Computer Monitor (photo contrast question)
 

My monitor at home shows all formats of photos (jpg, tif, etc.) with unsually dark contrast. Is the same regardless of program used to open and view photo. When viewed on another computer the photos are not at fault having good contrast.

Web pages and program windows all have good contrast.

What global XP setting needs to be adjusted?

Migrate to OSX. :P

If I can shoot you an email, I have a ppt presentation with test patterns and high quality pictures we use to set up monitors here at work. It's about 17M. It'll let you adjust your monitor to a standard.

Your monitor may also have a "reset" button to set everything back to factory. Is it a LCD or CRT?

No can do....dislike white furniture.:P

Evan - Its a 19" CRT by HP.

It's only a problem with photos; nothing else.

Here, I'll make it easy. Adjust brightness until you can just see the first gray box in the black row. Adjust contrast until you can just see all the gray boxes in the white row.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y71...c/Picture1.jpg

It shouldn't effect the readability of your other applications.

Been down this road before, but will give it a try again when I get home this evening.

Thanks

OK, that's the best I can offer... :) Some computers have unique software control consoles for their display systems that will let you fiddle with things like black level and gamma but that will be somewhere in the computers control panel.

I'm pretty sure that if you can make the test pattern look good, your pictures will look better too.

I did this yesterday.


Take a good quality photo and print it.



Hold it next to the monitor, and adjust the monitor to match the photo as best you can.

it might be that its not the monitor and it is the color profile that you are using. If you have access to another monitor you can check this out. Hook up the other monitor and see if the problem is the same if so then it is a color profile problem and not the monitor.

The best monitor i ever had was an old Sony....it had the best tonal quality of any monitor i have ever used.....the LCD's are much more contrasty.

Don't have time to play with this now, but like that thought.

Where do I find that profile?

right click on desktop then properties go to advance and then color management. Go to the advance tab in there and you will see what profile you are using. If you are going to change the setting remember what your profile is now so you wont mess things up more, you can always go back.

Not all computers have color profiles. If you right click on the desktop and choose "graphics options", your computer may have a color management panel like this one on my computer:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y71...c/ad46cf9f.jpg

It does a nice job of adjusting things and you can see the results in real-time.

I am sorry to correct you but every computer has a color profile whether mac or pc.