I've read through most of the posts that I can find on this subject, and I THINK I might be right in my understanding but want to double check. I have a print on the Prograph Pro-111. I have a calibrated QOLED screen. The colors match very well. The brightness and contrast do not. I believe that I should tune the brightness and contrast on the screen to match the print and thus will be working will a screen that matches the printer.
You can assume 1) that yes indeed the monitor is color calibrated properly with external HW calibration, that 2) I am adept at changing monitor profiles so that creating a unique profile for the printer is a good thing for me and that I will change the monitor to another profile for other tasks, 3) that I have the cameras, Canon Digital Photo Professional, and Canon Photo Print & Layout and the printer all coordinated with the Adobe RGB color space and for printing have chose perceptual rendering Intent and that I have also chosen the same color scheme, 4) that I used the correct Canon paper matched to the printer profile, and that 5) I have a pure white light source with which to illuminate the print.
Both Contrast and Brightness settings are very low to achieve this goal - in the 20 percentiles. It's a 400 nit 4K QDOLED screen - not sure that matters, though. I think this is the correct method, but nowhere I have I found that the steps are:
1) Color calibrate your screen
2) Make sure your settings align
3) Make a print from a photo taken with the aligned settings, and
4) Viewing the print in the room density white light (technically you could go for actually using the temp and brightness where your photos will hang I suppose, as well) manually adjust screen brightness and contrast of the screen to match.
I'm thinking that a logical action prior step 1 would be to take your printed photo of a color calibrated card, such as the Spyder Checkr. Since I have one of those I am planning to use it for that purpose. My first print - I admit I was anxious to print something before being methodical in my matching process - was beautiful, but darker than what I see on the screen
One suggestion I saw online that made a lot of sense in screen brightness setting is to use the metering in a camera to ensure that the brightness of the screen and print are really and truly matched.
I apologize if these are basic steps and are well-document documented in a million places already and I failed to find that. There is SO much talk of, and emphasis on, calibration that I had thought it possible that the calibration HW and SW would take care of the brightness, but from my first test print that does not appear to be the case. It appears to be strictly color registration, not brightness and contrast.
Thanks to any and all that read through all of that, and especially thanks to anyone who corrects any false assumptions or understanding on my part. I obviously do not do this for a living, just for pleasure.
