| Author | Thread |
|
|
09/21/2011 11:41:02 AM · #1 |
Not...really....well yes, one of my current entries is at 4.6 but ya'll don't stink. In fact, I need some help.
When editing with levels, curves, saturation my entry looked fine on my Macbook Pro. Everything seemed in order....whites were white, darks dark...image did not look flat.
However, since the entry, I have looked at the photo (through DPC) on an Ipad and a Windows computer. On both of those devices most if not all of the entries in the current challenge that I voted on were well within the limits of what I would call "good lighting". However, on both devices my entry looks too dark. Not just a little dark but very different that what it looks like on my Macbook.
The mac has a keyboard key on the left and one on the right. Left darkens and right brightens. It is set on tick above middle.
Should I lower the brightness on the mac before editing in order to get the right light on the photo?
I have a Spyder and have calibrated in the past but I do get confused when it asks me if I have a brightness button, backlight...contrast etc....What do these Macbooks have ? Bright/contrast backlight brightness ?
Thanks for your help. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 11:50:28 AM · #2 |
When you print your images is there a great difference from what you see on your Macbook?
Print is always what I take into account. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 11:54:44 AM · #3 |
| There is a software calibration utility in OSX - it won't be as good as your Spyder but it should allow you to do a quick appraisal. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 12:18:12 PM · #4 |
My home computer is considerably brighter than my work laptop. I process on my home computer and always check out my entries on both. This way, I figure I have most of the voters covered.
Why don't you check out the ribbon winners at a brighter level without pushing it too far. Use this setting to post process with and double check it at your current setting. That should help you find a balance.
Tim |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 01:09:08 PM · #5 |
| My girlfriend thinks I'm a weirdo when I bob and weave in front of my monitor. I am not dodging anything (mentally or physically ;-), but it seems I notice editing mistakes or other errors on my images before I submit them when I change my prespective. (might be my crappy monitor too...) |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 01:22:03 PM · #6 |
Originally posted by kenskid:
Should I lower the brightness on the mac before editing in order to get the right light on the photo? |
I've had repeated problems calibrating my brightness and my short answer is yes, lower brightness. If you do have calibration software, try changing your gamma to 2.2 (I believe macs default to 1.8). I may have that backwards, if you are at 2.2, try 1.8.
FWIW, I wasn't able to calibrate brightness using my HW calibrator. I turned the brightness all the way up and it still said it wasn't reading very bright. In fact I have a *very* bright monitor and it was WAY too bright.
I have my editing monitor set at a lower brightness than my 2nd display. That way my prints will calibrate properly, and on the brighter display I can see what others are more likely to see for web images (since the average user probably has their brightness cranked all the way up). |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 01:24:12 PM · #7 |
Also, check out this truly HEROIC response by  DCNUTTER about my calibration troubles. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 02:09:14 PM · #8 |
I have a macbook pro and they have REMARKABLY bright screens when turned right up.
First off, use the calibration software, go to system preferences > displays > colour and click on calibrate and follow that through.
Next when you're editing, or at least when you're almost done editing, turn the brightness down about half way using the F1 key at the top of the keyboard (the F1 and F2 keys turn it up and down). This will give you the typical brightness of a PC screen so your edits will come out more like you were expecting.
And keep checking on other devices once you've finished. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 02:43:40 PM · #9 |
Instead of editing based on what you see with your eyes, why not edit based on the numbers? That's what they teach in photo school. Then you don't have to worry about your monitor being to bright/dark or even about being color blind because the numbers stay the same regardless of what monitor the image is viewed on or whose eyes are doing the viewing.
White = R255,G255,B255 and black = R0,G0,B0. Every color has its own RGB number, so as long as you have the numbers right, the image's color and brightness will be correct.
I don't know if I'm fully explaining that very well. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 04:42:54 PM · #10 |
| turn the brightness at least half way down. it will look odd at first but you'll get used to it. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 04:49:16 PM · #11 |
| thanks for all the tips....Like I said...I do have the spyder and it works...but that one question....Do you have backlight or Brightness/contrast or just brightness controls on your computer....when spyder asks that, what do I put? I'm guessing that it is an important part of calibration ! |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 04:53:35 PM · #12 |
Probably a monitor brightness issue, but wait, there's more ...
When you save your image, make sure you save to the sRGB color space, Most browsers use sRGB information to manage color fidelity across different hardware/software combinations. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 05:29:21 PM · #13 |
Originally posted by geinafets:
Instead of editing based on what you see with your eyes, why not edit based on the numbers? That's what they teach in photo school. Then you don't have to worry about your monitor being to bright/dark or even about being color blind because the numbers stay the same regardless of what monitor the image is viewed on or whose eyes are doing the viewing.
White = R255,G255,B255 and black = R0,G0,B0. Every color has its own RGB number, so as long as you have the numbers right, the image's color and brightness will be correct.
I don't know if I'm fully explaining that very well. |
That's what they teach/taught in scanning/pre-press classes in the printing industry as well, and you explained it perfectly
The only difference is that they use the "subtractive" ink set (same as your inkjet or laser-printer, BTW) of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, so I find it much easier to think of adding 0-100% of those colors than to think of RGB ("additive") color combinations on the 0-255 scale.
It's just like mixing paints:
C+M = Blue; C+Y = Green; M+Y = Red; C+M+Y = Black
I set Photoshop's Info display to CMYK and Grayscale (0-100% black).
Message edited by author 2011-09-21 17:30:52. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 06:15:12 PM · #14 |
Ok...in English...what do I do?
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by geinafets:
Instead of editing based on what you see with your eyes, why not edit based on the numbers? That's what they teach in photo school. Then you don't have to worry about your monitor being to bright/dark or even about being color blind because the numbers stay the same regardless of what monitor the image is viewed on or whose eyes are doing the viewing.
White = R255,G255,B255 and black = R0,G0,B0. Every color has its own RGB number, so as long as you have the numbers right, the image's color and brightness will be correct.
I don't know if I'm fully explaining that very well. |
That's what they teach/taught in scanning/pre-press classes in the printing industry as well, and you explained it perfectly
The only difference is that they use the "subtractive" ink set (same as your inkjet or laser-printer, BTW) of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, so I find it much easier to think of adding 0-100% of those colors than to think of RGB ("additive") color combinations on the 0-255 scale.
It's just like mixing paints:
C+M = Blue; C+Y = Green; M+Y = Red; C+M+Y = Black
I set Photoshop's Info display to CMYK and Grayscale (0-100% black). |
|
|
|
|
09/21/2011 06:33:44 PM · #15 |
Originally posted by kenskid:
Ok...in English...what do I do?
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by geinafets:
Instead of editing based on what you see with your eyes, why not edit based on the numbers? That's what they teach in photo school. Then you don't have to worry about your monitor being to bright/dark or even about being color blind because the numbers stay the same regardless of what monitor the image is viewed on or whose eyes are doing the viewing.
White = R255,G255,B255 and black = R0,G0,B0. Every color has its own RGB number, so as long as you have the numbers right, the image's color and brightness will be correct.
I don't know if I'm fully explaining that very well. |
That's what they teach/taught in scanning/pre-press classes in the printing industry as well, and you explained it perfectly
The only difference is that they use the "subtractive" ink set (same as your inkjet or laser-printer, BTW) of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, so I find it much easier to think of adding 0-100% of those colors than to think of RGB ("additive") color combinations on the 0-255 scale.
It's just like mixing paints:
C+M = Blue; C+Y = Green; M+Y = Red; C+M+Y = Black
I set Photoshop's Info display to CMYK and Grayscale (0-100% black). |
|
@ GeneralE: They taught us to use the CMYK version with skin because it's much easier to think of skin in yellow and magenta : )
@ kenskid: First, you'll have to open the info pallet in PhotoShop (I'm going to assume you're using PhotoShop and not Elements or any of the other programs because I don't have other programs on my computer, so I can't walk you through on them).
To open the info pallet, go to the "Windows" tab at the top and select "Info." The shortcut key is F8.
Now open a curves adjustment layer. In the upper left corner of the curves panel, there is a pointing finger with an arrow pointing both up and down. Make sure that is selected. When that is selected, you can put you mouse anywhere in the photo and shift+click to drop a point on the curve and to add a point into the info pallet.
The point in the info pallet will tell you the RGB or the CMYK numbers. If those numbers aren't what you want them to be, you can move the point put on the curve to change the numbers. I recommend moving the point with the arrow buttons on your keyboard (my profs always said it's best to go up once, then over once, then up one again, etc, to make sure you move it evenly) because it's a lot more precise that way.
That works for the brightness as well as the colors. To change the colors, use the RGB channels in curves.
I don't have time to explain that part now because I have to leave like, 4 minutes ago : ) But I will copy-paste part of a comment I left someone else about editing skin for color.
The pasted comment:
I put a color point (open the Info palate, then shiftt+click on her face where you want the point to be--see next paragraph for an extra tip on this) on her left cheek, near her eye and nose. I picked that spot because it was one of the brighter spots of her skin without being a hot spot and without being a spot that could have something affecting the color, like blush or something else.
Before you put the info/color point down on her face, go to the eyedropper tool in the normal toolbox. At the top of the screen, there will be a drop-down box that talks about the sample size. Use either the 5x5 or the 11x11, depending on how big your image is. You don't want to use the 1x1 because that one pixel might not be properly representative of the color of her skin.
So then I added a curves adjustment layer to the image (let me know if you don't know how to do this). In the curves box, near the upper left corner, there is a pointing finger with and up and down arrow next to it. Click it. It lets you click on your image to put a point on the curves that represents that part of the image (for example, when you click on her skin in the point I mentioned above, a point will be added to the curves in the upper half of the curve line). This point on the curves is different from the info/color point you put on her face, but still related. Let me know if I have confused you with these things.
When working with curves, I don't do anything to the RGB channel; I do all the adjustments in the separate channels (red, green, and blue, which you get to by clicking on the drop-down box that says RGB in the curves adjustment box). Ok, so go to the red channel, then, after you have clicked on that pointing finger with the double arrow, click on the info/color point you placed on her cheek. This should put a point on the curves line. If it didn't, the pointing finger button isn't selected.
Now pull that point up and to the left to brighten that spot (my teachers were pretty insistent about going up and over evenly, so they made us use the arrows on the keyboard, push up once, then left once, them up again, etc). This is going to make your pretty model turn an ugly red color, but don't worry about that; once you're done, she'll be normally colored again. Go up until the RGB number (found in the Info palate I told you to open) for the red channel is around 245-250. Then repeat this step in the green channel (until the G# is ~205-210) and the blue channel (until the B# is ~185-190). You'll very probably have to go back to each channel a few times to make fine adjustments to her skin color until it looks normal.
My teachers all preferred to gauge the "proper" color of skin by the CMYK numbers (which are percentages of the ink which would be applied when printing) than the RGB numbers. For a Caucasian, the K should be at 0%, the C should be 2-10% (roughly a 1/7 to 1/10 of the M#), and the Y and M should both be between 18% and 29%, depending on how light-skinned the model is. The Y should always be a few numbers higher than the M, regardless of the skin color.
For your model, my final CMYK at the info/color point (sometimes you can only see the CMYK numbers in the info palate if you put your mouse over the info/color point) were C2%, M22%, Y24%, K0%. Your numbers don't have to match that exactly because your point won't be exactly where I put mine. Just adjust until she looks normally colored again, but brighter than before.
I hope this explanation was clear. Please let me know if there is anything you want me to explain differently or more thoroughly. Hope that helps!
Message edited by author 2011-09-21 20:55:03. |
|
|
|
09/21/2011 06:53:01 PM · #16 |
There are some online greyscales like This that can help you see if your monitor is too bright or dark: you should be able to see a difference for every equal step from end to end. As you noted, if your monitor is too bright, you will tend to darken the image during your editing to make it look right to your eye, but it will then tend to look dark on other calibrated monitors as a result. Didn't such a greyscale appear on all image pages here? I don't see it now.
macs tend to run bright at default settings. I do let my Spyder correct the gamma for me, but I don't offhand remember any specific steps associated with that (I think choosing gamma of 2.2 is the right number, but I think the Spyder defaults to the right number, so I stopped remembering it once I discovered that).
Also, be aware of the ambient light in your workspace. If the shades are open on a bright day vs at night, the monitor calibration will be overridden by your own eyes. Checking the "numbers" in your image, or the zones in SilverEFX Pro, etc is always a good practice. Ensuring that you export sRGB for web use images is important, too. You are probably already doing most of these things.
I had a similar problem with images being about a half to a full stop dark until I used the Spyder. Then it was much better, more consistent, and the biggest variable now in how I perceive the image as I work on it is the room ambient light. |
|
|
|
09/24/2011 06:41:52 AM · #17 |
ive got a similar problem with my 5d lcb showing pictures up great think ive got a great shot, then when its on my comp its 2 stops under exposed.
i was messing arounnd with my macs last night and there is a quiet a difference in screen brightness, i notice it from my mac book pro to my ipad etc.
left to right ipad 1, 14" old mac book(my 3yr olds)15" mac book pro (matt screen), 17" gloss screen, 17" matt screen all set to max brightness and same image |
|
|
|
09/24/2011 06:42:48 AM · #18 |
dulicate post deleted
Message edited by author 2011-09-24 06:45:03. |
|
|
|
09/24/2011 07:54:08 AM · #19 |
| Giles...that,s just blatant showing off...... |
|
Home -
Challenges -
Community -
League -
Photos -
Cameras -
Lenses -
Learn -
Help -
Terms of Use -
Privacy -
Top ^
DPChallenge, and website content and design, Copyright © 2001-2025 Challenging Technologies, LLC.
All digital photo copyrights belong to the photographers and may not be used without permission.
Current Server Time: 11/05/2025 06:24:05 PM EST.
