How Do My images show up for you guy's?

[Daniel]

Hi All, just a quick question, do my images show up very over contrasty and dark when i post them on this forum?

I ask because Im looking at some of my images here at work on these monitors which are supposed to be callibrated and looking at them on my laptop, and they look awful on the monitors whereas there's lots of depth on the laptop.

I'd be interested to hear how they tend to show up for you all, otherwise I think some monitor callibration and some re-processing might be in order!


Daniel
:O)

[RobertM]

I have the same problem Daniel.  I think monitor calibration is a very good idea, how do you do it?

[Fay]

I have to redo mine, when transferring from laptop to desktop for posting

[mickw]

Simon has a point really.
Processing should be done on a calibrated monitor, otherwise it's just a pretty picture on YOUR desktop/laptop.
As we all know, monitor settings generally are an individual thing, so I suppose everybody should calibrate their monitor 
There is also a can of worms waiting to opened here - LCD monitors look different depending what angle you view at so I guess a CRT monitor would be ideal.
Software/hardware is available to do the calibration, here's some examples -
http://www.warehouseexpress.com/search/?q=calibration&cat02=2023

Fortunately, none of this concerns me at the moment 

[Daniel]

That's exactly my problem, I've got a lot of pretty pictures on my laptop, but they look awful on anyone elses it seems, I've adjusted the gamma on my laptop, not properly yet, but just by eye to get my images looking as awful as they do on other monitors. after that I re-processed my M45 image, i haven't done the full whack on it yet, just balance colour and remove gradients.

but I'd be interested in getting your opinions on if this is any better, particularly Mark, since it was viewing your M45 on the monitors at work that made me realise my gamma is way out, yours looked great!

Anyway, I'll post both images for comparrison, new one first.......


Daniel
:O)

[The Thing]

FYI: I use a Pantone Colorvision (sic) Spyder to calibrate my screens, then I get the same from all of them. It sits on the LCD (can do CRTs) and analyses the light output and then writes a colour .ICM thingy for the screen driver to use to correct the colour, gamma etc.

Mine's an old device, they are much cheaper these days.

[MarkS]

Daniel,

I think something halfway between those two M45 images would be about right.  The old one looks too dark in the background and the colours are too saturated for my liking.  The new one has the saturation about right but the background is a bit too light.

How does this greyscale bar look on your laptop?


On my monitor, each gradation looks fairly evenly spaced.

Mark

[Daniel]

Thanks Mark, That's the funny thing, with the adjustments I've made to the monitor, the last 2 bars of black are almost the same shade, yet, when I looked at a callibration grayscale before I made the adjustments they looked perfect.

Daniel
:O)

[MarkS]

the last 2 bars of black are almost the same shade

Actually, the 2 blacks look almost the same on my monitor as well using that particular image - but it's a trick on the eyes.

Try this instead:


Here's the previous one:


It's the same greyscale but on a darker background.  The 2 dark blacks will now look more distinct - it's all a trick of perception and that's half the problem.

And if you're viewing this forum against a white background, that will also make a difference - try masking off the white and that will help.

Mark

P.S.  It's a question for Duncan as well - how do these grey scales look on your ultra calibrated monitor?

[Fay]

That scale looks ok on mine, Mark, but the end two blacks seem the same

[JohnP]

Daniel - Agree with Mark - bottom one is too black & contrasty (background is actually very red...?) Top one is a lot better but looks like you have red circles around some of the stars.... Is that your processing?

John

[Daniel]

Thanks for the comments guy's, that greyscale still comes out quite dark in the last 2 bars of black for me too.

The red circles are lens flare's coming off the brighter stars, think that may be the old astronomik star halo problem rearing it's ugly head. I managed to do a re-process to get rid of them, using parts of the green channel to patch over them, but it does loose some of it's true to life-ness.

Daniel
:O)

[The Thing]

On my monitor I can see all the bars on both strips without any bother.

Either of Daniels images would please the hell out of me if the were mine!

the last 2 bars of black are almost the same shade

P.S.  It's a question for Duncan as well - how do these grey scales look on your ultra calibrated monitor?