Saturation in these Wildlife Photos

sapphire73

Received a Dell U2410 monitor for Christmas and am starting to use it with a macbook Pro to do some post-processing on photos taken earlier, such as these wildlife photos shot in Kenya. Up until now, I've done all of my post-processing on a macbook pro - primarily using Lightroom and Photoshop Elements and I may have been overcompensating for the darkness of the monitor. I have yet to calibrate the Dell and macbook monitors, etc. but it would be helpful to know how these look to your practiced eyes on your monitors.

1. Wildebeests


2. Hyena


3. Zebras


These photos look pretty different on the two monitors, as you might imagine. I realized that they also look very different in the Lightroom develop module than they do in the library module or when they are exported. I have googled this and found out the reason this is happening but still need to figure out how to avoid tripping over this when I am post-processing....

Hope the multi-tasking of this thread/post is OK?! Thanks.

PGM

Hi! I have a calibrated monitor, and these look pretty good. The first just looks like the lighting was kind of harsh, like shot at mid day or something. The second looks great, and the background in the third seems a little underexposed on my monitor. Great subjects and nice sharp images! Best, Pam

jwear

Harry will be looking at these and hoping calibrate is worth the time even after that photos look different on at lot of srceens

dlplumer

PGM wrote: »

Hi! I have a calibrated monitor, and these look pretty good. The first just looks like the lighting was kind of harsh, like shot at mid day or something. The second looks great, and the background in the third seems a little underexposed on my monitor. Great subjects and nice sharp images! Best, Pam

+1 Very nice

jsedlak

Why does this happen with Lightroom? I am running into the same issue. In Photoshop I usually switch on the monitor profile which seems to align the editing with what the exported jpeg shows, but I see no such option in LR.

Ric Grupe

Looking good on my calibrated (six months ago) NEC monitor.

sapphire73

Thank you all for the feedback. It is reassuring. After post-processing about 40 of my Kenya photos, I showed them to some of my sons in a quick Lightroom slideshow and then cringed at how some of them looked - *much* redder than they appeared in the develop module. I gather that library uses Adobe RGB color space to minimize the file size while the develop module uses ProPhoto RGB with a larger spectrum of colors.

@Jsedlak - Sorry to hear that you are also having this problem in Lightroom. Any chance that Lightroom 3 has resolved this problem?

jsedlak

sapphire73 wrote: »

Thank you all for the feedback. It is reassuring. After post-processing about 40 of my Kenya photos, I showed them to some of my sons in a quick Lightroom slideshow and then cringed at how some of them looked - *much* redder than they appeared in the develop module. I gather that library uses Adobe RGB color space to minimize the file size while the develop module uses ProPhoto RGB with a larger spectrum of colors.

@Jsedlak - Sorry to hear that you are also having this problem in Lightroom. Any chance that Lightroom 3 has resolved this problem?

That would be what I am using. I will flat out admit that I am a beginner at this program, and color spaces in general. However, I have noticed exactly what you mentioned: much redder tones.

Edit: If I make a custom preset and use sRGB, the result is fine. I guess the question is how do I change what space the Smugmug and Facebook publish plugins use?

Gale

Look fine here . Nice shots
I believer LR default colorspace is prophoto
That might be the prob
When you are done editing (final) save as srgb .. Convert to srgb colorspace ..Convert Not assign

sapphire73

@Gale - Thank you for the additional input!

Since so many of you seem to like photographing birds (which I don't do as often as landscapes, mammals, etc.) I thought I would add this photo of a marabou stork - also taken in Kenya. Not the prettiest bird, to be sure, but it's hard not be impressed with its size and flying ability.

DsrtVW

Nice shots, they look good on my 20 in CRT.

sapphire73

To streamline my workflow - given that I am just getting around to processing the photos from our trip to Kenya in July - I had been leaning on the Lightroom preset "punch" and often choosing "landscape" for the (Canon 7d) camera profile, because it was the most efficient way to heighten the colors. After seeing how some of the Kenya photos were looking in sRGB, I have been trying to start with the standard profile more often and see how those turn out. Your input is very helpful!

Oh, and I added the Marabou Stork photo as a thank you to you all. If you haven't already seen one up close, I hope you all have the opportunity to see the wonderful array of birds found in eastern and southern Africa!

PGM

I like that stork! Happy New Year! Best, Pam