...and green backgrounds... 

This is my point.  Once you understand what you are doing, you'll be able to detect color bias simply by looking at the data points in Photoshop.  If your background is 10:25:15 RGB according to the info cursor, then you've got a green cast.  If it's 0:0:0 RGB, then you've clipped the blackpoint and you've lost data.  If it's 25:25:25 RGB, then you've got a nice neutral background.   If you perform a saturation increase and the histogram shifts away from the other color histos, then your balance will be wrong. 

Therefore, I don't look at a lot of monitors and wonder "which one is right?" 

I find that monitor calibration allows me to experience a closer match of the various shades of image colors, between the four monitors that I use (2 CRTs, 2 LCDs),when viewing photos in both fully, and partially managed environments (such as those photos, passed via disc, and opened for viewing in photoshop, w/o resorting to the eyedropper, and viewing photos posted on my website on the various monitors).

I suppose that in order to close out this discussion, it would be appropriate for us to agree to disagree on the value of color managing.

Robert

I take back what I said, my interest would be actually more in the scientific. I want to do imaging to see details, features that cant be otherwise seen, purely out of scientific interest. The actual color of the planets disk might not be "true" in some cases, but doesn't matter so much. I would sacrifice color correctness, before losing detail. Sometimes other colors can even help bring out the detail, the so-called false colors.

So it is definitely true that I am more interested in acquiring knowledge, about Jupiter or about Saturn or what have you. than a totaly perfect image.

Still, I think monitor calibration helps this aspect too, in seeing more details. For example, if your red channel is too high on the screen, it might saturate before the data in the image reaches 255. If you were looking at a red image you might lose detail in bright areas. But if you calibrate the red it better matches the range on the image data, so it might show more details.

My Laptop has an allowance for changing the gamma of the RGB channels independently. I might try and obtain a set of reference color cards, see what results I get, how much change it requirs on different types of monitors. Highly subjective work this way perhaps, but the  cards do seem to have the benefit, of taking into account the background lighting in the room your in, somthing which the sensor might not do. (?)

For anyone who cares, here is what I have done for color management. First thing was, to obtain a test pattern image that shows 256 shades of grey, such as this one-

Which I use to adjust my contrast and brightness. The bottom left corner is RGB 0,0,0 while the top corner is RGB 255,255,255. All other steps are displayed in-between.

But I also wanted to look at the response of my monitor to varying colors. So the next step is I made 3 new images out of this one, one each in the Red, Green and Blue. Eg- the red image is RGB X,0,0 where X goes from 0-255. By looking at these images one at a time I can make adjustments in my video control panel. This allows me to adjust the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast of the three color channels independently. I found that all 3 channels needed a slight gamma adjustment to allow me to see as much of the 256 shades as possible. The adjustments were not exactly identical, but pretty close. The actual hue of the colors is not adjustable in my control panel. But with this method I can at least optimize the channels for best range of colors displayed.

My overall impression is that the adjustment has made my laptop screen colors more vibrant. As a result, images I make in the future may now have slightly less color saturation than before.

Perfect!   Thanks for the contribution!