For a long while I was not working with a calibrated monitor and I never printed photos. I now do a lot of print work for clients and so I calibrated using a Calibrite DisplayPro HL. Calibrite's own software acts very buggy on my computer and often won't even finish, so I did the actual calibration with DisplayCal. Either way, colors seem reasonable.
Brightness is proving to be a large problem. Both Calibrite and DisplayCal's software put the brightness I was using at about 200 nits. Still, many - but not all - photos I edited before calibration print fine. When calibrating, I lowered brightness to 120 as this is in the range of what is considered correct for printing.
The result is that everything looks very dark. I'll review photos on the camera LCD and they look great, but loading into the computer they look extremely dark and, more importantly, if I try to increase the exposure compensation (in LrC or any other editor) they start to look awful and blown out. I spent several weeks where for every photo I spent an a half hour meticulously fine tuning exposure, highlights, shadows, blacks, and whites, all with a great deal of masking, just to get well lit photos that look good on the camera to look halfway decent. "This can't be right," I kept thinking.
One day I took photos of my kids and I thought they were really well lit on scene, but then I could not get anything that was even remotely decent on the computer. Finally I turned the monitor back up to 200 nits and they look good again, roughly like on the camera. I know this is much, much higher than is considered correct for printing, but at lower brightnesses these photos that look well lit and nice on camera look completely unusably dark on the PC. Unfortunately most of the really good examples of this are photos I don't have releases for, but you can see some examples of photos (unedited, except the third one) that I've had problems with here:
Of these photos, the very warm one in the forest is the best example of one that at 120 nits or even 140 looks far, far too dark, but I can't really brighten it up in any way without things starting to blow out. At 200 nits it looks just about right to me. Also keep in mind that the two photos on the left, which are unedited, are exactly as the camera's meter wanted to expose them. To me, they look about right but only with my monitor turned way up high to 200 nits. They are absolutely in the "workable" range. At 100 nits? Or 120? or even 140 - still much higher than people use to edit for printing - they're basically unsalvageably underexposed, no matter what the camera's meter thought.
When printing many (but not all) photos which look good on the monitor - and, for what it's worth, the camera - are just too dark. They're not usually terribly awfully, unusably dark, but they're darker than they ought to be and darker than you'd expect from something you've paid for. My wildlife photos, for what it's worth, have generally looked okay when printing - maybe a bit dark, but not as perceptibly dark as my people photos.
I'm at a loss as to what to do here. I am considering replacing the monitor as this monitor is by design a gaming monitor - it is an approximately 6 month old LG Ultragear 24" monitor. I know a more photocentric monitor would be better, but how dramatic of a difference can I expect from a monitor that will measure on a calibration device the same brightness as this one?
More generally, please help me understand what is going on here so I can get the brightness sorted out here.
Brightness is proving to be a large problem. Both Calibrite and DisplayCal's software put the brightness I was using at about 200 nits. Still, many - but not all - photos I edited before calibration print fine. When calibrating, I lowered brightness to 120 as this is in the range of what is considered correct for printing.
The result is that everything looks very dark. I'll review photos on the camera LCD and they look great, but loading into the computer they look extremely dark and, more importantly, if I try to increase the exposure compensation (in LrC or any other editor) they start to look awful and blown out. I spent several weeks where for every photo I spent an a half hour meticulously fine tuning exposure, highlights, shadows, blacks, and whites, all with a great deal of masking, just to get well lit photos that look good on the camera to look halfway decent. "This can't be right," I kept thinking.
One day I took photos of my kids and I thought they were really well lit on scene, but then I could not get anything that was even remotely decent on the computer. Finally I turned the monitor back up to 200 nits and they look good again, roughly like on the camera. I know this is much, much higher than is considered correct for printing, but at lower brightnesses these photos that look well lit and nice on camera look completely unusably dark on the PC. Unfortunately most of the really good examples of this are photos I don't have releases for, but you can see some examples of photos (unedited, except the third one) that I've had problems with here:
|
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
|
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
|
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
|
Of these photos, the very warm one in the forest is the best example of one that at 120 nits or even 140 looks far, far too dark, but I can't really brighten it up in any way without things starting to blow out. At 200 nits it looks just about right to me. Also keep in mind that the two photos on the left, which are unedited, are exactly as the camera's meter wanted to expose them. To me, they look about right but only with my monitor turned way up high to 200 nits. They are absolutely in the "workable" range. At 100 nits? Or 120? or even 140 - still much higher than people use to edit for printing - they're basically unsalvageably underexposed, no matter what the camera's meter thought.
When printing many (but not all) photos which look good on the monitor - and, for what it's worth, the camera - are just too dark. They're not usually terribly awfully, unusably dark, but they're darker than they ought to be and darker than you'd expect from something you've paid for. My wildlife photos, for what it's worth, have generally looked okay when printing - maybe a bit dark, but not as perceptibly dark as my people photos.
I'm at a loss as to what to do here. I am considering replacing the monitor as this monitor is by design a gaming monitor - it is an approximately 6 month old LG Ultragear 24" monitor. I know a more photocentric monitor would be better, but how dramatic of a difference can I expect from a monitor that will measure on a calibration device the same brightness as this one?
More generally, please help me understand what is going on here so I can get the brightness sorted out here.
