Man that was a very nice wipeout. 10 000 km on the water and you still have wipeouts like this 
i certainly appreciate your feedback stehsegler.
at the moment everytime i pick up the camera i feel like i'm learning something new so my ears and eyes are well and truely open.
the red thing has been a problem for me. i've turned down the red on the slider at the bottom of the lightroom right hand pane. (forget the name)
but as you have noted, my monitor has big issues.
in short it's an old lcd i was given after my crt died. it only has 1050x750 max res and is full analogue. 
oh yer, 15" also
(i really need to spend the $300 and get that sorted)
i've caliberated it myself by comparing prints and my work monitor(which rocks) to the home one. when i eventually upgrade the monitor i'll definately spring for the software to calliberate it.
after all no point trying to get the best results if the monitor isn't up to the job.
that said, i'll take your comments and see if i can tweak what i have a little further to improve things.
cheers.
p.s. any tips on good monitors and caliberation software?
re good monitors:
- NEC and Eizo do both really good 24 and 30 inch LCDs with a big color gamut. Only problem is they are quite pricey ($1700 +)
- The Apple screens are generally pretty good. Not the best but pretty good. Actually, the 24 inch panel in the iMac I would consider above average despite the fact that it is a glossy screen.
- Dell 24 and 30 inch screen are good BUT (read very bit BUT): Dell has a bad habit of changing the panels through out production runs.
I used to have a 2405 which was short of stunning. After color calibration is really was unbeatable. After about 2 years it developed a small fault and I had it replaced under Dells standard 3 year warranty. The replacement screen they sent while still ok is by far not as good as the first one I had. After a bit of digging around I found out that they used a different LCD panel (both screen still had the same model number). I complained to Dell but they didn't consider this to be a fault.
I have heard a similar story about 3008 from Dell. I don't have that monitor so can't comment.
The real problem though is that unless you have a known good monitor next to the Dell you don't realize how good or bad it is.
RE hardware color calibration:
I currently use the SpyderPro product from ColorVision. It does the job. There are better performing products on the market but they also cost a lot more. Try and stay away from products that cost less than $100. I haven't heard much good about them.
RE Lighroom:
Generally speaking I would try and stay away from the HSV color adjustments if you are dong basic color adjustment work. Especially if you are working with JPEG instead of RAW.
Try and stick with the basics (brightness, black point compensation, contrast). If you want more punch try and play around with vibrance.
Canon cameras have a tendency to over saturate reds. What picture style do you have dialed in on your camera? What lens are you using? Different lenses will have a different characteristic when it comes to color reproduction.
cheers stehsleger.
i like the dells so might spring the extra coin when i;m in a position to upgrade. at work we use all dells running off duak quadro's. wish i had that at home.
in jpeg i'm using custom standard. i tried landscape and custom landscape also but didn't like them as they blew the reds even further.
neutral i stopped using also. i find avoiding post production with jpegs keeps the quality up. neutral needed to much work also.
i will adjust my custom standard jpeg further and reduce the sharpeing another notch also. i think i was also doing too much lightroom sharpening.
lens wise i have a 70-300mm usm and 17-85 usm.
software wise i do minimal hsv adjustments. no more than +/- 5 and only really when needed. i do use the luminance bar a lot though. seems to add something ewtra.
everything else is the basics ie. expsore, blacks, recovery etc. i use the vibrace clarity on nearly every shot also.
well that's for jpeg, with raw i take things further.
definately my camera over saturates the reds. the omperloompa can be a problem for me.
i'll tweak my settings further based on your comments so appreciate the advice.
cheers.
just a comment on sharpening...
... in my experience sharpening should be done on the final file depending on size (if that makes sense).
So for example if you have a 640x480 pixel file you should to sharpening on a file that resolution in stead of sharpening based on what you see on screen then export to a smaller size. If you do that you run the risk of strange over sharpen artifacts on export.
It's for that reason that I don't believe the sharpen on export feature in Lightroom makes much sense. It really becomes a trial and error exercise.
If you are on a PC take a look at ACDSEE. I use that software almost exclusively before I switched to Mac. In my opinion the output from ACDSEE often was superior to Lightroom....
another good software with a decent RAW converter is Breezebrowser Pro.
My 2 cents on monitors, we've been very happy with both our Dell monitors, but (big but) they do seem to use better components for earlier models, then cheapen the components in order to bring down the price for the "same" monitor after a while.
So, I guess, rule of thumb, the longer the model has been around, the more likely that you may get an inferior screen.
I also know of people who have bought two identical Dell screens, and you put them side by side and there is no way you would think they are the same.
Dylan.
cheers guys, all tips appreciated.
it's also interesting what you say about lightroom stehsegler, back in the older version of adobe bridge it had what is effectively lightroom in it for editing raw. i have never thought that lightroom did as good a job as when it was in adobe bridge.
the raw images i edited in bridge just had a clarity to them i can't seem to achieve in lightroom. i am happy with the way lightroom deals with jpegs. i also like the lightroom workflow.
some testing i've done has also made me feel that photoshop sharpening is way superior to lightroom also. well images just look nicer if i open them in photoshop from lightroom and apply sharpening.
all of that said. it could just be me.
acdsee looks good. i'd never heard of it. i'll give it a go once i can dig up a copy.
you know i'd forgotten about the sharpen final image only thing. have been told that before so should know better. i also realised i didn't do the sharpening in lightroom at 100% pixel size. i'll be re-editing my favourite 2-3 from burrum for my collection. will try your suggestions over the last few posts.
cheers.
a quick one on RAW conversion... Lightroom and Photoshop in essence use the same RAW conversion engine... the same goes for Bridge, actually the RAW converter in Bridge and Photoshop are 100% the same.
