Image Quality for Television

[Mark_48]

I've been producing a few digital slideshows for viewing on television. Of the few I've done they appear lighter and slightly off color compared to what was viewed on the computer monitor. Most computer monitor calibrations seem geared towards printing and in general I've gotten good prints from what images I've tweaked with PS on the computer and printed.
Any ideas on how to approach image corrections for television viewing ? It takes a good length of time to render and burn a video DVD, so I would like to avoid a trial and error method if possible.

[CyberDyneSystems]

I can't imagine it would be possible.. every TV is going to be different.. and the image quality is terrible. Super low RES etc...

Just my gut reaction though..

[prime80]

One thing I've found through video editing is that most TVs don't show the full 0=black to 255=white range. According to some of the manuals I've read, you need to set your black=14 and your white = 240 in levels.

[PhotosGuy]

NTSC is called "Never The Same Color twice" among people who know. There is an option under File> New to choose NTSC & PAL file formatting. Maybe that will help.

[yb98]

Most recent TV have an advanced hide menu called service menu which allows to calibrate the TV colors and several other parameters.
To know how to access this hide menu you may try to download the technical manual of your TV here :
http://www.eserviceinfo.com/

Hope you will find your TV model.

Yacine.

[Rob612]

One thing I've found through video editing is that most TVs don't show the full 0=black to 255=white range. According to some of the manuals I've read, you need to set your black=14 and your white = 240 in levels.

That's correct. A TV tube (actually the color system, not the tube itself) cannot get trough pure black and pure white.

[PhotosGuy]

Afterthought: Somewhere in PS there's a way to choose "video safe" colors, too. They would apply mostly to colors for broadcast, but knowing how to access them might help you out. Sadly, I've forgotten where they are.

[Mark_48]

Afterthought: Somewhere in PS there's a way to choose "video safe" colors, too. They would apply mostly to colors for broadcast, but knowing how to access them might help you out. Sadly, I've forgotten where they are.
I'll take a look for this. Hopefully if there's something that will do it, I can set it up to do a batch process, as typically a slide show runs anywhere from 300-500 slides.

[J Rabin]

Mark.
I make digital slide shows all the time. Sure TVs are coarse. They only have, what 440 lines or something. What I have found is the following, hoping these opinions help you:

1. Do not oversharpen images. Do not even "appropriately" sharpen images or they look unnaturally coarse on TV. I shoot RAW, process unsharpened, and then just do a light "capture sharpening" in PhotoKit Sharpener for slide shows. Nothing more. I had an e-mail exchange with Bruce Fraser, and he agrees with this approach.

2. Use an uncompressed file format, like 8-bit TIF or similar (see No. 7).

3. Use or convert slide show images to sRGB color space. Anything else, like AdobeRGB printer space, ProphotoRGB looks horrid on TVs.

4. In some images you may need/wish to desaturate intense reds, blues, even some yellows. Over-saturated JPG sRGB colors look bad on TVs. Pay attention to camera settings (e.g., use Parameter 2 on Canon 20D) and you will not have this problem and will not have to fix images in PS.

5. Keep on TV screen menus short so they do not clip off end of users screen.

6. Write out directions for the recipient/customer to adjust the brightness (usually down), tone, contrast, color of TV setting to "taste," for rendering more natural skin colors. If the TV owner adjusts to get the skin color decent, other colors fall in to line. Also, for the newer wide screen TVs, have user turn off panoramic feature or it stretches the images.

7. Use DVD, not video CD. Using DVD high quality NTSC, the size of images is almost irrelevent for image advance/loading time. What I mean is, slide shows made with 40Mb 16-bit TIF files render just as easily and quickly as smaller 5Mb files. In fact, big JPGs are slower, because the DVD player has to decompress/recompress JPGs everytime they are viewed.

8. Some older DVD players, particularly the one's made for home theater systems do choke on big files.

9. ALL THIS OUTPUT SUCKS COMPARED TO LOOKING AT 35MM CHROME SLIDES. The luster and beauty of a slide projected on a good screen with 40-year old equipment is superior. We accept this quality decrease because CONVENIENCE OF THE MEDIUM is what digital slide shows are about. So be it.

J.

[Mark_48]

Mark.
I make digital slide shows all the time...
...J.
Copied, pasted, and saved your text. Thanks alot !!! :) :)

[PhotosGuy]

Afterthought: Somewhere in PS there's a way to choose "video safe" colors, too. They would apply mostly to colors for broadcast, but knowing how to access them might help you out. Sadly, I've forgotten where they are. Found it!
Filter> Video / NTSC Safe colors. Hope it works for you. ;-)

[drisley]

What I do for any image bound for TV is:

1. Use the NTSC Safe Colours filter in Photoshop (as mentioned by Photosguy).
2. Clip the black and white levels to reduce contrast by using Levels. I change the OUTPUT levels to 20 and 220. Clipping isn't the proper term as I change the OUTPUT levels, not the normal level sliders. Black and white both move closer to grey.