I don't have deep technical expertise either here, but from what I've been able to gather, color and brightness do seem to vary considerably across devices--and even across different apps on the same device. I know my phone's OLED screen makes colors look noticeably more vivid and contrasty by default, while both of my monitors tend to be closer to "true to file." Which is one reason I never trust my mobile edits without also viewing them on both my desktop monitors and again after uploading to DPC. Sometimes--and I can never quite put my finger on exactly why--an image that looks awesome on the desktop looks much less attractive on mobile app. And vice-versa. I usually feel like I have tuned in the color and tonality about right when I experience the image similarly across all devices, but when in doubt, I usually lean toward desktop browser display as the final arbiter of what I submit. Sometimes when I choose to add a border to an image it's specifically to combat the thing Martus is mentioning, too--the neutral gray-blue of the DPC background on desktop can sometimes play optical tricks with my frame in ways I find distracting, but adding a neutral white, beige, or darker margin around the image sometimes makes the composition "pop" a little differently.
And all of this is BEFORE you add in all the subjectivity of the individual viewers who are accessing our images! This is why, I'm increasingly convinced, so many photographers are rediscovering the joy of printing and film development. It's a much more uniform experience when everyone is looking at the same print in the same lighting environment, and the only difference in perception is linked to the configuration of rods and cones in the viewer's own anatomy. :-P |
