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color spaces, calibration, and profiles...
are the biggest pain in my ass. I dont' vent often on-line, but I just realized that my images don't look the same on most computers as they do mine ... I calibrate mine weekly btw, use srgb for web, save for web, yadda, yadda, yadda-- thus assumed what I put out will be consistent and look like as I intended it. When I had a meeting with a client this morning, they previewed images online and I brought a book with me in-person. They took a look at my book and said, wow-- they look so much better than online. I chuckled and said, it isn't a photograph until it hits paper. They replied, no-- your exposure and detail is great-- online was underexposed and contrast blown out. No freaken way I'm thinking-- specially these ones, which got a simple autolevel, autocontrast, unsharp @ 80/.3/0. Lo and behold, the ones on their computer appeared about 1.5 stops under, so my dark grays-blacks were gone. I then asked to use their laptop and same thing... Now I'm feeling like I belong in conspiracy theory v2... after my shoot tonight, I've checked and rechecked my calibration, and it's dead on (or so it says). I'm no computer graphics nerd, nor do I want to be --but this is maddening. Jul 25 07 10:40 pm Link Well, while your monitor might be calibrated perfectly... ...isn't it just as likely that their monitors might not be calibrated very well (or at all)? Besides, I've always been under the impression that because of viewing angles images are not to be judged on laptop displays. I'm no expert on monitor calibration (far from it, in fact. had a rather elementary question on how to do it yesterday), I'm genuinely curious. Jul 25 07 10:47 pm Link true, but then again-- that's even scarier if exposure is +/- 2 stops depending on who looks at it. Jul 25 07 10:52 pm Link it's always something of a crapshoot when someone pulls your stuff up on their computer but if your prints are good and your monitor matches your prints then the client's gear is very likely the problem - although if it really was that bad then pretty much everything they looked at should be underexposed...this might sound silly but are you one hundred percent sure the files you uploaded to your site were the correct/finished files from your computer? Jul 25 07 10:52 pm Link Welcome to my world. While I try to keep everything calibrated, it all depends on how folks are viewing your work. Even with your portfolio, they may look fine under your controlled lighting. But at the customer location under their lighting your prints may look like S---. Kent Jul 25 07 10:54 pm Link yes. hey if someone has a minute and a calibrated monitor, shoot me a pm. Jul 25 07 10:54 pm Link kentd wrote: How true, perhaps I'm just becoming an anal retentive control freak as I age.... Jul 25 07 10:57 pm Link fStopstudios wrote: Now, if you really want to bang your head on the desk... try opening the same image, on the monitor, using different browsers. Jul 25 07 11:05 pm Link u know... they were using firefox. I was using IE. Hrmmm looks like I have a download to do. Thanks for the lead. Jul 25 07 11:09 pm Link fStopstudios wrote: best way i found around this is when saving jpegs for internet viewing go to proofs and click monitor... Then it will brighten it up and desaturate it. Fix it like it should look for print or the way you want. IT wont be exact but pretty close. Then when saving it do not save it with color profile. Uncheck it. There it should be close darkness and brightness wise and also wont be super saturated when viewing it either as many pics do... Its what i found works best. Jul 25 07 11:09 pm Link and added upon that... i was banging my head on my desk for over a year because when viewing pics like in blogs or such on myspace or anywhere else they would be super saturated and be darker.... this should hopefully solve your problem... if not i know hwo you feel and it definitely sucks ass Jul 25 07 11:11 pm Link NewBoldPhoto wrote: If I understand correctly, all browsers will show the same image exactly the same on a Windows machine. If you're using Safari on a Mac I believe you may be colour space aware but Firefox and MSIE should behave much like they do on a PC except that Mac OS's color management software will ensure that your monitor's profile is applied globally unlike on a PC where you have to be in a colour-aware application (like Photoshop) to properly load the active profile for your display. Still, if you open, for example, a ProPhoto RGB image on a Mac running anything but Safari you'll still get a low saturation/green cast image. Jul 25 07 11:14 pm Link When you did save for web, you did check the box to save them in the current workspace, yes? There is also a default setting there for Winduhs Gamma and another for MAC OSX... Perhaps, trying saving in one of those and view it on another computer and see if that helped any... Jul 25 07 11:16 pm Link nod-- I always uncheck all boxes when saving for the web. I think it could be a gamma thing, which was the first thing I checked when i got back home... appears to be pretty darn good tho when looking at the zones... Jul 25 07 11:19 pm Link klyment wrote: Try it for yourself...I did, firefox and IE. I noticed a contrast shift and a color cast shift, not severe but noticeable. Jul 26 07 12:41 am Link ok-- couple updates. I do notice slight differences between browsers, but it's not the issue I reported. Something to keep in mind if you have a critical eye. I only have two computers here, a desktop pc/server and a powerbook. After several tests, my hunch is that I must of processed some images using my powerbook. Although the powerbook was in fact calibrated via huey, when i ran through the manual calibration-- I noticed the "target gamma, was a weird 1.3, so I bumped it to 2.2. and set it to to d65. My guess is the huey calibration set it to d50 and the lower gamma. So my hunch is that I must of processed a few images on the road using my laptop and somehow this mucked em up when viewing from the web/pc (i.e. darker). I did find one image in my port that looks much different on my mac than my pc (pc looks like I want, mac too dark) and it's still different even now with both calibrated and at the same gamma-- thus I presume I must of saved that one wrong somehow... Jul 26 07 01:13 am Link It is the bane of all professional photographers. When you realize that after all the time and effort you put into calibrating your equipment and making everything look perfect, then you hand the file over to a client (high-end, low-end, take your pick) who is simply uninformed or hasn't spent the money or time to learn it all on their end, and your image ends up printed looking, well, less than it should. This just happened to me on the layout I have in the swimsuit issue of American Curves, the cover of which is my avatar. Compare this image below, which is how it was printed and shown on newsstands, with the avatar, after I *fixed* it.  For some reason, they all think they know what they're doing, but they don't always do. I have read post after post on pro forums and in seminars, about photographers watching in horror as their clients opened up the images on the client's computers, only to discover monitors with a dead gun, clouding, or simply not close to being calibrated. I can't tell you how many photographers have reported watching as art directors routinely chose "Discard embedded profile", because they didn't know what it meant. Its just part of the game, and you give them the best you can. Once you work for someone once, you learn how to pre-plan for their errors. BTW, regarding viewing for the web, the method I use is simply to "convert to profile sRGB", rather than "save for web". All the PS gurus I know say its much better, so I do it. Andy Pearlman Jul 26 07 01:15 am Link thanks andy and believe me, this issue drives me absolutely nuts. This is one of the belly aches I have with the digital revolution... Congratz on the wonderful cover-- even if they did muck up your nice warm touch  Jul 26 07 01:26 am Link Jay Bowman wrote: Yes, and this is more common than some want to admit. I had to address this to my instructor. I had presented a example of my work for my finals. I presented it to him on the Epson projector that is hooked up to the Mac computer and monitor. The image colors were washed out. He swore up and down that the image needed to be saturated. I proved him wrong. Nothing needed to be modified. I went from my Windows computer to the Mac in the school lab and just printed. All was fine. He just had a monitor that was never calibrated. Jul 26 07 01:32 am Link klyment wrote: A few small errors. Jul 26 07 02:47 am Link Between the various monitors , computers, color standards, ambient light were monitor is , position of the moon in relation to Mars.... none of this has any meaning. The only thing that matters is does the client like it and did the check clear the bank ! Jul 26 07 02:57 am Link Fotographic Aspirations wrote: LOL. Of course the check cleared and they loved the prints. However, I'm old fashioned and deliver prints/show books with clients in person. If I left things to online viewing, emailing, downloading, etc-- methinks I would be singing a different story. Jul 26 07 03:07 am Link |
