Sony P73 4.1 MP digital camera

Any reason why my computer screen does not display true red such as when I take close up photos of flowers, they tend to turn out a purple or dark pink or even green ( the green possibly because the flower was between some very large Begolia leaves) . The lcd screen on the back of my camera shows the true red colour and my printer that is connected to the computer prints out a true reproduction of colour. In other words I think my computer is colour blind.

Thanks

Colour is a fun thing to get right on a computer. First of all you have to assume your camera has the white balance set right for the conditions (they usually do a pretty good job, but having lots of one colour in the photo might confuse things). Then your monitor has to display the right colours, and your printer has to reproduce them.

If the image looks ok on both your camera and your printer, that suggests your monitor is at fault! Red is often a bit of a blind-spot for digital cameras to get right because of the way the CCD works, but if it's printing ok then the picture should be fine. Have you ever noticed any problems with other pictures on the web etc? The monitor could be faulty (unlikely, I would have guessed you'd notice it) or more likely just not calibrated properly - this is a big issue for serious graphics and printing work.

At a long shot, it could be a faulty image that is being corrected at the print stage by either your software or the printer driver - try printing in another way or explore the driver options. I'd be surprised if this was the case though.

Out of interest, is it a LCD or CRT monitor? I've never seen an LCD monitor that I'm happy using for photo work, although I'm assured they do exist if you pay enough! :)

Originally posted by rich951
Colour is a fun thing to get right on a computer. First of all you have to assume your camera has the white balance set right for the conditions (they usually do a pretty good job, but having lots of one colour in the photo might confuse things). Then your monitor has to display the right colours, and your printer has to reproduce them.

If the image looks ok on both your camera and your printer, that suggests your monitor is at fault! Red is often a bit of a blind-spot for digital cameras to get right because of the way the CCD works, but if it's printing ok then the picture should be fine. Have you ever noticed any problems with other pictures on the web etc? The monitor could be faulty (unlikely, I would have guessed you'd notice it) or more likely just not calibrated properly - this is a big issue for serious graphics and printing work.

At a long shot, it could be a faulty image that is being corrected at the print stage by either your software or the printer driver - try printing in another way or explore the driver options. I'd be surprised if this was the case though.

Out of interest, is it a LCD or CRT monitor? I've never seen an LCD monitor that I'm happy using for photo work, although I'm assured they do exist if you pay enough! :)


In my haste to post about this problem I forgot to mention that one of the flowers that was green instead of red on the monitor did in fact once turn from green to its true colour red while I was looking at it . Also occasionally for no apparent reason the background colour of my monitor when I am looking at web pages turns from its normal colour to a very pale pink
The monitor is a Packard Bell 17 inch CRT 5 years old



Thanks

Ah... That means your monitor has problems! It sounds like you're losing one of the RGB colours (I was never any good at paint mixing, what is there too little of to give you purple? :)) I have had this once or twice where the pin in the monitor cable plug got pushed into the housing so wasn't touching the graphics card - but I've also experienced it where the monitor was just faulty, which I think is more likely given the age. There's probably not a lot you can do about it though - I guess a repair would cost less than just buying a better quality new one!

It wil just be a dry joint in the monitor. Quite easy to fix if you know your way around a soldering iron. Probably not worth taking to a shop for a repair as you can get monitors very cheaplly nowaways but if you have an hour and a soldering iron you could probably sort it.

Once you have sorted out your soldering you might like to try this colour chart.
http://www.photobox.co.uk/static.html?name=colour
PS How this works if your monitor is not giving reasonable images in the first place I don't know :loopy:

Originally posted by matsalleh
Once you have sorted out your soldering you might like to try this colour chart.
http://www.photobox.co.uk/static.html?name=colour
PS How this works if your monitor is not giving reasonable images in the first place I don't know :loopy:
It assumes your monitor is working ok, but whenever I've seen faults like this it's very obvious - eg a page with a white background like a blank Word document will be pink! If you haven't noticed any problems, you should be able to calibrate your monitor to match the printed card. Would be an interesting one to take to a shop when comparing new monitors, particularly TFTs to check how well they cope with the colour depths...