Monitor issues - I could just cry!

04/25/2007 12:26:22 PM · #1

I'm hoping you folks will have some brilliant words of wisdom here, because I'm not sure what's going on at all. I have 4 different monitors available to me at home, and one at work. Whenever I edit my photos for challenges, I check them on each of my home monitors and I TRY to check it at work, too, but sometimes can't before rollover if I wait until Tuesday to take it. Most the time, my pictures looks great on all 4 of my home monitors but when I get to work, they look terrible! In this particular instance, the difference is enough that it's pretty darned shameful.

I've searched the net and adjusted all my home monitors so they do all the things they're supposed to, but I can't do much about my work monitor. How do you cope with this? What kind of strategies do you use? What's a girl to do?

Thanks!

PS - I saw one of my pictures on my parent's monitor the other day, an old CRT set at 800 X whatever... I could have wept.

geoffb

04/25/2007 12:30:59 PM · #2

Originally posted by EducatedSavage:

You've told us the monitor at work looks bad, but you haven't said *how* it looks bad. Too bright? Too dark? Colours are off?

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

04/25/2007 12:37:42 PM · #3

Originally posted by geoffb:

You've told us the monitor at work looks bad, but you haven't said *how* it looks bad. Too bright? Too dark? Colours are off?

Oh, right! Details! Sorry about that - posting at work is BAD.

It tends to be REALLY dark (for instance, the last 4 bars on the DPC value bar are all straight black, and that fifth one is pretty darned close) and very grainy. It wouldn't both me so much, except that I can tell other folks have to have the same kind of settings as my work because I'll get comments that refer to things I can only see at work, and then I'll get other comments that make perfect sense when seen on any of my other monitors.

TechnoShroom

Canon EOS-30D

04/25/2007 12:40:04 PM · #4

Why can't you calibrate your work monitor?

hanneke

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

04/25/2007 12:41:03 PM · #5

then it looks like that monitor is badly calibrated.. with all these people, we can't have one standard of calibrating monitors (that would be nice!) so not everybody can see it the way you can.

But, with 4 good monitors, I think you can say these are ok ;)

geoffb

04/25/2007 12:54:55 PM · #6

Originally posted by EducatedSavage:

Originally posted by geoffb:
You've told us the monitor at work looks bad, but you haven't said *how* it looks bad. Too bright? Too dark? Colours are off?

Oh, right! Details! Sorry about that - posting at work is BAD.

It tends to be REALLY dark (for instance, the last 4 bars on the DPC value bar are all straight black, and that fifth one is pretty darned close) and very grainy. It wouldn't both me so much, except that I can tell other folks have to have the same kind of settings as my work because I'll get comments that refer to things I can only see at work, and then I'll get other comments that make perfect sense when seen on any of my other monitors.

I've looked at a few of your pictures, and it looks like you're using a calibrated monitor to process them. As has been said by others already, it seems the work monitor is simply poorly calibrated.

The benefit, I suppose, is that it allows you to fix any problems in the dark areas. However, you should continue to process the images based on the exposure of the calibrated monitors.

dwterry

Canon EOS-1D Mark III

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

04/25/2007 01:06:52 PM · #7

What bothers me more than brightness and color (because you have some control over that) is that my work monitors (both of them) are LCDs. And I'm sure a lot of people have LCDs with this issue:

I'll do my editing at home and come up with something that looks really nice (on screen and in print), but when viewed on an LCD, it looks extremely (and irritatingly) over-sharpened.

I've looked at the same images on other CRTs and do not see this at all. But even my wife's laptop shows the images to be over sharpened. And yet, if I reduce the sharpening so that the LCD looks good, then the CRT image looks too soft. The prints come out too soft too, so I definitely don't want to change the way I do things. But more and more, I fear people are switching to LCDs which is just going to make the images look bad.

It's almost to the point that I want to show unsharpened images to LCD users and sharpened images to everyone else. Somewhere perhaps there is a happy medium.

Nikon AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 ED

04/25/2007 01:44:58 PM · #8

TechnoShroom - I've played with all the settings I can get to on my work monitor and to go any further, I'd need to get some more software on here and our tech people wouldn't like that and I don't want to tick them off.

geoffb - Thanks so much for looking! I wasn't entirely sure I'd calibrated properly, so that makes me feel a lot better. I guess it's just frustrating because I want my shots to be beautiful everywhere.

dwterry - Are LCDs not the norm? All the monitors I have access to (except my parents') are LCDs of one type or another, but what you say would explain why I always feel like I'm so heavy handed with the sharpening.....

FireBird

04/25/2007 02:14:54 PM · #9

Originally posted by dwterry:

I fear people are switching to LCDs

In 5 years I doubt you will be able to buy a CRT.

Apple iPhone 5

04/25/2007 02:19:30 PM · #10

"Work monitors" tend to be the cheapest crappiest kind of 17" CRT that you can put on a PC system. I've had the same problem in the past, with monitors at work being way too dark. Fine for working with spreadsheets, but not for viewing photos.

And, to make matters worse, pushing the brightness or contrast to maximum values just doesn't help. These types of monitor are just... uncalibratable (is there such a word)

Art Roflmao

Canon EOS-6D Mark II

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS

04/25/2007 02:24:00 PM · #11

one tissue per breakdown, please. ;-)

wavelength

Nikon D300

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

04/25/2007 02:32:56 PM · #12

Originally posted by fir3bird:

Originally posted by dwterry:
I fear people are switching to LCDs

In 5 years I doubt you will be able to buy a CRT.

I'll buy one (lcd) when it has a .25mm dot pitch, and 10,000:1 contrast ratios are standard, thanks.

TechnoShroom

Canon EOS-30D

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

04/25/2007 02:43:36 PM · #13

Originally posted by EducatedSavage:

After "accidentally" knocking it off the desk a few times you should be able to say to them... "I dunno, the backlight just stopped working. I guess you'll have to order a new monitor."

tnun

Ricoh GR III

Pentax DA 18-135mm F3.5-5.6ED AL [IF] WR DC

04/25/2007 02:51:24 PM · #14

This is a real problem. You'd think with the explosion of digital photography and digicam development there would be something in the way of monitors. The times I've tried the more sophisticated (than Irfanview) Gimp for postprocessing I cannot really "see" what is happening on my very lesser LCD monitor. Certainly time to upgrade but to what? Also wonder if we should have an acronym for crappy monitor to add when we comment on a picture. CM?

splidge

Canon EOS-40D

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

04/25/2007 03:48:55 PM · #15

Originally posted by dwterry:

I've looked at the same images on other CRTs and do not see this at all. But even my wife's laptop shows the images to be over sharpened. And yet, if I reduce the sharpening so that the LCD looks good, then the CRT image looks too soft. The prints come out too soft too, so I definitely don't want to change the way I do things. [...]

It's worth pointing out that generally you want to sharpen more for print than for display anyway. So the fact that the level of sharpening that works for prints happens to work for your CRT as well doesn't mean that LCDs are "wrong".

I would sharpen your DPC entries/other web stuff so that it looks good on LCDs and then sharpen more for your prints.

splidge

hajeka

Canon EOS R5

Canon RF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS USM

04/25/2007 03:59:32 PM · #16

Originally posted by Art Roflmao:

one tissue per breakdown, please. ;-)

One tissue will not be enough. Work monitors aren't normally calibrated for photos, just for Word or Excel (that means: no calibarition at all).

geoffb

04/25/2007 06:49:00 PM · #17

Originally posted by hajeka:

Originally posted by Art Roflmao:

one tissue per breakdown, please. ;-)

One tissue will not be enough. Work monitors aren't normally calibrated for photos, just for Word or Excel (that means: no calibarition at all).

Sheryl Crow would beg to differ.

rox_rox

Canon EOS-20D

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM

04/25/2007 07:13:36 PM · #18

If it makes you feel any better, my work and home monitor is one and the same; and it's a POS LCD, which simply scoffs at my attempts to calibrate.