Pictures look better on camera than computer

Hello All! I just purchased a Canon Powershot A3100 IS. When I take a picture and then view it on the camera's LCD screen, it is great- really great. However, when I transfer it to my computer, it looks very grainy and the colors are not as sharp/saturated - they look faded.

I know there are ways to decrease "grainyness" (have already tried lowering ISO), but if my pictures were actually grainy, wouldn't they show up that way on the camera's screen as well?
OR is it common for the picture to look better on the camera than it does on a computer?

Thanks for any help you can give me

Remember, when viewing a picture on the LCD review screen, you are seeing just a fraction of the data in the image and also it is very small so any flaws are well hidden. You can adjust your monitor so that it displays the image properly, but the grain (noise) is in the image and either has to be accepted or post processed out.

BTW, welcome to the forum

Welcome. And its pretty much as simple as that. The small screen on your camera is lacking in enough detail that everything looks good on it. Also the brightness on small screens can hide a great deal of under or over exposure because the camera screen is dependent on the brightness of the room you are working in.

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! I have been researching this question for an hour and could not find the answer.

Now onto researching and trying all the ways to make my photos look better...luckily there are many many posts on that already

Thanks again!

For the noise issue, shoot at the lowest ISO you can. The lower the ISO, the less the noise. So it's a balancing act between ISo, the shutter speed and the aperture. Once the picture is taken there are programs, like Noise Ninja, that to an excellent job removing noise from an image.

thanks for the tips!

Reminds me of my slide film days. I'd get a box of Kodachrome slides back and in my eagerness to (finally) see my photos, I'd just hold the slide up to a light. Wow! Looks good! However, when I projected them up to a larger size --- not so good...

Can you show some of the pictures to let us know what the setup where...? If you are getting a lot of grains, then it might need to be taken at lower ISOs, as many guys here told you.
Now, the screen does have this issue as it is of low resolution, a higher resolution images look better in terms of noise suppression... Still, i have not experienced such an evident difference in quality between the LCD and my monitor.....

Try taking the same shots at a lower ISO and check the results....

That camera shouldn't be too terrible with the noise unless you're pretty high in the ISO or shooting someplace dark. A lot of times it's good to just accept that some noise ("grain") in the pictures is better than having it blurry from too slow of a shutter speed or having it be too dark from under-exposing. Some of it can be taken out in editing fairly easily as well.

Funny, I just came to the forum looking for information on the S95 LCD. The pictures have so much punch and color compared to my Dell ST2410 that I was wondering if the small screen was just deceiving me... It almost has me wondering if the S95 LCD is an IPS panel or some better tech than my Dell TN panel LCD. Maybe an overly bright and saturated small screen has the subtle effect of making the pictures look better than we think... because something inside me wants my computer to display pictures with the same bright and colorful look as the S95's little lcd.

Sal

Size the image on your computer screen down to the size as your s95 LCD and see what a difference it makes... To solve this problem, get a smaller computer screen