Black and white and different monitors, even backgrounds

RJCorfield

Do you have any advice for working on black and whites and getting the levels and contrast right? Different monitors and different page backgrounds change things. It's a different world to the chemical darkroom, though I remember even with that you had to always take the picture into the light to assess it.

At home I have a fairly old Illyama monitor driven off the digital connection, so no brightness or contrast controlls on the monitor, running on X-Windows with whatever its default gamma is. Software is Bibble Lite. At work I just view the SmugMug page on Microsoft Windows using a newish Samsung monitor and analog connection. At work, especially using a black background, the pictures look more washed out and my darks don't seem that dark at all. Using a white background makes things look dark and contrasty again. (I've come to like contrast). I've not tried printing yet.


Two examples:


I'm happier with this against the white background now. The contrast makes it look shinier.




Looking at this one now I think I need to play with the curves a bit to make the walls lighter and make the whole picture seem brighter and more welcoming, but I'd like contrast to show the stonyness of the steps. I think it would be a more complex curves edit rather than the simple brightness/contrast edits I've done so far. This second one I'll have to revisit.

Thanks

- Richard

claudermilk

Two things to do: 1) Calibrate your monitor. This is most important and is the foundation for good color management. This way you know you are seeing what the imaging app is trying to show you (i.e., that purple really is purple and not blue). 2) Set your application background/desktop to middle gray (128, 128, 128). I have all my imaging apps set this way as much as possible (Bibble Pro, PSCS, IMatch, BBPro). This way the background tends to fade away and not influence the image.

RJCorfield

Grey background
Bibble does this for me already which is nice.
Of interest, what theme do you use on your galleries? It seems to work well.

claudermilk

RJCorfield wrote:

Bibble does this for me already which is nice.
Of interest, what theme do you use on your galleries? It seems to work well.

Thanks. You don't recognize it? Cool, that means I got it changed up enough.

I use a heavily tweaked version of Smugmug Gradient--same as in your galleries. Lots of CSS to change up the formatting, particularly colors and typefaces (to match my old JAlbum site), also a bunch of Javascript to run stuff (some of the more popular hacks from the dgrin forum and my own variation of a random image switcher for the front page). I am taking full advantage of the customization afforded me with the Pro account.

If you don't already have FF and the Web Developer plugin, load that up & you will be able to see the CSS, Javascript & HTML changes. That's how many of we SM hackers get going--we look at each others' pages (well, mainly Andy's, BWG's, devbobo's, and Mike Lane's) to see how to do the cool stuff.

RJCorfield

Thanks
Thanks, I'll take a look. That would be the developer extensions to Firefox presumably which I do have. There is some cool stuff out there.

I've also found some strips for setting up for black and white which I'll check my monitor against when I go home, though I think it may come down to different people having different gamma.

- Richard

claudermilk

The gamma question should go away if you calibrate your monitor. That means getting the spyder hardware/software package like eyeOne, Colorvision Spyder, Pantone Huey, etc.--they're getting cheap these days. This is a must for proper color judgement, eyeballing it & using Adobe Gamma really doesn't get the job done.

RJCorfield

Second attempt at the staircase


Trying the "Ansel" plugin for Bibble in its easy mode. A little different to using the curve editor in Gimp or XV - trying to increase the lightness by increasing its prominence. I think it looks better than the first ones.

Monitor still not calibrated to print. The new settings mean I'll have to change things like terminal colours as it's less pleasant to read and work on for non-photo work. Oh well. I do get higher contrast out of the Iiyama even if I lower its contrast setting.

claudermilk

Looks better. I really have to buy Ansel, I just converted some shots today that could have either used it or a switch to LightZone. Ansel's cheaper.

RJCorfield

Ansel
With the Dollar to Pound conversion ratio it's incredibly cheap. I hope the author does well selling lots of it which at that price he should. Wasn't Lightzone the one that was going to do a free trial on Linux? I'll have to keep an eye on that.

Thanks for the input. That picture must have gone well. I was showing someone from the church the pictures I'd taken. She immediately chose that lighter one over the darker one and it is now on her desktop background.

- Richard

claudermilk

RJCorfield wrote:

With the Dollar to Pound conversion ratio it's incredibly cheap. I hope the author does well selling lots of it which at that price he should. Wasn't Lightzone the one that was going to do a free trial on Linux? I'll have to keep an eye on that.

Yep. I thought is was available now. Aha, here's the old page: http://www-old.lightcrafts.com/linux/ Looks like the Linux version is still on v2.4, but for the price can you complain?