Calibrated Monitor issues

I use a new hardware calibrated Dell 2005FPW monitor that is recalibrated every morning. Contrast is evidently controlled by the monitor at 50% (I can't access it) when used on a Mac, and the brightness is currently set at 85.

I just heard from an ad agency that an image I shot that they had me touch up for them is sooo dark it's unusable, so I'm looking for input from users of hardware calibrated monitors (image attached). The corners and background people are dark and soft by design. The only thing I changed was to darken the corners and the key man's suit (mid slider in levels to .95) to direct attention toward the faces more.

This agency is using me a good bit lately, but two weeks ago I wrote here about going to their offices to adjust images they thought were too dark also. I learned then that they are using their Apple Cinemas at whatever they were when they came from the box and have no way to calibrate. I offered to do it for them, but they declined because currently they have a sense of how things will translate to the printing agencies they use and are afraid of messing with that. Images that were excellent on my screen were pure mud on theirs until I redid them for them.

So, other than the areas that are intended to be dark, what are others seeing? This image has only been changed in ppi from the 300 it was to the 72 dpi jpg that will not take up too much space here. The original was RAW converted to TIFF in Lightroom. I had tried to keep it a little light, knowing what their monitors are like, but comes a point where if it looks wrong on mine, I can't go further.



Thanks.
--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

NO one? not looking for anything other than "yeah, it looks right" or "No, it's really dark" but only if you have a properly calibrated monitor yourself.
--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

Looks pretty good to me. The suit on the guy middle right may be a bit dark, but not unusable. I'm curious why a professional add agency would not calibrate their moniters.

I don't know what you use, but I use Vision Spider. It works great.

The picture looks a bit muddy to me. Instead of darken it, would blur work for you?

If they don't want to calibrate their monitor, you might deliver your CD with a print, maybe twice as large? They can always scan from the print. It's also a visual proof that there is nothing wrong with your photo, if too dark or too bright is the excuse.
--
http://wupatrick.com

Hi Jeff. Here's my perspective. The image looks ok on screen - maybe a touch dark - but the numbers tell me it's quite a bit too dark. Much of the jacket of the main man returns RGB values of less than 10. In my experience, if you give an image to a commercial printer with shadow values that low (and the readings drop to just 1 in some of the creases of the jacket) you run the very real risk that they will block up and print black.

I think the image could go quite a bit lighter before the faces run the risk of blowing out.

Looks good to me (I have a calibrated monitor). I had a similar problem recently also dealing with mac people. What was suggested to me, and I think here also, is to make a print at a pro lab. That's what I did and realized my setup was just fine.

The photo is, overall, a tad dark, but the faces look properly exposed and I think that's what you were going for.
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Chad Johnson
http://www.chadjohnson.exposuremanager.com/

I have a Dell 2405 24" LCD and it's calibrated with my spyder 2. I find the composition of the shot to be "dark." The light seems to be poking through to the faces from behind the table... I don't know how to explain it further, but it does come off dark. I would play with some levels, give them what they want... in a perfect world, everyone would have to calibrate their monitors

--
Once a Marine, always a Marine.

First, thanks to those who replied. It would seem that it is in fact a tad dark, although it didn't seem to be on my monitor. I'll drop my screen brightness to "0" and recalibrate this morning.

Guaranteed I had given the agency what they wanted long before posting this, customer first, after all. I just wanted get a grip on what others see since their monitors are unreliable. Even though I had intentionally darkened the suit of the key guy, if too dark it obviously won't work.

Like some other comments, I have no understanding of any monitor in an agency not being calibrated, but after they refused my offer to do it for them, my next step is to find a way to work with them. That's where you guys came in.

Thanks too, to PeterStone for reminding me to check the numbers. I got caught up in what I was seeing!

--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

Changed monitor, re-calibrated, read dark areas, made changes. Further feedback welcomed.



--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

You just have to be creative. You have to change the user color settings, and adjust each individual color channel. It seems odd, but it works. Took a bit of fiddling to figure it out, but I can get my LCD spot one with an Eye1 this way.

Good luck.

Jeff Behm said:

Changed monitor, re-calibrated, read dark areas, made changes.

Click to expand...

The mud is gone, for good.

Looks like you need to change your monitor calibration hardware, if you use any hardware at all. If it didn't catch the problem for you, it's not doing its job.

As far as the image is concerned, if the client is happy, the job is done.

Your intention may be to focus on the man with a tie, but the woman to his right jumps out at me and well focused.
--
http://wupatrick.com

it is not bright, but I assume that you have captured the essence of what you saw?

For printing they'll need to be about 5-10% brighter to help defining the shadows, maybe 15% for off-set.

And the % you'll have to figure out yourself how to do, I just used them as a rough measurement. Guess I meant 0.2-0.3EV and 0.5ev

Cheers
--
Anders

Some of my pictures can be seen at;
http://teamexcalibur.se/US/usindex.html

event photography and photo journalism

Calibrating their monitor is not something they can't change back by
choosing their old profile. I'm wondering if they know that?

Besides Mac/PC gamma questions, if all your Macs are calibrated to true

color, then it should be all the same. They are sort of silly for not calibrating
although a Mac comes pretty close, it is not spot on from the factory.

As an alternative you can set up a profile for this one agency. A pain in the b*tt
for sure, but that is one way to do it.

What I have a hard time with here is an agency that does not want a calibrated
system throughout their office?

Jeff Behm said:

Changed monitor, re-calibrated, read dark areas, made changes.
Further feedback welcomed.



--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

Click to expand...

Patrick Wu said:

Jeff Behm said:

Changed monitor, re-calibrated, read dark areas, made changes.

Click to expand...

The mud is gone, for good.

Looks like you need to change your monitor calibration hardware, if
you use any hardware at all. If it didn't catch the problem for
you, it's not doing its job.

As far as the image is concerned, if the client is happy, the job
is done.
Your intention may be to focus on the man with a tie, but the woman
to his right jumps out at me and well focused.
--
http://wupatrick.com

Click to expand...

As it states in the first sentence in my OP, I use hardware calibration, updated every day. Then I talked about offering to calibrate the agency's monitor for them. I will say, though that this being a new monitor, my eyes are still wanting to make things darker, which must have happened here. What I changed was the screen brightness - from 85 to zero.

Patrick, you're right about the woman, she's the other key person.

I'm not sure what to say, Anders, about brightness. The highlights on the man's forehead are as bright as I'm comfortable taking them. The highest reading there is 221. There's no pure white I want to approach anywhere. I'm sure your monitor is calibrated, too, so some of it comes down to our respective brains plus the net servers.

I saw the image we're discussing a little bit ago on the agency's monitor, and it was a pretty close approximation to what's below!!! Nothing we're discussing here looked like that! They REALLY need to calibrate, but that's not my call. Wish it were. I really wish it were. For those who think I exaggerate, come on over!



--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

Is their mac set to 2.2 gamma and not the mac gamma?

Someone on their end might have set up a 2.2 gamma with/without
knowing it?

Are you mac too.... sorry, did not catch that part?

Something is amiss if it looks that dark on their monitor.

Someone has to change their objection to calibrated monitors. It will
be best for them in the end anyway.

For example: our local print shop does not believe in ICC profiles. They
insist that 'you' calibrate 'your' monitor. Their prints is calibrated to true
color and they expect you to bring in files that match color charts. That does
away with all the ICC nonsense and gets straight forward results.

Yep, I'm Mac at 1.8 Gamma. I'm not sure what they're using at that agency, but the refusal of yet another offer to calibrate leads me to just shut up and as was suggested, create and save a profile that'll meet their needs. They took their Apple Cinema Displays out of the box and have run them "as is" since. The owner has 30 years in the biz. Maybe he's old school enough to think calibration isn't important. I have no idea.

As was mentioned, he goes by his eyeball judgement as to what he sends to the production houses. Hey, he pays me - not the other way around, so I'm the one who has to adapt. With such a strange set of circumstances. it was important to get some perspectives from other calibrated monitors.
--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

I wouldn't make their rejection of getting free "tuned up" their fault. Their monitor may not be perfect, but if everything appears to be too dark there, they probably would have noticed. They didn't refuse your photos many times before, and this photo was a bit too dark. Even with my well calibrated monitor, I wouldn't have used it.

So, let it go. Your fault.
--
http://wupatrick.com

So, Patrick, what's the lightened version look like on your monitor?
--
jrbehm
http://www.behmphoto.com

Jeff,

It's better. See http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1014&message=18760398

--
http://wupatrick.com