Post Production - Always too dark?

Hi All,

I went to my local Cathedral yesterday afternoon and took a few snaps. I spent a while doing some alterations, and making the snaps look fairly nice. On my laptop monitor (which is an Acer, CrystalBrite) the exposures looked just right... but when I look at them on my work computers, or on other screens they always look way too dark.

Any ideas?

Here is an exampleof what I mean (just click 'Cathedral' and look at the three images).

Thanks!

Amnesia180 wrote in post #8041971
Hi All,

I went to my local Cathedral yesterday afternoon and took a few snaps. I spent a while doing some alterations, and making the snaps look fairly nice. On my laptop monitor (which is an Acer, CrystalBrite) the exposures looked just right... but when I look at them on my work computers, or on other screens they always look way too dark.

Any ideas?

Here is an exampleof what I mean (just click 'Cathedral' and look at the three images).

Thanks!

is the monitor at your work good? mine sucks and all my pic looks kinda darker on it too.

Is your workflow color managed? At a minimum, you need a hardware calibrated display and paper/printer/profiles to match.

Log onto DPReview.com and look at any dSLR test...at the bottom of the first page of each test is a grayscale step which you should use to adjust your monitor so that the most steps are distinguishable across the widest range of tones. Poor man's monitor calibration, but it works well enough to establish brightness and contrast adjustment of your monitors.

Matter of taste I suppose, but I think the catherdral is too dark: The lower corners go black.
Calibrate your screen. Most monitors are way too bright out of the box.

It should be at about 120Cd/m^2.

René Damkot wrote in post #8043159
It should be at about 120Cd/m^2.

I would replace "about" with "no higher than" ...

René Damkot wrote in post #8043159
Matter of taste I suppose, but I think the catherdral is too dark: The lower corners go black.
Calibrate your screen. Most monitors are way too bright out of the box.

Probably because the manufacturers figure a lot more monitors are used for gaming than for precise photo editing.

tzalman wrote in post #8043867
Probably because the manufacturers figure a lot more monitors are used for gaming than for precise photo editing.

And over at some other forums which will remain nameless, they seem to have the smug attitude that the only monitors usable for photo editing are the high end Eizos and NECs. I'm happy just to crank my Dells and Samsungs down to zero brightness.

I hear ya, Chas!

ChasP505 wrote in post #8044065
And over at some other forums which will remain nameless, they seem to have the smug attitude that the only monitors usable for photo editing are the high end Eizos and NECs. I'm happy just to crank my Dells and Samsungs down to zero(zed) brightness.

I love my crappy Samsung TN display calibrated with the Spyder2. The prints always come out better than my display.

At work I have a fancy NEC, at home I have a cheapo monitor. Photos look the same on both because I have them adjusted suitably. I'd rather that my employer subsidize the fancy stuff, because in the end it did not matter.