Why so dark?

[Chris Carlson]

Hello, I had a question regarding image quality. I am quite new to this, and when I created an image (large size) for the intro page, I noticed on most other computers that the colors where really dark. Now I know that the settings of a computer can mess with quality, rather unpredictable, but the problem was when I created my images in Adobe , my contrast button on the monitor was up full bright ( i like it that way) but other viewers mostly keep their contrast somewhere in the middle i think. Is there any average setting that people have? , because my images look horrible when the brightness is turned down. Check it out: http://lakepointechurch.org
any suggestions? let me know what you think if the average viewer will be "turned off" by the images contrast.


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Thanks,
Chris

[Scott]

I concur with Justin and Dan.

It all depends on the user, their settings and enviroment.[nbsp][nbsp]Your average viewer can only be determined by your target audience.[nbsp][nbsp]

I once heard that images seen on a pc look a tint darker than they do on a mac.[nbsp][nbsp]But I cannot confirm this since I have only seen the web through apple eye's.

Looks great latenight.

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Scott
www.onDV.com (http://www.onDV.com)

[teach1st]

I once heard that images seen on a pc look a tint darker than they do on a mac.[nbsp][nbsp]But I cannot confirm this since I have only seen the web through apple eye's. That's the way it is on my classroom computers. I can adjust the Macs and IBM's for that, though. I have been to quite a few of my students' home computers (all Windows machines), and they are always bright, with low contrast. (I go to students' houses to work on the machines and to teach parents how to use my site - while I'm there, I often try to sneak the brightness settings down a bit and change the resolution from 640x480 to 800x600 - I'm so bad.)
On the other hand, I am cursed with preferring a darker, higher contrast screen at home and have a history of overbrightening my web pics - the gamma adjustment police might have busted me for image destruction a few years back. I'm just now getting a better feel for the optimum image brightness after four years, but I think it's really a crap shoot. What's more, I also have to compensate for my colorblindness..

[Carol-H]

So, bottom line: for web design, it's not what looks good on[nbsp][nbsp]*your* computer, but what will look good on the *average* computer... :-)

I also keep my monitors at moderate brightness (60%) and a little higher contrast (75%-80%).[nbsp][nbsp]They're the only part of the PC I expect to last more than two years and I don't want to burn them out.

But for a quick fix, try re-setting your monitor to its initial defaults and work with that (though your monitor may be burnt out already...).

- Carol Hanson
[nbsp][nbsp]www.dragonbear.com (http://www.dragonbear.com)[nbsp]

[Justin]

Anyone who sits in front of a monitor (or monitors) all day will generally keep the brightness low - but it also depends on the surrounding lighting. In a dark room, one would tend to keep the brightness lower than in a brightly lit office... Then of course there's just personal taste - for example, on some people's monitors, you cannot tell that there is even a background image in the CNC - but if I made it any brighter, it would become distracting for those with the brightness up.

It's hard to find a good mix - but I do think your images are a bit on the dark side - you probably should turn your brightness down, but change your color scheme to a brigher one to suit your preferences. I keep the brightness about average I suppose, but I have a darker color scheme so it's not so bright...

Hope this helps.

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[Dan Kaplan]

I agree with Justin.[nbsp][nbsp]I've been having some difficulties working between a couple of different computers with much different brightness settings.[nbsp][nbsp]As far as I can tell, this one has some funky video card characteristics which make things either very dark at regular settings or washed out at "bright" settings.[nbsp][nbsp]I know it's not the monitor, as I've used it on a different computer and it looked "normal."[nbsp][nbsp]These things can be very difficult to decide what's right and what's not...

Dark

[farlane]

Most of our graphic creation is done on Macs but we always review with PCs. The brighter than normal effect can also cause images with a white background to have little dots (we call them "mac fuzz") when viewed on a PC.

A great way to get an approximation of the "PC look" on a mac is to set your mac monitor's gamma to PC standard (pre OS 8) or to calibrate it while looking at the same image on a PC monitor.[nbsp]
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farlane aka andrew mcfarlane
http://www.leelanau.com/pages/farlane/

[Justin]

The best thing to do is to do a calibration test - I think Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop both have something for this - but basically you take two images. One is grey, exactly 50% brightness, and the other is dithered with black and white pixels (like a mini-checker board). Both should look approximately the same brightness when your brightness/contrast are set "correctly". You might get some aliasing in the dithered version depending on your monitor resolution, but the overall brightness/shade of grey should be the same as the straight grey image.

There are all sorts of monitor calibration tests out there, most just a full screen image with the above test and possibly color bars etc - but of course this is not to say that the average monitor is calibrated to specs...

Factory defaults are always sloppy - I've never seen a monitor that is "average" by default - my two 17" monitors were bought at the same time, from the same shipment, and yet to make them the same, one is at 55% and the other at 75% brightness... At factory defaults, one was much brighter than the other. Not to mention the default size gave me an inch of blank space around the screen...

Main problem is in how CRT's are built - they are among the oldest technology still in use. A CRT is just a huge vaccuum tube, and they aren't all that predictable when they are built - which is why there are so many different adjustments on a monitor/TV...

Hope this helps.

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[Dan Kaplan]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that finds every monitor setting to be far from standard![nbsp][nbsp]:)

I installed the PhotoShop demo recently, and it automatically ran the calibration test.[nbsp][nbsp]Worked quite well.[nbsp][nbsp]Of course, my computer froze up repeatedly after installing PhotoShop... then again, the #@$! thing freezes up due to just about anything...

Uninstalling PhotoShop removed the calibrated settings with it.[nbsp][nbsp]I didn't know Paint Shop Pro also has a calibration test -- that's the app I use -- but I'll take a look for it and let people know if it exists and if it works.

Dan

[Justin]

Paint shop does not have a calibration - I worded that incorrectly... Photo Shop can actually correct the gamma of your monitor, and has an applet in the control panel - but this slowed my system down quite a bit, and the only way I knew to disable it was to uninstall Photo Shop.

Paint Shop Pro has just the graphic, letting you adjust the brightness on your own monitor while viewing the graphic - which is better than using gamma correction software, as it forces colors to be resampled on the fly, thus slowing the system down tremendously.

My video cards (Voodoo3 2000) have a gamma correction as well, with an applet in the control panel, but since it's hardware driven it doesn't slow anything down - but like so many other programs out there, it is not multiple-display aware and setting one sets both cards... when are programmers going to wake up and smell the desktop? :)

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[Benj]

I worded that incorrectly... Photo Shop can actually correct the gamma of your monitor, and has an applet in the control panel

Where exactly is this gamma corerction option ? In which control panel ?

Thanks,
Benj

[Shalazar]

In your Control Panel (assuming PC), you will find an icon named Adobe Gamma, that will run your monitor configuration utility.

Otherwise, from within Photoshop (5.5, here), go into the Help>Color Management option, and ti gives you the ability to run Adobe Gamma.

I would suggest first, however, that you do a thorough search to see if a color profile (.ICC) already exists for your monitor.[nbsp][nbsp]Then you can drag and drop into your program, load the profile, and be off and running.[nbsp]