Export Brightness - LRc on MBP Questions

[Hooligans Imagery]

What's the interplay between the MBP brightness and exporting an image? I'll try to explain my situation.
I don't have an ideal workspace and I don't have options to change it. The light is balanced before sunrise but there is a skylight just off my right shoulder which impacts the brightness.
I have a 16" MBP and BenQ 321. The brightness on the two doesn't match up at times.
I can easily control the BenQ brightness with their Hotkey Puck - a dial I can turn.
So what actually controls the brightness of the exported image - sRGB color space for web? Is it the brightness of the MBP monitor and therefore I should just try to use my dial to match the BenQ depending on my ambient light?

Trying to understand the physics so to speak or the interplay of what I see and what is exported so I know what to adjust.

Hope this makes some sense.

 

[Anjin San]

What's the interplay between the MBP brightness and exporting an image? I'll try to explain my situation.
I don't have an ideal workspace and I don't have options to change it. The light is balanced before sunrise but there is a skylight just off my right shoulder which impacts the brightness.
I have a 16" MBP and BenQ 321. The brightness on the two doesn't match up at times.
I can easily control the BenQ brightness with their Hotkey Puck - a dial I can turn.
So what actually controls the brightness of the exported image - sRGB color space for web? Is it the brightness of the MBP monitor and therefore I should just try to use my dial to match the BenQ depending on my ambient light?

Trying to understand the physics so to speak or the interplay of what I see and what is exported so I know what to adjust.

Hope this makes some sense.

You can calibrate the screen on the MBP with the Display preferences. It isn’t as good as the whole color calibration software and hardware but it is pretty good. I haven’t calibrated my MBP because I don’t do much PP on it…but did calibrate the Studio Display on my Studio. Mostly the results is that the monitor isn’t nearly as bright as most people keep it for email and web…so it might be worth saving a couple of profiles for PP and everything else.

 

[DRwyoming]

So what actually controls the brightness of the exported image - sRGB color space for web? Is it the brightness of the MBP monitor and therefore I should just try to use my dial to match the BenQ depending on my ambient light?

Yes, the brightness of an exported image whether for print or screen display depends a lot on how you edit it and that depends on both the monitor brightness settings and the ambient room light. This becomes really apparent if you edit in a dark room and then send images off for commercial printing, they often come back very dark as during editing they looked very bright due to the dark ambient room.

For web or email sharing uses it gets even tougher as we have no control on the screen brightness or ambient lighting or even color calibration of remote users viewing our posted images. That's just something we can't control even when we carefully convert to sRGB as part of a color controlled workflow using calibrated monitors.

Ideally for important work you'd either calibrate for a controlled amount of ambient lighting and then only work in that lighting or you'd reset brightness in a controlled way each time the room's ambient lighting changes. It's one of the reasons BenQ and other dedicated photo monitors typically ship with side baffles to reduce glare and the impact of changing room light but still you don't want big changes in ambient lighting or at least you want to compensate for them so that you can edit to consistent brightness for your output images.

FWIW, I do my more serious editing (e.g. for large and expensive prints or commercial work) on a calibrated BenQ 27" monitor and my editing room is set up for very little ambient lighting change(window shades keeping the room fairly dark while editing and using the same interior lights when I edit) but for things like web posts I usually post an image then go into another room and check the posting on my MacBook Pro to see if the image still looks good. Sometimes I go back and edit a brighter version that will look better on the laptop and repost it.

But yes, ambient room lighting and associated monitor brightness can have a big impact on how you edit and from that the brightness of the final image.

 

[JamesFarrell]

You should be able to attach a hood onto your external display to minimize glare or other unwanted light. Also, you should be able to add some kind of adjustable ceiling-mounted shade over your skylight. I did the same thing in my previous house. Would seem this would be preferable rather than fiddling with system brightness display settings.

 

[Hooligans Imagery]

You should be able to attach a hood onto your external display to minimize glare or other unwanted light. Also, you should be able to add some kind of adjustable ceiling-mounted shade over your skylight. I did the same thing in my previous house. Would seem this would be preferable rather than fiddling with system brightness display settings.

My two cats would tear any hood down in less than 20 minutes or should I say collapse it. I will think ceiling shade and look into those.

 

[Hooligans Imagery]

Yes, the brightness of an exported image whether for print or screen display depends a lot on how you edit it and that depends on both the monitor brightness settings and the ambient room light. This becomes really apparent if you edit in a dark room and then send images off for commercial printing, they often come back very dark as during editing they looked very bright due to the dark ambient room.

For web or email sharing uses it gets even tougher as we have no control on the screen brightness or ambient lighting or even color calibration of remote users viewing our posted images. That's just something we can't control even when we carefully convert to sRGB as part of a color controlled workflow using calibrated monitors.

Ideally for important work you'd either calibrate for a controlled amount of ambient lighting and then only work in that lighting or you'd reset brightness in a controlled way each time the room's ambient lighting changes. It's one of the reasons BenQ and other dedicated photo monitors typically ship with side baffles to reduce glare and the impact of changing room light but still you don't want big changes in ambient lighting or at least you want to compensate for them so that you can edit to consistent brightness for your output images.

FWIW, I do my more serious editing (e.g. for large and expensive prints or commercial work) on a calibrated BenQ 27" monitor and my editing room is set up for very little ambient lighting change(window shades keeping the room fairly dark while editing and using the same interior lights when I edit) but for things like web posts I usually post an image then go into another room and check the posting on my MacBook Pro to see if the image still looks good. Sometimes I go back and edit a brighter version that will look better on the laptop and repost it.

But yes, ambient room lighting and associated monitor brightness can have a big impact on how you edit and from that the brightness of the final image.

Thanks - I guess other than eyeballing it there is really no way to get the two screens to match up in brightness without some complicated calibration each time.
Maybe some sort of test image for eyeballing?

Any insights there would be helpful.

Thanks..

 

[DRwyoming]

Any insights there would be helpful.

When working in fully calibrated editing studios we used colorimeters (commercial versions similar to the Spider series) to make sure all the monitors matched one another in color and brightness, gamma, etc.

For two different model and different brand monitors side by side without such a tool I'd probably either eyeball or do some test prints/images that could be compared and adjust accordingly. It's a big reason why the suggestion to control room lighting and just get that alignment figured out is a better approach than adjusting brightness for changing room lighting.

I assume multiple monitors is so you can have more workspace and have more screen room for each image you're editing. If so, I'd probably dedicate one monitor to actual image editing and the other for workspace, tool palettes and other things where color and luminance calibration isn't really important. But if somehow you're actually simultaneously image editing on multiple monitors then yeah, getting them to a close match will be very helpful.

 

[Hooligans Imagery]

Great feedback Dave and others. I love the BenQ and use it as the second monitor for LR, or for PS when I go out of LR. That's why I want them close. Maybe I try the Ben Q only. I will need to experiment. Thanks everyone.