You post an image online that was prepped on your calibrated screen...

How many will see it as you intended? I have images that look great on my calibrated Asus pro-art display, but the same images looks 5 different ways on 'regular' displays. I have a decent biz display at home as well, the images on it look terrible (although productivity work is great), if I view my images on my work computer (which has an old cruddy screen) things get even worse.

I wonder how many are not seeing what we intended vs. how many that actually do? Of course it all comes down to the physical print is the answer, but it is awfully hard to share this method on a global scale.

I find Macs and OLED based screens (even on phones) produce decent/accurate results. Most windows systems with generic cheap displays are usually way off.

I guess all we can do is share our calibrated images and hope for the best, but I do wonder if a high percentage of judgement comes down to lack of viewers seeing a close approximation?

It's a mess and I feel your pain.

I've seen different browsers (e.g. Chrome and FireFox) render the same image differently on the same monitor, side by side, with the color management options in both browsers set correctly. Even if that doesn't happen, I can open a test image in the browsers on my machine (Chrome, FireFox, Edge) as well as IrfanView and GIMP and they will render the image the same, but if I open the same image in the Windows Photos app, it renders the colors differently. This is all on the same calibrated monitor. Color management of some apps still just sucks.

Here's another 'cool trick'. My desktop has two monitors - different brands and types. Both screens are periodically calibrated (i1Pro 2). Yet, one screen leans towards magenta while the other leans towards cyan. So monitor calibration in practice turns out to not mean that much anyway.

I took the time the other day to (re-)calibrate my file-to-print workflow, including monitor calibration and printer profiling (the latter using ArgyllCMS). It's good enough for me, but in all honesty, there's just no exact match between what I see on my computer screen and what I get on the print. It's fairly close for most scenes, but not critically the same. Mind you - this is with soft proofing enabled and basically everything set up in such a way that the fidelity should be maximized.

When it comes to web publication, I just accept that everyone will get a different result. I make sure to output everything in sRGB because that's the de facto default, and beyond that, all bets are off anyway.

Do you realize that many people today use a setting on their phone that cuts out a significant part of the blue signal at night? Here we are sitting discussing monitor calibration while there's plenty of phones that will show everything through a strong yellow filter after 10pm! Just to indicate how massive the problem is if you want to aim for consistency across viewers. I've given up on even trying.

I have a monitor with zero dead pixels, physically perfect, but if you look carefully, with a neutral background, you will notice that the left side of the panel is slightly magenta, while the right side green. The average user won't notice it but I do! It drove me nuts for a while, but have accepted the situation as it is and realised that there are numerous other far more important things in life. I mean, my income and wellbeing doesn't depend on it, so bugger it. Even if I wanted to calibrate it, it would be an exercise in futility...

Yes, is does sound a bit futile as mentioned above with apps having different outputs even on the same screen, etc.

Sean said:

How many will see it as you intended? ...

Click to expand...

Hm... if you shoot B&W...
... i assume that in the analog world similar problems were around regarding reproduction of color pictures... and i also think that peoples eyesight differs, also regarding colors...

Harry Callahan said:

i assume that in the analog world similar problems were around regarding reproduction of color pictures

Click to expand...

To an extent, but of course very different in terms of technical nature of the issues involved. Anyway, this is one reason why color reversal film reigned supreme in the publishing world. It gave an objective baseline reference.

But perhaps we should stick to the topic of digital presentation here since that's the focus of the original question. The ins & outs of analog color reproduction have been discussed extensively on this forum already; there's always room for more, of course, but it's be best to start a new thread about it in an appropriate section.

I have posted almost exclusively scanned color transparencies for well over 30 years now. For 20+ years I have posted and critiqued images on a nature site. I use an Asus-Pro display that I calibrate every other month. For years I found Firefox to be a big problem. Every time they updated the software the color management settings would fall out. I have found for me Chrome does a better job of presenting images on line than Firefox. Firefox always seemed to be juiced up in saturation off & on primarily when the settings fell out. I have noticed Firefox does not seem to lose the settings on updates anymore so it seems a bit more consistence.

Compared to my calibrated screen some are bad but most are not too bad. They tend to be too blue. Phones are actually quite good. I use NEC monitors and calibrate it with NEC Spectraview II with hardware calibration.

I don't use a good self-calibrating graphics monitor so my pictures will look good on random people's monitors. I do it so when they buy. print, the print will match the editing I did on my screen.

Screen brightness setting is always a PIA for us, we never know what our clients are setting up with, we are always at 60% brightness but it seems many are at 100% , which will cause darker
prints if we do not do the test print.

This is like timing/grading motion picture release prints for theatrical showings. Some theaters had Xenon Arc Lamp houses, some ran Tungsten bulbs and even a few Art Houses still scrounged-up vintage Carbon Arc rods for their presentations. Not only the color temp varied, but the screen brightness varied dramatically.

Was/is there Standards; yes. Good luck enforcing them.

I have nothing calibrated, plus I use several different machines/monitors throughout the day, so things can vary quite a bit for me.
Though I originally came here for information, not visuals.

As far as seeing what is intended, with all the variables between one person's screen and mine, I understand there are limitations (even some that the fastidious may be unaware of). It's the "price of admission" for doing this on the internet, and is fine so long as one is aware of it.

Keeping this in mind, I view the photos with a more relativistic mindset. I try to appreciate the subject matter, composition, and tonal/color variation within the context of how it appears on my screen. I don't evaluate these things online using an absolute or rigid perspective.

However, I do understand that some do not want the distortion inherent in online imaging to misrepresent their work.

chriscrawfordphoto said:

I don't use a good self-calibrating graphics monitor so my pictures will look good on random people's monitors.

Click to expand...

I don't think it works that way. Not having a calibrated monitor just means that whatever color and brightness you're seeing is as random as on any other uncalibrated screen. The randomness on your end does not somehow compensate for the randomness on your customers' ends. If that were the case, then everybody would just use an uncalibrated screen because everything would look the same - how simple life would be if that was the case!

koraks said:

To an extent, but of course very different in terms of technical nature of the issues involved. Anyway, this is one reason why color reversal film reigned supreme in the publishing world. It gave an objective baseline reference.

But perhaps we should stick to the topic of digital presentation here since that's the focus of the original question. The ins & outs of analog color reproduction have been discussed extensively on this forum already; there's always room for more, of course, but it's be best to start a new thread about it in an appropriate section.

Click to expand...

I don`t want to discuss problems of color reproduction in the analog world, i wanted to point out that color reproduction always has been a problem - to relativize the problem itself. It`s not nice, but it`s always been like that and somehow the world kept on turning.
Another question also is whether average people do pay attention to color shifts at all in a picture - i assume for most the content of the picture does matter more than some possible color variations you cannot judge because you're not seeing the picture on the screen the photographer did use and the image software etc. .

... i didn`t wanted to stop this discussion either.
If you had to estimate in percent how big is the color deviation if you use a different screen and different browser?

Harry Callahan said:

in percent how big is the color deviation

Click to expand...

Insofar as anyone could answer this quantitative question, I'm afraid the answer would still not mean much for how people perceive these differences. The differences between browsers and platforms can be huge or minimal, depending on your frame of reference, personal sensitivity to color, contextual variables (lighting conditions, what you were doing just before looking at any examples) etc. The final conclusion is that some people will care at least at some points, and some won't. The question revolves naturally around the people who do care and the extent to which they can do things to combat the issue. I think that extent is also naturally limited given the fact that you have basically no control over someone else's display rendering.

koraks said:

Insofar as anyone could answer this quantitative question, I'm afraid the answer would still not mean much for how people perceive these differences. The differences between browsers and platforms can be huge or minimal, depending on your frame of reference, personal sensitivity to color, contextual variables (lighting conditions, what you were doing just before looking at any examples) etc. The final conclusion is that some people will care at least at some points, and some won't. The question revolves naturally around the people who do care and the extent to which they can do things to combat the issue. I think that extent is also naturally limited given the fact that you have basically no control over someone else's display rendering.

Click to expand...

You could in theory measure people's screens and determine the delta E of their screens versus a calibrated screen. But that is very difficult thing to do.

Chan Tran said:

You could in theory measure people's screens and determine the delta E of their screens versus a calibrated screen. But that is very difficult thing to do.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily very difficult provided you have the right equipment. You can arrive at some kind of XYZ or CIELAB measurement for a range of patches, for instance. The problem is that if you then calculate a percentage difference, virtually nobody will actually be able to intuitively interpret that number. Assume you end up with a 2% difference on a* out of Lab for two different screens - what does that mean, visually? Only people who work with these numbers all the time will be able to make sense of such a number, and even they are subject to contextual and subjective factors like anyone else.

The problem is not so much the measurement itself - it's the fact that it doesn't carry any real-world meaning as an indicator of perceptual differences.

koraks said:

Not necessarily very difficult provided you have the right equipment. You can arrive at some kind of XYZ or CIELAB measurement for a range of patches, for instance. The problem is that if you then calculate a percentage difference, virtually nobody will actually be able to intuitively interpret that number. Assume you end up with a 2% difference on a* out of Lab for two different screens - what does that mean, visually? Only people who work with these numbers all the time will be able to make sense of such a number, and even they are subject to contextual and subjective factors like anyone else.

The problem is not so much the measurement itself - it's the fact that it doesn't carry any real-world meaning as an indicator of perceptual differences.

Click to expand...

There is the established standard that a Delta E of less than 2 the average person can not tell the difference. When I worked in printing they accept a Delta E less than 5 to be good. However, the difficulty is how do you get to enough people screens to make the measurement?

Carnie Bob said:

Screen brightness setting is always a PIA for us, we never know what our clients are setting up with, we are always at 60% brightness but it seems many are at 100% , which will cause darker
prints if we do not do the test print.

Click to expand...

I found I get darker prints when using Blurb book printing. I'm sure it is the reason you mention that I keep the display brightness too high.

If someone is just printing JPEG with you, would it be bettter to just allow the camera to do the settings and let you figure out the correct print process procedures, settings, etc? OR do you provide ICC tyupe settings they should use when editing?

Kino said:

This is like timing/grading motion picture release prints for theatrical showings. Some theaters had Xenon Arc Lamp houses, some ran Tungsten bulbs and even a few Art Houses still scrounged-up vintage Carbon Arc rods for their presentations. Not only the color temp varied, but the screen brightness varied dramatically.

Was/is there Standards; yes. Good luck enforcing them.

Click to expand...

I've had many fights with theater managers when they show their movies so dark that it seems the whole movie occurred at night. Most patrons don't notice and could care less.

I own and use an Xrite i1Studio calibrator, and considering that I'm working off of an "okay" LCD of a business-class PC, (all-in-one Lenovo Thinkcentre), I can't complain.

I am getting a new monitor hoping it's as good as the 3 old ones I have.

koraks said:

Insofar as anyone could answer this quantitative question, I'm afraid the answer would still not mean much for how people perceive these differences. The differences between browsers and platforms can be huge or minimal, depending on your frame of reference, personal sensitivity to color, contextual variables (lighting conditions, what you were doing just before looking at any examples) etc. The final conclusion is that some people will care at least at some points, and some won't. The question revolves naturally around the people who do care and the extent to which they can do things to combat the issue. I think that extent is also naturally limited given the fact that you have basically no control over someone else's display rendering.

Click to expand...

I see.

koraks said:

I don't think it works that way. Not having a calibrated monitor just means that whatever color and brightness you're seeing is as random as on any other uncalibrated screen. The randomness on your end does not somehow compensate for the randomness on your customers' ends. If that were the case, then everybody would just use an uncalibrated screen because everything would look the same - how simple life would be if that was the case!

Click to expand...

You didn't read carefully. I actually DO use a calibrated screen, one made for graphics work that is internally calibrated and covers the Adobe RGB color space. My reason for using it is not to ensure other people see my images correctly, because it wouldn't, since I cannot control their screens. I use it so my prints will match the editing I do.