Actually, that bar really doesn't tell anything about the proper calibration of the monitor. Any monitor that is flexible enough to be calibrated can display each square properly at any gamma. But, a monitor calibrated to a gamma other than the one the image was created for will still display the image brighter or darker (depending on the variance in gamma) than it was seen by its creator. Not only that, but there are color shifts to be considered with different gammas as well.
I would love to see a calibration screen displayed prior to each voting session; say when a person goes to challenge screen and is faced with all the thumbs, before they could vote on any images they must face a screen that shows them if they have their monitors properly calibrated to 2.2 gamma for proper viewing of the images. This would be repeated with each voting session, should the individual take more than one session to complete voting. Of course, there would be those that would ignore it (even if it was turned into a test such as placing the lower three black values as random boxes with instructions to click on the darkest one, before being allowed to continue), but it would at least make everyone aware of their monitor's calibration.
I was on the site for a month or so before I got curious and went in search of the meaning of the gradient bar in the image pages while voting. But the sad truth is there are many who never get curious. It really needs to be much more of an 'in your face' issue, with a site standard to back it up. After all, what point is there to be voting on an image without knowing it looks the same as what the photographer submitted.
David |
