Screen calibration and the rest of the world.

[arthurbikemad]

Hi, I had a quick mess around yesterday with some horse portraits, I have been asked as a friend could I do a couple of blacked out backgrounds of a horse? Thinking maybe I could just use my speed lights and some HSS I could grab a quick shot and Bobs Bob. Nope, first the nag was unsure of my shutter noise! Not so much the speed lights but even on quiet the nag seem to dislike it, me and said nag are friends but she defo was camera shy, so fired a quick Q to another forum member and she said to use a better location and utilise the ambient light. So managed to grab a couple of quick snaps and got some average images that I could stick trough post, I rushed through the edit and thought I had something that may have been an example, but no seems that my ageing Dell screens are deceiving me, i.e when viewed on another device you could see my rushed brush strokes etc. Perhaps the lesson is simple i.e don't rush or skimp on edit time? I thought brushing out highlights would be good enough rather than creating a selection/mask and composing a new image. So I guess my question is has anyone encounter a shock horror moment when they think an image looks great and then view/see it on another device. I know screen calibration maybe important but given that nearly all other devices are not calibrated where does that leave you?

Anyway here is my poor effort test image. Looks awful on my iPad but ok on my desktop, like I say my displays are old pro screens from Dell, they take a good half hour to come up to spec, perhaps time for some new displays and maybe screen cal.

 

[petersmart]

Looks fine to me and even when I turn up the brightness the B/G still looks good and can't really see any brush strokes.
.

 

[fazer]

Hi Arthur. The background looks fine to me on my so called calibrated laptop (ColorMunki). The only problems, which I hope you don't mind being pointed out, is the ear tips fading into the background and on the left side of the right ear there is brown hair which looks unattached. I believe the definition of the ears need to be brought out a tad. Of course, it could be my calibration is out and everyone else is correct without adjustment.
Very nice shot and will look great on any wall

 

[arthurbikemad]

Thanks for the reply's No not at all (just off to change my "Edit my images" to YES) any help and tips are very much welcome

It was a bad day for me, nothing seemed to come together, high ISO and lots of noise did not help my attempt plus poor planning and a limited number of locations to take the shot also made it harder. Then after a quick edit I thought it looked ok, loaded it up on my iPad later on only to make myself look a complete plumb didn't make me feel any better about it.

Next time I kind of hope to make a better effort! Taking on the advice

As for screen calibration I don't think I help my case by editing on old uncalibrated screens, with no baseline I guess I am asking for trouble, its shocking how some images look once moved onto another device.

 

[ancient_mariner]

No brush marks visible here. I'd suspect the iPad screen is the problem, rather than the Dell.

I used to edit on an old Samsung TN screen, and it was always pot luck how an image would look elsewhere.

 

[Denyerec]

I can't see the original image link, but when dealing with dark backgrounds I always use a threshold / exaggerated curves layer to be sure.