Dark Pictures and Monitor Calibration

Hello all,

Once again a digital newbie is looking to pick your brains. Here's the dilemma:

When I look at images I have taken on my computer, they look great. When I send them off to friends or family, they look horribly dark. I am assuming that the only thing about the image that is different from when I send it is the monitor it is being viewed on.

Do I need to calibrate my monitor somehow ? If so, how ? Or can I save the images in some other fashion that allows then to look at least passable on other monitors ?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Briefly, if the images are correctly exposed, say from a digital camera and you don't make any changes then they should display correctly on most monitors.

How do the original images look on your monitor?

If the straight from the camera pics look great then the other monitors are out of whack.

Ian

Jeff Rawson said:

When I look at images I have taken on my computer, they look great.
When I send them off to friends or family, they look horribly dark.
I am assuming that the only thing about the image that is different
from when I send it is the monitor it is being viewed on.

Do I need to calibrate my monitor somehow ? If so, how ?

Click to expand...

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JohnnyBGood

First at all, do you have photoshop? If so, you should check histograms for the said pictures. This way you could confirm if you are in the ballpark or not. Histograms can be checked on the better cameras too. If the histograms are fine, then you should adjust your screen accordingly.

jean bernier said:

JohnnyBGood
First at all, do you have photoshop? If so, you should check
histograms for the said pictures. This way you could confirm if
you are in the ballpark or not. Histograms can be checked on the
better cameras too. If the histograms are fine, then you should
adjust your screen accordingly.

Click to expand...

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All the points made so far are valid and fair.

However.........

I wouldn't adjust YOUR screen to bring it into line with other peoples monitors. This would possibly duplicate their poor adjustments on your monitor. After that, any pictures edited would be adjusted to accomodate a POOR screen instead of a good one. Not a good idea, so please don't do it.

If you DO adjust your screen (let's say, to take it from "good" towards "even better"!) then do so with the aid of the right tools.

Good levels of Monitor calibration can be achieved with Adobe Gamma (comes with Photoshop progs.) although it takes a little practice.

With Adobe Gamma the adjustments are made visually, no extra hardware is required to do the viewing of the screen for you. To my mind that makes more sense, at least for the casual/amateur user. It is, after all, the eyes that are ultimately used to veiw the pictures.

The hardware solutions to monitor calibration are really only worthwhile when it is imperative that pictures match across other peoples' monitors. Even so, the quality of match will depend on their monitor calibration being equally well done, AND their Colour Management being set up correctly. In my experience, even the pros are still getting these things wrong. (The situation is getting better, but not fast enough.)

Hope this helps you see where your problem fits into the general scheme of things.

Whatever you do, don't destroy the good screen representation you presently have, to suit those monitors which may not be as well adjusted as yours.

Regards,
Baz

If you're looking at your images on your PC in the aRGB colorspace, and leaving them in that colorspace after conversion for web sharing, the color will be off. Convert them to sRGB ( optimal for web viewing ) and look at them. You may need to do some adjusting to get them back to the color/brightness you expect.

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