Everything is relative!

dbe4876

Two to three weeks ago I began uploading some of my "snapshots" to my SmugMug website. I had tried other online gallery tools such as Gallery and Coppermine in my own webspace, but there still seemed to be drawbacks to each. After searching the Net I came upon SmugMug, did the free trial for a few days, and realized I had found the home I wanted for my pictures. So, I put my money down and started building my SmugMug site (http://dbe.smugmug.com/).

There I was having a great time re-working some of my images in Photoshop Elements and uploading them into new galleries on my SmugMug site, thinking the world would finally get a chance to enjoy some of the gifts of nature and life I managed to capture (maybe in spite of myself?). I had finished uploading a couple of fall color pictures to my scenic gallery (http://dbe.smugmug.com/Nature/243965). The next day I was over visiting my elderly parents for Sunday dinner, after which I darted into the computer room to see what my gallery looked like on their computer.

"Ugh! What's this! These images are way darker than when I worked with them at home on my LCD!" And thus began my saga, which continues-to-this-moment, to understand how I can get my images to look as nice on other people's computers as they do on my own. I admit I am still mystified.

I started reading articles on the Net about color management. I tweaked my Samsung SyncMaster 914v settings using the Natural Color application that came with the 19" monitor. I thought I had it licked. Visited my parents home again and looked at my site using their 17" CRT. Same result. My images were still too dark!

At work one of my buddies had just come back from a hunting trip. He sent me an image he had taken with his cell phone camera while hunting. He had nicely arranged the two roughed grouse he dispatched (that means killed) next to his gun and laying on his hunting vest. It was a nice shot, but on my LCD monitor at work it was way to bright - washed out! I pulled it into Microsoft Photo Editor, did the auto-adjust, and shot the email back to him with what I thought was a much improved picture. He called me back to his desk and showed me the picture on his CRT. It was terribly dark. A ruined image. Go figure!

So back to the color management knowledge base I went. I emailed the support folk at SmugMug and they kindly directed me to a help page that addressed monitor calibration. I ordered the 8x10 color calibration photo. I ran Adobe's Gamma Calibration wizard. I downloaded Quick Gamma and checked and re-checked my settings. Finally, I got the calibration photo in the mail and did some comparisons and more tweaks with gamma settings. I thought I had the beast tamed. Until today.

Last night I took some images of a rock (Lake Superior Agate) from my gem & mineral collection. I took them in RAW using my Canon PowerShot G5. Afterward I worked them in Picture Window Pro until I got a few keepers. Then, before going to bed (way late!!) I emailed one of the images to my work email address so I could share it with a few co-workers today. The same sad story played out all over again. The image looked great on my LCD monitor at work (http://dbe.smugmug.com/photos/105657553-M.jpg). But for everyone of my co-workers who had a CTR that had gotten the image, it looked too dark (not nearly as much as before, but still too dark).

So, now I'm thinking either LCD monitors are like totally too bright, powerful, punchy or something, or CRT's are a bunch of crap and outta be pushing up daisy's! Frankly, I don't know what's true anymore. And I have no idea how I can know whether what I'm uploading are pictures with a proper balance of color and brightness. I love my LCD, but is it lying to me?

Any guru's out there got some wisdom to share??

dancorder

I'm not an expert on this by any means and this is just what I've come up with from thinking about this problem myself so if anyone knows better I'd love to hear it too.

I think the main thing to realise here is that you can't control other people's monitors. There will always be people with badly set up monitors and you can't make the same photo look good on all of them.

Someone with more experience may be able to point you at some general trends if there are any (e.g. you may well be correct that LCDs are generally brighter).

If your monitor is calibrated and the photos look good on it then I don't know what more you can do. You might also consider what will happen if someone buys a print, hopefully the print will look like the picture on your monitor, if you start de-calibrating your monitor then not only will you still not know what your pictures look like on all other monitors you also won't know what a print is going to look like.

flyingpylon

I agree with dancorder. You're working on the wrong end of the problem. The best thing is to just let it go. But if you want to help a few individuals that are important to you, take a calibration image to their computer and adjust their display so that it looks as "right" as possible. Then (theoretically) the photos that looked good on your monitor will look good on theirs. The other thing to realize is that if your properly color-managed images look crappy on their monitor, so will all of the other images they see.

dbe4876

Thanks for the input. I kinda thought that's what it comes down to - you do the best you can to color manage your own monitor and the images you produce and let others fight their own battles. Still, it's disconcerting because so many people will be viewing your images on CRTs that are poorly calibrated, and they will never know it's about their own equipment. The upside is that tons of folks are buying LCDs and the majority will see a "relatively" pleasing image.

One thing I can do is put a blurb on my site that keys visitors into the fact that they may need to adjust their monitors a bit for the most enjoyable experience.

saurora

This is a good post and a common problem. I have a year old LCD monitor at work which I did not realize until recently how poor the quality was for viewing photographs. I could tell by reading other posts that I was not "seeing" the same things in a shot that they were. I assumed because it was fairly new and an LCD that it was a good monitor. So I began saving the threads at work and waiting until I was at home on my own monitor to view and comment. The difference was huge. Quite often people will comment that there is "no detail" in the shadows of a shot, when that is not the case. We need to make sure we have a properly calibrated monitor and a good idea of what our monitor is capable of displaying properly, before we critique too harshly. You do have to realize that not everyone is seeing the same thing you are!

David_S85

The above strip shouldn't be used except for very basic monitor adjustments. If the two rightmost darker squares both look black, then something's wrong with brightness or contrast adjustments on whatever monitor you're using.

Ideally, you should get your monitor calibrated properly.