Background Info: I've just edited my first image on my new, LaCie Photon20VisionII LCD monitor. The monitor is calibrated with a Gretag MacBeth Eye-One II Display colorimeter, the brightness has been lowered to 60%, and the luminance has been tweaked to 200cd m2, with ColorEyes Display, to match my second, older LCD monitor.

Unfortunately--it appears that somehow when I used ColorEyes Display to tweak the luminance on my LaCie profile, I think it also tweaked my Philips (my older LCD) profile--because it's looking awfully dark and not quite right, at the moment.

So the problem is--I *know* how prints that I've edited on my Philips turn out...and I've got a pretty good idea of the range of how various CRTs render images edited on my Philips, on the web...but I've no idea how my LaCie works in either department (yet)--and when I drag the freshly edited image over to my Philips--it looks rather horrific--dull, dark, heavily over-saturated in terms of colors, and very flat. But so do older images I've got on the web--images that always looked vibrant on this LCD before--so I've lost my frame of reference, and would like to hear from others, how this image looks on THEIR monitors--with the following info being useful, as well:

CRT or LCD
calibrated or not

http://www.pbase.com/briarrose/image/54876996
For reference--the image has a warm brown & grey wall; a dark, Prussian blue "carpet"; chartreuse earrings; forest green wrap around the model's waist; deep orange kimono; pinkish/coral undergarment (sleeves and ruffles); purplish blue hair; and a rather odd bluish red overgarment with with and black trim. Her skin is very fair, and pinkish.

I'm not really looking for critiques on the image itself (it's not all that exciting--but it's only meant to show off the costume)--just an idea of how the colors are being rendered, so I can fix my little color issues! :)

Thanks in advance! :)

Background Info: I've just edited my first image on my new, LaCie Photon20VisionII LCD monitor.

http://www.pbase.com/briarrose/image/54876996
For reference--the image has a warm brown & grey wall; a dark, Prussian blue "carpet"; chartreuse earrings; forest green wrap around the model's waist; deep orange kimono; pinkish/coral undergarment (sleeves and ruffles); purplish blue hair; and a rather odd bluish red overgarment with with and black trim. Her skin is very fair, and pinkish.


Based on your description of the photograph, I am inclined to agree that it was a bit on the dark side. I use a ViewSonic VG150B Monitor. When I brought it into Photoshop 7.0.... I raised the Levels just a bit. I used your "warm brown & greay wall" for the focus point, because it was mearly a black and brown wall with nothing diffinitive. Levels raised changed that. And there are my two cents worth.

Thanks, for taking the time to help out, Candice--sounds like what you're seeing is very similar to what I'm seeing on my Philips. :) (And I, too, found that changing the midtones in Levels seemed brightened it up very nicely on my Philips...colors were still a bit off, and the image didn't "sparkle" the way it does on my LaCie--but at least it was viewable!)

*sigh...* I HATE that period when you're "breaking in" a new device, learning its color quirks, and trying to nudge it into your workflow! :-/

Whoops--I just noticed that you'd attached an image! YES!!! That's a GREAT match!!! (Viewing it side by side--with my original on my LaCie--and that on my Philips--you can hardly tell the difference!!! Well done!!! (And what a good match, based on a verbal description! :))

Hi Briarrose.

I had a similar problem a couple of moths ago and purchased a ColorVision ColorPlus (cheap Spyder).

Skin looks fine. But darker than Candice’s Picture
I could see no blue in the hair only purple.

I just wondered if this can be done ‘By the Numbers’

I downloaded your picture and took a reading on the brightest point (by her right thumb)

That point reads
Red 255
Green 254
Blue 246

I added an adjustmet layer and increased the Blue to 255.
This takes the yellow out of the kimono border.

Hope this helps.

Ken

Hi Ken--good call on removing the blue from the kimono border! I'd cleaned that up earlier in the image...but when I resized it and "finished" it for the web, I warmed the image up a bit, and forgot to go back and clean the whites again. Oops! :)

The blue in the hair is something that you might see--or might not. It's a blue wig--dyed purple--and it's been a nightmare to edit--and it confused the heck out of my camera, sometimes coming out electric blue, and others, violent purple. (Yeah, I know--manual white balance. I was using the camera for the first time--as well as my studio lights for the first time, and I screwed up plenty of things--never mind setting a white balance!)

I think that part of the color problem (overall) is that the LaCie has a larger color gamut than the Philips does--which could account for some of what looks like a sort of "color compression" to me, from one monitor to the the other...and the brightness--well, the LaCie is just MUCH brighter than the Philips, even with the brightness down to 60% (hence the luminance tweaking). I guess the real proof will be printing...although it IS important to me to edit well for the web, as well.

Oh well--problems are just opportunities for ehancing knowledge, right? ;)

Thanks, as always, for your help--I really appreciate it! :)

Hi briarrose,

The image is well exposed and looks perfect on my monitor. It should definately not be any brighter, otherwise you will get blow-outs. I tried some local contrast by ctrl-clicking the blue channel, reselect the RGB and ctrl+J (pasting the RGB of the blue channel selection to a different layer. Did some reverse USM to bring a touch of local contrast into the face. Flood the layer mask with black to hide, and painted with a soft white brush on the face to reveal the local contrast. I am not posting the image, but instead I made up an "AngleGradient.png" for you to see if you can make out all the steps in the grayscale. If you can't, then the monitors brightness setting may need adjustment.

briar,

i'm seeing mostly what your text description says:

brown and grey wall: yes, one of them. the other is white, with a tiny bit of light blue that goes into a sort of greenish-brownish.

dark, prussian blue carpet: dont know what 'prussian blue' is, but i see a very dark, almost black, blue carpet.

chartreuse earrings: i forget what chartruese is, but i see (barely) a sort of off-white or slightly silvery earring that may be tinted by the hair color.

forest green wrap: yes, with dark green shading.

there is also a very yellow 'sash' with some green tints where it's near the skirt/wrap.

deep orange kimona: yes, with some darker redish-orange shading.

pinkish coral undergarment: yes.

purplish-blue hair: not much true blue there. mostly violets and purples fading to black near the lower front edge.

odd bluish red overgarment: i see this overgarment as a blood red down the length of her body and the bit at the end, on the floor, is more bluish red. and yes, white and black trim.

skin fair and pinkish: yes.

i dont have all the fancy monitors and calibration hardware. i'm working in sRGB mostly and have calibrated only by the various website calibration pages and paint shop pro's calibration system. so, i make no particular claims for being 'true color'. hopefully, i'm not too far off from the main, though, and hope this helps a bit.

craig