Photos Displaying Differently

superflyninja

First off here is a photo of an apple that I took:


I edited it on my home pc. Behind the apple was the black side of a circular reflector and some creases were slightly visible. So I dropped the curves and masked back in the apple. I upload to 500px i think. I look at the photo later on my tablet and there was a lot of the background detail visible. I looked on the work pc and still it was visible.
So I went back to the pc i did the editing on and it looked the same on the website - background items visible. It s almost as if photos are displayed one way in lightroom, another on windows photo viewer and another on the web. I know photos have colour space profiles and Im sure I have lightroom set to export using whatever default space the image has. Looks to me like its not actually monitor calibration at fault but something to do with the colour spaces? Anyone else encounter something similar?
cheers for any feedback

dirtyghettokid

ooh yea i got a nasty surprise the other night. i edited a couple of pics on friday. in the pics, was a dark background, but with some objects i didn't want present. i had used a black paintbrush on a mask in photoshop to blend in. thought it was grand. when i edited, i turned my brightness all the way up on my macbook & couldn't see anything in the background after my edits.

then i was at my mate's house sat night, and he uses a mac mini hooked up to an LG TV (large screen) and an apple display. well on the TV, i could see loads of things i missed on the mask, but when i dragged it across to the apple display, it looked all black, like it had looked on my own macbook. kinda scary! left me wondering how many of my edits look dodgy on other screens, yet perfectly normal on my own
wish there weren't so many colour profiles!

superflyninja

Yeah its a nightmare. Im really trying to get my PP improved atm and its a right pain knowing the edits may not look right on other screens.Know of any workarounds/best practice?

stcstc

i would suggest using sRGB for web images

although that alone isnt enough to make sure

simple terms there isnt actually a way of making sure images display correctly everywhere

the other issue you will have is some of the photosharing sites will do some tweating to images uploaded. i have seen sharpening happen, contrast and brightness

also it depends on if they strip the profile imformation from the images as they are uploaded

superflyninja

stcstc wrote: »

i would suggest using sRGB for web images

although that alone isnt enough to make sure

simple terms there isnt actually a way of making sure images display correctly everywhere

the other issue you will have is some of the photosharing sites will do some tweating to images uploaded. i have seen sharpening happen, contrast and brightness

also it depends on if they strip the profile imformation from the images as they are uploaded

bugger!

Zillah

Regardless of different profiles treating the image differently, they will treat all 100% black pixels equally, so I actually think this is a monitor issue. On your screen they appeared to be pure black, but they actually weren't, some were slightly less than 100% black but were rendered as such because of a lack of sensitivity at that range on your display. A display with more sensitivity in the darkest part of the spectrum will accurately render the differences that your first monitor was unable to.

If I'm ever worried about something like that I use the eye-dropper in several places to make sure what is being rendered as pure black is actually 100%, and not just "close enough" for the monitor to say "that'll do!".

Another handy trick you can do is to slowly use curves to brighten everything except the darkest blacks to reveal those that are only pretending to be pure black. Behold!



All those pseudo-black patches showed up as pure black on my laptop monitor until the curves revealed them. I bet if I looked at the original on my Dell Ultrasharp at home those patches would be very dark grey.

superflyninja

Good tips cheers.....had'nt thought of using the eyedropper.........I have a new monitor so i guess ill just need to make sure thats calibrated ok and do the checks when finished processing.