Digital BW, The Print

In a message dated 2/1/07 12:12:19 PM, sagaface@... writes:


> I have received a couple of emails letting me know that the photos look too 
> dark on
> calibrated monitors (thank you!), and I wanted to address this issue for a 
> moment:
> 
> My images are very dark in general, with high contrast and very little 
> shadow detail by
> design. Printed, they look exactly as they should (thank you Clayton and 
> BO!), matching
> my calibrated monitor to a T. Unfortunately, there is a very fine line 
> between as dark as
> they are and too dark that gets crossed when viewed on differently 
> calibrated monitors, it
> would seem...I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm going to put a thin 
> border on the
> images and see if that helps. So, please let me know if the viewing is 
> improved at all....I
> appreciate it!
> 
Untagged images will be assumed as sRGB   by PC browsers; this should also be 
true on Macs, unfortuantely there images are assumed to the users monitor 
profile instead! So under Windows, a gamma of 2.2 is assumed, and as long as the 
images are in sRGB   or AdobeRGb, or Grayscale gamma 2.2, they should be fine 
(while color images in AdobeRGB will show the wrong saturation in some 
colors). But on a Mac, is the user has the monitor calibrated to gamma 1.8 (a thing 
some Mac users still insist on), then the images will appear incorrectly, if 
they are from a gamma 2.2 space, and untagged. Tagging your images makes them 
take a hair longer to download, and uses a bit more server space, but not enough 
to worry about.

Since your website is setup to not allow images to be downloaded via 
rightclicking, or equivalent, I can't really tell how they are tagged, or not 
tagged...

But on a Mac calibrated to gamma 2.2, without excessive ambient light, and a 
monitor white luminance approprite to my ambient light, your images look 
properly contrasty, properly dark, and properly detailess in the darks. I simply 
assumed, when I saw them, that this was your intent, and that appears to be the 
case. They look just as I would want them to, for dreamy images like these.

Hey, isn't this the list on which I'm accused of being full of bull, and 
never posting anything thats not an ad? Guess I better watch it, I'll ruin that 
reputation if I keep writing general information posts... <G>


C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com


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