Differences between monitors

[pasusan]

First off, the monitor on my main computer is an ancient flat screen - and of course I judge and edit all my pictures using it. I have tried to adjust the settings using one of the tutorials on this site, but I can't even make the middle grey stripey area blend in like it's supposed to for the brightness and contrast setting - it's always darker. That said, my pictures should be darker on my monitor and lighter (than on mine) on screens that are adjusted correctly. (I am saving up for a new monitor...)

When I load up my pictures in my laptop (hooked up to the TV) - to show on the TV - I have 2 different stories. The laptop shows the pictures kind of dull and on my TV - WOW - they pop right out at you with lots of vibrance and saturation without any added PP. So, when I show the pictures on the TV after they've been LR'd they are really over the top.

Here is an example that I'd like some feedback on...

SOOC:


After LR:


How do they look on your monitor? Is the LR'd one over the top?

[Polar01]

Susan: the LR images looks great, not the best kind of sky to work with but what you saw is what you have to work with. As for the TV screen most TV's are factory set and they are set high (Bright), as they are seen first in the store in bright lighting they need to be to overpower the stores lighting. A lot have presets sports (max bright), movies (lowest level) as we usually watch them in a darken room so not as much brightness is needed.

Cheers:

Allan

[herbert]

Hi Susan,

Remember that images do not always have to be realistic but they should be believable.

The second image looks fine to me. Probably a lot more like you remember it. I vote for the second one.

Note that when you boost colours using Vibrance and Saturation you also increase the the visibility of chromatic aberrations. I can see the top right corner has more noticeable green and purple fringing on the tree branches. Try to see if you can get rid of them using Lightroom. Depending on your version this can be done in different ways. In version 4 there are some sliders in the lens corrections tools specifically designed to deal with this. Older versions have a 'remove chromatic aberration' checkbox. You can also try and desaturate the purple tones in the HSL sliders or try desaturating with a local brush adjustment.

Alex

[Geoff F]

The first thing I do with a new television is to turn off the auto brightness and saturation controls then manually make adjustments to give a more realistic result.

[pasusan]

Thank you Allan and Geoff for setting me straight on the TV settings - I checked them and what do you know - they were set at something called Dynamic - I set it to Standard (which was right in the middle) and things look a whole lot better.

And Allan - you mentioned the sky and all of the sudden something clicked with the tutorials I have been watching about LR 4. Split toning! I added blue to the highlights and fixed up the sky a lot. Of course - it really was very blah in real life - but I think this makes it better.

Alex... How can you see that chromatic aberration??? I had to really zoom in to 2:1 to even begin to see it. I think I fixed it using the Defringe eye dropper tool.

So far it looks like my monitor must not be too far off if nobody is screaming about the horrible colors, right?

Here's the new version with a better sky - any comments?

[Manfred M]

TVs use a totally different colour space than images (Y'CbCr rather than RGB) so there is a degree of translation between the two media and while there is an overlap, the two are not identical so won't give identical results. Your TV was never designed to act as a tool for "proper" colours, but rather for displaying a wide variety of video output ranging from action events like sports to expensive (and colour corrected) Hollywood movies.

When I look at the results on my calibrated and profiled wide gamut IPS monitor, the pre-LR colors look richer, warmer and more realistic. When I do so on my (also calibrated and profiled) cheap second monitor which uses the more common TN technology, the colours of the pre-LT look more muddy and less vibrant. The post-LR colours don't look quite right either, but are probably closer to what you remember seeing. The artifacts that others have mentioned are clearly visible in both monitors.

So the answer is not that simple and really shows the variability of output devices.

[pasusan]

Thank you Manfred for telling me what you see on your 2 monitors. That tells me what I didn't want to hear, but needed to hear. My monitor isn't that good since I can't see those artifacts without lots of zoom. And I do see that every monitor will be a bit different. I guess I've got to start researching monitors....

[herbert]

Alex... How can you see that chromatic aberration???

Oh dear, I have been outed as a pixel peeper.

In truth I first saw the post on my RSS feed which had the image at full size on a 24 inch monitor. Add to that my tendency to look for chromatic aberrations in the common places and it was easy to see. These issues usually occur when you have extreme contrast in a slightly out of focus region, for example chrome highlights next to dark paint, or thin tree branches against a sky. They are more common at the corners of the image where the lens performs the worst.

At least Lightroom 4 has the nice dropper tool to allow you to fix them. However note that the tool applies a global change to purple/greens at edges so just check your purple/green hues near edges in the rest of the image have not been desaturated too. Sometimes the tool can make a mess that can be fixed by re-sampling with the dropper or tweaking the sliders a bit.

Alex

[pasusan]

Thank you very much Alex! Now I know where to look and zoom in to those types of places.

[Manfred M]

Thank you Manfred for telling me what you see on your 2 monitors. That tells me what I didn't want to hear, but needed to hear. My monitor isn't that good since I can't see those artifacts without lots of zoom. And I do see that every monitor will be a bit different. I guess I've got to start researching monitors....

Susan - I use a dual monitor setup on my photo / video editing machine. My main high gamut monitor is 27". so it is fairly easy to see things that one would miss on a smaller monitor. like on a laptop. I use it to display the images I'm working on and it naturally has a high resolution without having to pixel peep. IPS technology is not inexpensive (mine is a few years old now, but the cost of my monitor is not that different from a new one) and by itself is in the range of what a mid-range laptop would cost.

My secondary monitor is a 24" wide screen setup and that makes it ideal to park things like menus and browsers, i.e. things I use when editing, but do not need them to be highly accurate in terms of colour reproduction. It being a cheap TN style display, it gives me a fairly good indication of what most people would see on their home computers and laptops as this technology is the most commonly one used because it is relatively inexpensive.

I've calibrated and profiled both monitors to make sure that they produce the "best" colours that they can. What is important to me is that when someone has an issue with the colours in my work, I know that the problem lies with their equipment and not mine.

[pasusan]

{snip} What is important to me is that when someone has an issue with the colours in my work, I know that the problem lies with their equipment and not mine.

That appeals to me very much - I yearn to be in that same boat.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Susan,

How can you see that chromatic aberration??? I had to really zoom in to 2:1 to even begin to see it.

I think this is one of those things that with experience, you see easier - for one thing you know where to look (furthest from the centre) and what to look for (tinges of opposite colours on either side of light-dark-light edges that are concentric to the centre) - as you can tell, describing it is quite complicated, but seeing it is easy - with experience of seeing a few 'classic' examples.

100% or 1:1 should be sufficient though, going significantly more than that (say 400%) can almost trick an inexperienced eye into not seeing it.

[chrisletts]

Thank you Allan and Geoff for setting me straight on the TV settings - I checked them and what do you know - they were set at something called Dynamic - I set it to Standard (which was right in the middle) and things look a whole lot better.

And Allan - you mentioned the sky and all of the sudden something clicked with the tutorials I have been watching about LR 4. Split toning! I added blue to the highlights and fixed up the sky a lot. Of course - it really was very blah in real life - but I think this makes it better.

Alex... How can you see that chromatic aberration??? I had to really zoom in to 2:1 to even begin to see it. I think I fixed it using the Defringe eye dropper tool.

So far it looks like my monitor must not be too far off if nobody is screaming about the horrible colors, right?

Here's the new version with a better sky - any comments?

That one looks to me to have a blue cast to it

[pasusan]

^Thanks for your comment - I have decided I can't go with that image as it is too false - the sky was made blue by coloring the highlights blue - so the sky and clouds are backwards to reality. And all the rest of the photos for that day have the overcast sky... Who's kidding who? I'm just going to have to live with what the day was like.

I am getting a new monitor though!!!! The ground around the edge of the money pit is starting to give way...