photos processed on my laptop too dark?

[skipgoshannon]

Hi everyone,
I just discovered a problem that I didn't realize I had until this morning. I've been processing my digital photos in photoshop on my laptop at home and I thought they were coming out good. That is, until I looked at my photoblog and flickr page with my work computer. The images were so dark i had to strain my eyes to see them, and the details in the shadows were completely lost. Is there anything I can do to fix this problem, some sort of settings on my laptop screen or something (i use a g4 ibook if that helps)?
If you have a second to look, maybe you could look at my blog and my flickr page and see if they look too dark for you?
http://myrichpageant.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skipgoshannon

thanks!
shannon palmer

[NaturesPixel]

Try this ...

http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

you may wanna calibrate your laptop :)

[skipgoshannon]

great, thank you so much! I'll use this as soon as i get home this evening!

[Merlyn]

great, thank you so much! I'll use this as soon as i get home this evening!

I would not try to do any color processing on a laptop. Best to go with a desktop monitor. The ambient light effect on a laptop will never give you the truest colors. They say and old CRT monitor gives the best colors, but a lot of the newer LCDs do a pretty good job. A lot of pros use a monitor with a hood to cut out the effect of any ambient light in the room. You can try this on a laptop but you will see that any time you move your head, the screen colors change.

[smc1377]

My work computer is an LCD screen (21" Samsung) and the display on it is absolutely horrible. I have the opposite effect you're having, in that if I work on a photo on that computer, my pictures turn out too light, not too dark.

When determining if my LCD was off or my CRT monitor, I simply took my PMS book (which I don't expect anyone to have) and drew a box using a specific Pantone Color and sure enough, my LCD was completely off.

After much fuss with the adjustments on the LCD Monitor itself and the software that came with the monitor, I just cannot get it to display correctly. It's annoying.

From what I've read, CRT's tend to show colors more accurately being due to the signal processing involved (something to do with digital vs analog). Good luck.

[hitkaiser]

Sometimes its just not practical to get extra monitors (hence the laptop in the first place), I suggest you do the following steps to "help"

Change the colour space on your camera to Adobe 98 (I know you can do this on the 400D, unsure about 20D)

Right click on your desktop, click on advanced and get to the colour profiles tab, click on add and select adobe 98.

In photoshop preferences, hunt for the colour space options and again, use adobe 98.

You images do look a bit dark, hope this helps (do post back on your findings)

[beckywithasmile]

Try this ...

http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

you may wanna calibrate your laptop :)

I can either see all of the white colors or the black (depending on how I move the screen of my laptop). How do I change the contrast? I can't find this setting on my computer.

[hitkaiser]

Don't think you can calibrate laptop screens

[RainPacket]

You most certainly can calibrate laptop screens; I'm one of those who recalibrates my laptop screen every month or so! OS X is actually brilliantly easy to calibrate in; you just go to 'System Preferences,' select 'Displays' and then click on the 'Color' tab. Load a profile, or click 'Calibrate' and follow the prompts. Tada!

The thing to remember, however, is that OS X has a completely different concept of gamma and warmth than Windows does. While OS X is very good at staying calibrated and giving you true/accurate color (especially with flatpanels on a laptop, or an Apple cinema display), PCs have a gamma setting way off, and tend to have a completely different 'temperature' for the monitor (different white balance). Plus, PCs are rarely calibrated, so an image can look vastly different even on two different PCs.

This isn't a 'flaw,' it's just that Macs were set up for graphic design work, so calibration and true color representation is unsurprisingly high on the list of OS priorities. Windows was not designed for such, so it falls much lower on the list.

I now have an ICC profile on my Mac that more or less mimics the general PC monitor, and I can use that for soft preview before uploading to Flickr, to make sure something isn't too dark or too bright or whatever. However, I invariably use the Mac when setting up for printing, because I can get a much more accurate representation of the print service that way, especially since most services (Mpix, Costco, etc.) offer an .ICC or .ICS profile for their printers, which you can use to preview with.

[NaturesPixel]

I can either see all of the white colors or the black (depending on how I move the screen of my laptop). How do I change the contrast? I can't find this setting on my computer.


Some one please answer Becky i don't have a laptop nor have i ever used one...

so like a newb i presume its the same as any other puter ????

[beckywithasmile]

When you get to answering me (I realized I didn't give this info). I have a PC Laptop.

So here are the questions:
*How do I calibrate my laptop?
*Where do I find the function or controls to do this? (I might be able to figure it out if I knew where to look. I looked at the different settings in my computer and didn't find this option)

Thanks!

[Krimo]

Hello Becky,

I found this on a forum, maybe it can help :

" I don't have a laptop, but here's an idea. Goto...
http://desktoppub.about.com/gi/dynam...d_targets.html
...and download a test target. Make sure that it looks OK on your desktop computer in PS.
Then open it on your laptop at the same time as an image that you want to evaluate. If they both look OK at the viewing angle your using, then the image you're evaluating is probably OK, too. "


Hope it will.