New monitor... and now ? PP again ?

Hello !

I just received my new Dell u2312hm monitor. From the first point of view i must say i am excited, but on the other side i am quite disappointed seeing how much work i have to do the next... months .

Until now i was processing all images on an old 4 year old laptop TFT. The laptop's monitor was not as bright as it used to be and having also a yellowish tint.
With the new monitor the images look much much different.

1) Where on my laptop i could see black details, with Dell those details are lost completely.
2) The images are oversaturated in comparison with the laptops monitor. In some images
the results show nice, but in 80-90% there is too much color.

My first idea was to calibrate the monitor. I checked online for some custom presets.
Some people suggested brightness settings to 20% , some even as low as 7%. In both cases the blacks were way too black and any detail was just lost.

So my question is...

1) How do i process now thousands of pictures again (mainly jpegs) to fix the saturation? Surely one by one would be a drama. Furthermore, i am concern of the quality loss of editing and saving again a jpeg.

2) Any suggestions of doing the best calibration of my monitor ? Brightness / Color ?

3) Anyone has that monitor that could give me some tips? Could be for example that monitor oversaturating and my images are in the end fine and do not need to process them again ?

Thank you in advance.

You need to calibrate your monitor with a calibration tool before you change a bunch of images.

Sounds like you may need to invest in calibration software/hardware for the new monitor, that away you always know your images are spot on if you change monitors again, or your images are viewed on a different screen.

Shame they are all jpeg. Once you've blown out a color or highlight, it isn't coming back.

I'd get the monitor calibrated fast, the internet is correct in that the Dell brightness are set way too high.

then, rather than batch processing everything, use this time to hand pick the images that are going to be printed and fix those as you need to or in small manageable numbers.

After you;ve hand tweaked the cream of the crop, then maybe try to do a batch process on the less important ones.

Well , my pocket got empty with the monitor for the moment.
So buying a calibration hardware is out of the question at the moment.

What i can do i shoot tomorrow some shots on both monitors to tell me also your opinions.

In the meantime, i can see on some other monitors how my images appear. I just hope to save all that time in editing.

PS. I do remember sometimes people telling me that my images were oversaturated, i hope they were not seeing what i am seeing now. If yes, then i have lots of work in front of me...

As a cheap way to see how off my screen was when I first started was to edit an image, then have it printed from my local lab (I use Costco) then adjust the screen till the print and screen looked the same.

Why don't you post a couple of pictures here and we'll let you know what we see?

Alarm wrote in post #15986393
Well , my pocket got empty with the monitor for the moment.
So buying a calibration hardware is out of the question at the moment.

What i can do i shoot tomorrow some shots on both monitors to tell me also your opinions.

In the meantime, i can see on some other monitors how my images appear. I just hope to save all that time in editing.

PS. I do remember sometimes people telling me that my images were oversaturated, i hope they were not seeing what i am seeing now. If yes, then i have lots of work in front of me...

There are ways to get your monitor better set up then buying calibration hardware. You can do it for free. Not as accurate, but a good place to start.

HiepBuiPhotography wrote in post #15986429
Why don't you post a couple of pictures here and we'll let you know what we see?

Ok, this is a great idea.

Here are some images that looked pretty fine when i was editing them on my old laptops TFT monitor and look oversaturated on my new Dell.

So. one by one what i was seeing and what i see now comparing them side by side.

The front wheel is almost totaly black, not easy to recognize the rims

Some of the lens rental companys rent calibration units. You might take a look into that.

tomholman wrote in post #15986506
Some of the lens rental companys rent calibration units. You might take a look into that.

Just started looking into this option for myself

You can try calibrize.com. I used that on my computer at work, just so that I can view photos more accurately there. I don't process anything there, so I can't vouch for its ultimate accuracy, but it's not bad in lieu of a calibrator.
I just bought the same u2312hm monitor for photo processing. It was like a small sun sitting on my desk when I first hooked it up. Very bright. My laptop monitor display is also far different from the new monitor, although it doesn't sound like it's as drastic a difference as yours. I have given up processing in any great detail until FedEx brings my Colormunki Display, and I can straighten everything out.

So, here i have some side by side comparison.
Don't mind on the clarity , mainly focus on the colors.
As you will notice the effect is extremely huge mainly in the magenta colors as i said before.
It is obvious that the small monitor lacks the brightness, but it looks that the new Dell is oversaturating, or maybe my old tft lost its colors...

What do you think ?

What software are you viewing the images in?
Is any of the screens calibrated?

The "screenshots" are more then "a bit" different, specially the last.

The "flower" image looks more like the screenshot of the left monitor, but not as "neon". As you noted, the race car has very little detail in the front tire: I can just make out the transition from tire to rim and wheel housing. (This is viewing on a calibrated monitor, in a fully color managed browser, assuming the images are sRGB (as they don't have an embedded profile)).

However, I wouldn't even expect a very crappy laptop screen display such a color shift as the last screenshot… So I'm assuming you are viewing the images in a not color managed application?
That would be a pretty useless exercise…

Calibrate the monitor, use color managed software, then see if the images need additional editing.
On my screen the images look okay, but with a bit crunched blacks. However, I know a lot of people who edit like that on purpose

René Damkot wrote in post #15988627
What software are you viewing the images in?
Is any of the screens calibrated?

The "screenshots" are more then "a bit" different, specially the last.

The "flower" image looks more like the screenshot of the left monitor, but not as "neon". As you noted, the race car has very little detail in the front tire: I can just make out the transition from tire to rim and wheel housing. (This is viewing on a calibrated monitor, in a fully color managed browser, assuming the images are sRGB (as they don't have an embedded profile)).

However, I wouldn't even expect a very crappy laptop screen display such a color shift as the last screenshot… So I'm assuming you are viewing the images in a not color managed application?
That would be a pretty useless exercise…

Calibrate the monitor, use color managed software, then see if the images need additional editing.
On my screen the images look okay, but with a bit crunched blacks. However, I know a lot of people who edit like that on purpose

The images are jpeg opened with irfanview
They are sRGB.

My laptops monitor is on default while the new Dell i have reduced red by 3% and green by 1% . Brightness is at 50% at the moment. Calibrated through software and not through hardware though. I have also installed a profile found on www.tftcentral.co.uk .


As for the front rim , as i commented on comment No9 https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=15986501&p​ostcount=9 , i can see more detail on my notebooks monitor then on dell.


As for the last image, i admit that the difference is huge. Therefor my assumption that i was either working on a terrible screen until now, or dell is oversaturating.

So from your point of view (monitor) the problem is mainly in the blacks than its saturation.

In the end it seems that i have lots of hours to spend in editing again...