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#1 2013-06-01 02:39:10

skipper
Member
Registered: 2013-04-26
Posts: 121

Display Quality of pictures on different devices

Hi,

I would like to know, how people deal with the difference in display quality on different devices?

I use the following set up:

1. iMac 27" with calibrated display and web reference monitor

2. Apple Cinema Display 23" - calibrated and print reference monitor

3. iPad mini - I guess no user calibration possible

4. iPod touch 4th Gen. - no user calibration possible


Normal color pictures look almost tidentical on all devices. The "normal" viewer wil not see any difference anyway.

I do have a lot of Black and White photos, that somtimes are low key and have big dark areas with good and important tonal detail, when looking at them on my iMac or ACD. If I look at them on the iPad mini or iPod touch, the tonal detail is almost gone and the areas look like they are completely black (which of course they are not). That is the case especially on the iPad mini.

I thought that these devices and screens were optimized to display sRGB color space images, but evidently they are not really. I don't know how much lee way there is in production of the screens as far as contrast and color is concerned? Maybe I just happen to have an iPad mini, which just barely made the tolerance limits and thus has little details in blacks?

Now I wonder if other photographers on the forum here have noticed such fairly big differences and if so, do you just leave it as is or how do you go about it?
If I raise my very dark tones on those images to the point where they show as intended on the iPad mini, they would not look good at all on my iMac. I know that most people will look at images on non-calibrated monitors and they might look even worse there, but I am still of the opinion, that the images should look perfect on a calibrated monitor as far as tonal range and color is concerned as a known standard.

Some insights on that would be appreciated!

Cheers

Peter

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#2 2013-06-09 05:02:30

JimR
Member
Registered: 2012-11-30
Posts: 348
Website

Re: Display Quality of pictures on different devices

skipper wrote:

Now I wonder if other photographers on the forum here have noticed such fairly big differences and if so, do you just leave it as is or how do you go about it?

Yes, I'm sure anyone that's been calibrating their monitors is aware of how off uncalibrated monitors are. The ones sold by Apple are pretty good out of the box, but the cheap ones typically used on Windows systems can be really out of whack. Same for the iPad/iPhone screens compared to other tablets and phones.

BTW - my iPad and even my iPhone are calibrated, using the Datacolor Spyder.

You can't help those with uncalibrated monitors. First, you can't explain how it's out or how to fix it to them. Second, they probably don't care (certainly not nearly as much as you or others who would calibrate their monitors).

You might consider showing a test image (e.g. 20 shades of gray) and letting your visitors know if they can't see this, then they should adjust their monitors. Still this will be ignored by nearly everyone that views your images. Few will bother to do the calibrated, even with the built in software of their OS.

http://w4zt.com/screen/
http://uofgts.com/PS-P2Site/Calibration.html
http://elephantav.files.wordpress.com/2 … yscale.jpg

Then even if they tried to calibrate their monitors using its hardware and the OS's software controls, it's still very likely they'll still not be able to see what you intended. Most people are not using monitors that can show the full sRGB gamut or all its shades of grey. (and again, they probably don't care and wouldn't appreciate the difference).

About the only thing you can do for uncalibrated monitors is to reduce the dynamic range of your images (less contrast) and reduce the gamut (less saturation).

But then when someone like me who has good monitors and appreciates properly tuned images would be disappointed with your duller images.

So...don't worry about other people's uncalibrated monitors. They don't know what they're missing and really don't care. You can lead a horse to gallery, but you can't make them appreciate art.


--Jim

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