Why do my images sometimes appear so dark when viewing on a different screeen?

fisheyonadishey

fisheyonadishey

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Good evening,

I'm fairly new to photography, and pretty much a total noob when it comes to post processing. I run Linux, so anything Adobe isn't happening. I've been using Raw Therapee, and find it quite capable, and certainly way more advanced than me. I'm editing my photos on and 40" 1080p LCD TV, which I know isn't the best start, but I cant afford a decent monitor, and I don't really have anywhere to set a computer up that way if I could, so it'll have to do for now. So when I edit my photos, they look as I want them to, or as near as I can get with my limited knowledge of Raw Therapee, when viewing them on my TV. Also, they look pretty much the same when a view them on my phone, Sony Xperia Z2. But I've loked at them on some other computers, fairly low end laptops and cheap kit monitors, and they looked way too dark. Is this my editing that's at fault, or the poorer quality screens? The 2 images I have attached both came out looking really dark and lacking in colour on some computers, but look ok on my phone and tv. I know its subjective to an extent, but the differences have been really noticeable. Any thoughts on this much appreciated .

View attachment 32170 View attachment 32176

Simon
 
There may be some compression involved: were the flickr files larger?

The issue is likely entirely down to your screen being set bright (since it is a TV). If you can borrow a laptop on which the images look dark, set the same image to view side by side on TV and lappie, then adjust the TV until it looks similar. Make a note of the settings in case you need to set it back to normal for watching TV (create a pre-set for editing?) Re-edit the images & voila, they should look similar on the laptop screen.

Something you may also find helps is to edit using the histogram to check for blown/blocked highlights and shadows.
 
Is your editing program outputting in sRGB? I had a devil of a job working out why photos looked completely different on my PC and on my ipad/iphone until I worked out that the iProducts go squiffy when faced with anything else. I edit for the ipad's settings now instead of my monitors as I know they are all calibrated to A when other people's monitors could be from A-Z.


Top one needs a ND grad filter either on your lens or in post editing and the bottom one is under exposed, I've had it open in LR and you would have to go +1.21 and mess about with the highlights to fix it. If you look on the histogram it's all bunched up to the left instead of being a nice hill in the middle.
 
IMG_1750
ancient_mariner said:
There may be some compression involved: were the flickr files larger?
Click to expand...

I uploaded them from ŧhe same file on my computer, but I don't know if they have been compressed by either Flickr or Talk Photography. I'm a noob when it comes to uploading photos to websites.

ancient_mariner said:
The issue is likely entirely down to your screen being set bright (since it is a TV). If you can borrow a laptop on which the images look dark, set the same image to view side by side on TV and lappie, then adjust the TV until it looks similar. Make a note of the settings in case you need to set it back to normal for watching TV (create a pre-set for editing?) Re-edit the images & voila, they should look similar on the laptop screen.
Click to expand...

I have tried calibrating my TV using my phone and tablet, and saw a vast improvement, so much so, I could hardly believe it. My tablet is 4 years old now, and while the colours and contrast aren't as good good as my phone and TV, its nowhere near as bad as I've seen on other monitors. I'll try turning the brightness down on the TV a little bit more and see how I go.

ancient_mariner said:
Something you may also find helps is to edit using the histogram to check for blown/blocked highlights and shadows.
Click to expand...

Decca said:
Top one needs a ND grad filter either on your lens or in post editing and the bottom one is under exposed, I've had it open in LR and you would have to go +1.21 and mess about with the highlights to fix it. If you look on the histogram it's all bunched up to the left instead of being a nice hill in the middle.
Click to expand...

I'm just starting to learn how to use histograms properly. So far, I've just been editing by eye. I'm going to try putting a ND filter on in GIMP. Should I be going for a "nice hump" in all my photos, even black and white? Sorry if thats a daft question, but on my TV at least, I quite liked the way the black and white one looked.

Thanks for the replies :)
 
You don't have to do anything, if you want to blow the blacks to create silhouettes then that's certainly something you can play with. The problem isn't really your shadows it's that everything else is under exposed, looks to me like your camera's light meter got confused by the lighter areas on the triangle thing on the right and went squiffy, the non-shadow bit of the floor is what it should have gone for. I'm looking at your flickr and it looks like all your recent black and whites and that one of the boats are also under exposed by about 1- 1.25. I've upped the one of the boats by 1.14 so it's exposed properly so you can compare the difference. I would try downloading whatever Canon's free RAW program is and doing the basic work in that and then moving it over to gimp after.

View attachment 32187
 
Decca said:
The problem isn't really your shadows it's that everything else is under exposed
Click to expand...

I have noticed that when I do my editing, I tend to overdo it, and end up with bad results. I go back and look at them later, and see them with fresh eyes that some of them aren't good. But when I started uploading to Flickr, I decided to leave them so I could look back through them and see how I was improving, an online record kinda thing. I do have better edits of some of them, but others, I just can't get the results I'm looking for.

Decca said:
I've upped the one of the boats by 1.14 so it's exposed properly so you can compare the difference
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have to agree, that does look much better.

Decca said:
I would try downloading whatever Canon's free RAW program is and doing the basic work in that and then moving it over to gimp after.
Click to expand...

I run Linux, so Canons raw converter isn't really an option, I could try running it in an emulator, but I dont think my old Aldi pc has enough RAM to run an emulator and work with raw. I've been using Raw Therapee, which seems very good so far, considering it's free. Then I move them to the GIMP.

Ive been reading up some more on histograms, I think I need to start using them while I'm editing.

Thanks for the help.
 
I've not used RT for a while but it has a histogram tool as I recall.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I've not used RT for a while but it has a histogram tool as I recall.
Click to expand...

I've had another go at a black and white that I took today, and edited in Raw Therapee , paying particular attention to the histogram, after doing some more reading on them. It all seemed to click into place a bit more, using different tools to alter different areas of it. It also seems to stop the over editing habit I have. Would you mind telling me what you think?

Ive tried a few times to upload it, but it keeps failing at the last 1%, so heres the link to the inamge on Flickr. Sorry, I dont know why it won't upload to TP.....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/126547341@N07/16134782854/

Many thanks again for the help.
 
That's much much better, exposure is bang on :)
 
Yes, that's good. Highlights look a little blown, but that might be the image rather than processing.

As for Flickr :mad:
 
I discovered a new trick to flickr the other day. After being locked out of my account because of yahoo nonsense I discovered I could download all of my original high rez images while logged out, even the all rights reserved ones, thus making it easy to transfer all my work to 500px, which was nice.
 
fisheyonadishey said:
So do you think I would have been able to correct that in Raw Therapee, or have a slightly over exposed it when I took it?

Why the mad face for Flickr?

Thanks again for the help :)
Click to expand...

I loathe Flickr from the heart of my bottom. For example, when I followed your link, instead of showing me the image, instead it took me to a page suggesting I should sign up for a flickr account with no obvious way to view the image except by closing the page & trying again. I've found the site slow to serve images in the past compared with almost every other hosting service, many flickr users struggle to post images to other sites from their account - as you seemed to have done - and I hated the way in which it grudgingly displayed one image at a time (better now I believe). I find it unintuitive and intensely annoying to the point where I will actively avoid visiting galleries hosted by them: I made a rare exception to view your image. Flickr sucks.

As for the blown highlights, I don't know. I'm installing rawtherapee now to have a play.
 
Interesting....I've not really thought about it that way. To be honest, I only signed up as a way to share my photos with some friends. I feel about Facebook as you do about Flickr, and while I do have an account, I'm not posting my work there to have it ripped apart by people who can't get a level horizon.

I didn't try to share directly from Flickr, I tried to upload the same file from my computer, but it wouldn't have it. I'll try again tonight. I agree that it is totally unintuitive though, trying to find an image that you didn't favourite or follow the person is near on impossible, and incredibly annoying. I've a feeling I'll may quickly come to agree with you about Flickr generally. Time will tell.

Thanks for making a rare exception to help me though, and for going to the trouble of reinstalling RT, very much appreciated :)
 
Lots of people love Flickr, so don't worry about my rather unusual take on it.

Checking for blown highlights in Rawtherapee: above and slightly to the right of the image I am editing there are 2 triangles with ! inside. the lighter one is for highlights and the darker for shadows out of range. If you look at an image and click these they will show you areas that are over or under exposed.
 
Ahh, I'm really starting to get the connection between clipping, the histogram, and my poorly developed images. As far as exposure goes, using these tools seems to have all bit solved my problem of editing on the tv, since you guys showed me where I was going wrong, my images are looking better on all devices.

Thank you so much for the help, it's been beating me for some time.
 
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