Gamma Check II
My thanks to everyone who participated in the poll or left a comment, the results have found me thinking on the matter for several weeks - as my absence has likely conveyed. Many drafts of this post were started during that time, one of which reached nearly 1,200 words in length and was somehow both painfully technical and unnecessarily idealistic. After hours of writing and re-writing I finally came to the conclusion that I’m a photographer and should stick to my talents.
Of 31 votes, 19 feel my images are too dark; either slightly, recently or otherwise. Right at one-third, however, did feel the images look agreeable to them, which is encouraging. I was also pleased to see two votes for “Lighter as of late” because I adjusted things slightly a few months back and it seems some folks did notice. I haven’t made any further changes to my monitor or workflow since posting the poll, but I did decide to go ahead and purchase a screen calibration device in the near future. If anyone has input regarding such hardware, I invite you to leave a comment…I need some convincing on these gadgets.
My plan is to post a number of images over the coming weeks, then offer up another poll to see what the consensus is. For what it’s worth, I appreciate minute details in the darks and often employ pure black to convey mood or visual weight. At the other end of the spectrum…I have yet to post an image which contains pure white, or zero color information. I underexpose every shot intentionally to retain details in even the most subtle highlights. It is not my intention for every image I make to have ‘perfect’ light values across the entirety of the frame. On the slightly technical front, all of my work is produced in a medium-lit room and is intended to be viewed on a dark background. If you are viewing my images in a bright room, chances are that they’ll appear too dark and I’d recommend checking out the site in the evening sometime. If you’re only viewing my work via my RSS feed, I encourage you to visit my site directly and view the enlargements on a darker background. I can guarantee that you’ll find subtleties in the work which escaped prior scrutiny. As a general rule, I would even go so far as to say RSS subscribers should click the post title vs. the image in the feed itself…
I am using a dual monitor system, 1-24 and the other 19” un-calibrated except best by my eye.
I did originally use the Adobe Gamma correction tool and I got reasonably close. Once I use One-eye and set it up properly for 6,00K the colour were noticeably better and when printed they matched the screen with no noticeable colour chances (my eyes). The one problem I did have is because the monitor is so bright I had to set brightness to losest level to match a very bright room for viewing. I am using a basement studio and therefore it is hard to match brightness of a bright room and therefore screen to paper. I developed a printing adjustment curve to match this offset as the colours are bang on.
When I compare the images on the 19” to the 24” it is almost like night and day in colours. When I see soft purples on calibrated all I see are blues on the other monitor.
Niels Henriksen
I’ve got a Calibrize calibrated laptop monitor at work which is fairly good and a “fiddle with the settings and curse” external monitor which is a lot poorer (and thus reserved for code, tweets and such).
Calibrating your own monitors is good, but remember to take into account changing light conditions. Anna’s iMac is calibrated for when it is fairly light and image editing when the surrounding are dark leads to problems every now and then.
In a sense I’d recommend having an uncalibrated monitor around just for testing as many of your visitors probably don’t have calibrated monitors around.
@Niels - Good input, I too have used Adobe Gamma to compensate on-screen, but it seems to getting the best of me lately. I also have the same issue regarding calibration and room light - I know it’s going to be an issue when I make the purchase. My 24″ monitor my be playing a role in this also, with amazing brightness/contrast ratios and clarity I’ve seen on few other monitors. I’ll include them in a future post, but I found a number of demanding grayscale charts and can discern between even the slightest variances in blacks and whites…but again, that does little good when other monitors don’t have the same display control. Ersh…I love this headache!
@ramin - I’m wondering more and more if room light isn’t playing a bigger part in this than I had originally thought. I’m aware that this plays a factor when calibrating with a third-party device, but I typically work at night and it has to be affecting the way day-timers see my work. I removed my second monitor a while back, but I think it’s time to bring it back. Thanks for feedback!