Nick David Wright wrote:
Herein lies one of my biggest peeves about digital photography.
The photographer does not have any control over how the print looks when it is
displayed.
I put some of my best shots on the web a couple years back. On my
fully-calibrated screen they looked wonderful. I went to my sister-in-law's
house and she wanted to see them so we pulled them up on her screen and they
looked like crap.
You do have quite a bit of choice in the material of the printed form. But when
you send the finished product off, at least you can be assured that the person
you send it to will see it in the manner that you intended.
~Nick David Wright
http://pedalingprose.wordpress.com/
That's the gist of the argument I was going to raise. And I will go
further and state that most people view images on crap monitors, so no
two viewers of your work are seeing the same thing!
Inexpensive LCD monitors that the average user has these days are all of
the TN (twisted nematic) type. I have found that these things act like
an out-of-control Photoshop curves filter where the pixel brightness
across the range depends entirely on your vertical viewing angle. Hence
if the histogram of your image resembles a bell curve (centered around
128), then your image will look somewhat normal viewed straight on,
brighter if viewed from above and darker viewed from below (ie looking
up at the screen). Same thing happens if you raise and lower the LCD-lid
angle on your laptop/notebook PC.
Images with an overall darker histogram tend to look *very* dark and
lacking contrast seen at the usual viewing angle, while high-key images
look completely washed-out.
If you present a subtly rendered image, say a portrait taken in a
candlelit room, it will tend to look completely washed-out and too dark
with no contrast to make out any detail, so Average Viewer will skip
right on past looking for those flowers in the sun that look OK on TN
monitors.
I have a TN display and a good IPS display side by side. I now make a
habit of inspecting images alternately on both displays as I'm
post-processing so I'll see what most viewers are likely to see. I find
I now have to use Curves to increase the brightness quite a bit for the
TN display as I've been in the habit of making more moody, saturated
colour images using the IPS display that simply become dark and
indistinct for most people.
Sigh.
So the upshot is: pix on paper will look right for everyone, thus
solving the viewing problem. I never thought I'd be supporting paper,
but the more I get into this photography thing, the more I want to see
my shots on paper. (Guess I'll be shopping for a printer this year
instead of next.)
-bmw
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