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Warning: My old monitor showed only 72% of the colors I was painting, and a $12 test print is how I found out
I do most of my digital painting on a 2016 Asus monitor I got used from a guy in San Jose for $40. Three weeks ago I posted a piece I was proud of, a sunset over a lake with a lot of purple in the water. Someone commented that my shadows looked flat and green. I thought they were being mean. Then I sent the file to a friend who printed it at a shop in Portland, and when I saw the paper version I almost fell over. The purple was gone. Everything read muddy and gray. I started reading up on color spaces and found out my cheap monitor only covers around 72% of sRGB, so all the soft tones I was picking were basically guesses. I spent $12 on a small test print at a local shop and that one sheet taught me more about my color choices than two years of painting. I still use the crappy monitor for sketching, but now I check every finished piece on a phone screen and a print before I post it. What do you all use to double check your colors before you show a piece?
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owens.ben23d ago
Sounds like a lot of drama over a monitor.
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