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Viewing Photographs on Your Monitor
(reading time: 5 minutes - satisfaction :timeless) |
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The point of this page is to tell you whether your internet provider, your software, and hardware are conspiring to take away something from viewing photographs in the best possible manner. Your computer monitor may not display the pictures exactly as intended due to many variables. The pictures may look too dark, or may look to bright on your monitor. The colors may have a different hue and/or saturation. Windows and Macintosh systems are displaying colors in a slightly different way as well. Various monitors working with the same computer may also show the same picture differently. The ambient light plays an important role too - you may need to adjust the monitor's contrast and brightness controls to compensate for bright daylight in your room, |
BASIC DISPLAY CHECKUP FOR DUMMIES |
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The Test Rainbow image below should appear as a rainbow starting and ending with red. There should be a smooth transition from color to color with no banding and no little dots. TEST
RAINBOW |
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If you have your display set only to show limited number of colors ( i.e. 16 or 256 levels of color), the Test Rainbow will look like one of the following example images - they are not a smooth transition:
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Below are 4 boxes, one should be absolute black. Nothing on your monitor should be darker than the black box. Look at the black border surrounding your viewable area on your monitor.. It should be as black as that box. One box should be absolute white. Nothing should be lighter than this white box. One of the gray boxes should be slightly lighter than the background, the other slightly darker. The gray boxes and the white box should have a neutral gray appearance. No color tint should be visible. Any visible traces of red, green or blue color show that you have a problem with the calibration of your monitor. |
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A 10 section step wedge above will allow you to check that you have a full chromatic scale available on your monitor. If you are not able to distinguish the 10 separate tones going from an all white to a total black it means that you should calibrate your monitor.
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The text above is a scandalous simplification of the topic - if you would like to precisely calibrate your monitor and learn more about color issues in computing, I recommend visiting: a very informative web page : by Thomas Niemann - www.epaperpress.com
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