Adjusting for Projector Effects

[Lon Howard]

Hi. Life has taken me away from photography for about five years so am way behind the curve right now, but here's an issue I'm revisiting. Haven't calibrated my monitor for all this time and discovered that my camera club's projector made my digital submissions look dark, so when downsizing my 'final' tweak, I would pump up the brightness in the process to make up for that.

It seemed to work, but not consistently from month to month; lately I found that I've over-brightened and gotten washed out images when they were presented.

A few weeks ago I sprung for Color Munki Display - very easy to use - my existing files looked a bit strange but I ignored that because I'm more into the future, not the past.

Anyway, after practicing with the Color Munki, I somehow (can't explain why) got the impression that the calibration had reduced the need for brightening so I did only half of what I had been doing. The result was that they were STILL too bright.

So, I'm wondering if it's possible that calibrating my monitor has almost - if not entirely - eliminated the need for tweaking brightness (one way or the other) on my images before submitting them for display on a projector?

Thanks!

[Acorn]

Hi. Life has taken me away from photography for about five years so am way behind the curve right now, but here's an issue I'm revisiting. Haven't calibrated my monitor for all this time and discovered that my camera club's projector made my digital submissions look dark, so when downsizing my 'final' tweak, I would pump up the brightness in the process to make up for that.

It seemed to work, but not consistently from month to month; lately I found that I've over-brightened and gotten washed out images when they were presented.

A few weeks ago I sprung for Color Munki Display - very easy to use - my existing files looked a bit strange but I ignored that because I'm more into the future, not the past.

Anyway, after practicing with the Color Munki, I somehow (can't explain why) got the impression that the calibration had reduced the need for brightening so I did only half of what I had been doing. The result was that they were STILL too bright.

So, I'm wondering if it's possible that calibrating my monitor has almost - if not entirely - eliminated the need for tweaking brightness (one way or the other) on my images before submitting them for display on a projector?

Thanks!

You could first try reducing the brightness of your screen before re-calibrating. Screens that are too bright have the effect of sometimes darkening print and projected images..

[Manfred M]

The first question I would ask is does your club check out the level of lighting in the room and the output of the projector before showing the work? It could be a problem at the club, rather than your work.

I know one of the clubs I belong to will do a brightness check on the projector and will tweak the brightness so that it is in the range of 90 - 120 candela / square meter. The room itself (this is usually the easy part) needs to be fairly dark as well; with light levels below 70 lux. The Colormunki lets you set the desired screen brightness.

Your editing workspace should be set up the same. The room light should be consistent.

[Lon Howard]

Thanks to you both. The lighting in my camera club meetings is darkened and is consistent, but I will ask if the lighting level is - or ever has been - measured. I suspect not. I have noticed that most of the images submitted are either too dark or too light, so I don't think I'm alone here. Thanks to Barry, I'll just put a stickie on my monitor reminding me to reduce my own brightness before calibrating and also when editing afterwards. Very helpful, thanks again!

[Manfred M]

I'll just put a stickie on my monitor reminding me to reduce my own brightness before calibrating and also when editing afterwards.

First of all, that should be done as part of the calibration and profiling process, not before or after as that can change the colour profile.

The final brightness adjustments that you make should be part of your final work flow, Keep the computer screen output constant and work in a constantly lit room. Then apply a final output adjustment in your editing tool to get the image to be where you want it to be. As I do all my final edits in Photoshop, I add an adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack and make the tweak there and label it as an output adjustment. Turning the layer on and off is all it takes to have it look normal on my computer screen.

I do very much the same thing when I print, although that includes the final brightness adjustment as well as output sharpening that are applied after I resize the image to print size.