Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The petal that is straight up differs in having some highlights right along the edges that are very nearly at maximum white values. That probably means that, particularly on a laptop screen because they all have higher contrast, that those highlights might be blocking on your monitor and not on mine, thus showing us two very different things!
I've recently seen a really kewl effect from this sort of thing. A young fellow here in town is interested in learning photography and borrowed a couple of lenses to experiment with bokeh (particularly an old manual focus 85mm f/1.4 lens). So the first set of examples he emailed me had a very harshly surreal effect due to contrast and color saturation that were just plain strange! Then I saw them on a laptop... and they looked pretty close to "normal".
Color is just all over the place! A few people like to make comments about white balance for images shown on line, but in reality it's a joke when they try. Even with the usually claimed "on my calibrated monitor", it means very little. I have a menu option on my widow manager (this is Linux, and I don't have a clue how to do this with Windows) that allows me to switch between literally half a dozen very different calibrations!
The new laptop with Windows 7 OS and all the bells and whistles I added to it has more than half a dozen...it's a bit daft.
This is why I am a little hesitant when offering opinions when asked on photos shown online. What may be perceived as 'normal' for one person may not be necessarily the case for me and vice versa.
The new laptop with Windows 7 OS and all the bells and whistles I added to it has more than half a dozen...it's a bit daft.
This is why I am a little hesitant when offering opinions when asked on photos shown online. What may be perceived as 'normal' for one person may not be necessarily the case for me and vice versa.
This sort of reminds me when my friend and I hired a PS expert in India couple of years ago. Even though the claim was made that the person was well versed with PS CS3 Extended, we'd assumed he would be fine with Illustrator which we really wanted to use (not Photoshop) considering that the project was on Usability Sciences. We had to get him acquainted with Illustrator.
It was a matter of presenting different scenario before he realized the differences, and that what he perceived to be great, wasn't so under other circumstances.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Floyd_Davidson
Yes, except of course for the half that it makes brighter...
You boost color when you increase contrast. You can do it using curves in PS, no?
Last edited by EinsteinsGhost; 09-15-2011 at 04:09 PM..
TYou boost color when you increase contrast. You can do it using curves in PS, no?
No. Contrast is the slope of the graph you see when looking at a curves display. If the slope is made steeper the contrast is higher, if the slope is decreased the contrast is lower. Hence if contrast is adjusted by rotating the curve around the center of the graph, half of the tonal range gets brighter and half gets darker, with the average being exactly the same.
Brightness and color saturation can't be changed in RBG mode without color shift, so image data is changed to either HSV (Hue, Saturation, Level) or HSL (Hue, Saturation, LIghtness) to make those adjustments. In any case, just as the average brightness stays the same with the change in contrast, the same is true of saturation.
Of course the image does not necessarily have an average of middle gray, so if it's average is actually lower than that it will get darker and if it's average is higher it will get brighter. The odd thing however is that saturation changes differently with HSV and HSL modes, so whether it increases or decreased depends on how "Contrast" adjustment is implemented.
I use GIMP, and didn't use curves at all. It was done with a "Brightness/Contrast" tool that has a slider for each. What I actually did was very carefully adjust brightness and contrast of the image to hit both absolute black and absolute white without significant blocking. That is not a visual judgment, it's a literally measurement. It makes the image "right", but it can't take into account monitors that are not well corrected for either brightness or contrast. (Note that gamma is the same thing as contrast.)
If you're interested, in the edited image there are 968 pixels with a value of 255. There are 4,393 pixels at black. That is out of a total of 424,800. The average value is 108, so it is a little darker than middle gray at 128. The original had 93 pixels at pure white, and no pixels at all in the lowest 16 values. The average value was 138. For the flower itself, the median value in the original is 190.4, and it's 186.6 in the edited version. That is to say, it is indeed darker... by an imperceptible amount (about 1/8th of an fstop).
I do like the post-processed DOF/Bokeh...it brings the focus onto the petals more and it is more alluring.
The contrast and highlights, to me, are overblown. And the added sharpness appears to cause aberrations on the edges of the petals.
I'd agree with that but the other one appears to be too soft, somewhere in the middle would probably be perfect.
Quote:
That all being said, and of course only my opinion, I have to wonder with all the different resolutions of computers/monitors...if that doesn't effect the viewing of the images? Could it be that the images look optimal on one monitor, but due to different calibrations, lack in quality on another? Or is it even discernible enough to pose a quandry?
Images on web pages are shown at their standard pixel size unless a different size is specified in the markup. The only variables are the monitor size and what the resolution is set at.
The human eye can see about 200 to 300 DPI at viewing distance which is the distance you might hold an image at in your hand or be sitting from a monitor. For example my monitor has a physical width of 20 inches and resolution of 1920 for the width.
1920/20 = 96PPI in this case since we're discussing monitors.
This of course is far below what my eye can see, the image could have much more detail. If the physical size of the monitor is smaller but still the same resolution the image is much more detailed BUT it now has much smaller physical size. Of course you also have the color differences in monitors, graphic cards and a bunch of other things. In other words it's a cluster .........mmmmmmmm you know what I'm getting at.
Until the resolution of monitors exceed what the human eye can see there is no parity between different ones at least as far as the detail goes.
Although this thread seems interesting and informative to some; I know for a fact; Some people new to photography can't even begin to grasp what the heck is going on here.
Photography is all about creating an image using a camera.
this thread is all about "finger painting" 101
If you cannot create an image that looks great; straight out of the camera
YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG!!
I just had to put my 2 cents in - due to the many messages I have just received.
For the flower itself, the median value in the original is 190.4, and it's 186.6 in the edited version. That is to say, it is indeed darker... by an imperceptible amount (about 1/8th of an fstop).
Thank you... but not so imperceptible that I could notice without pixel peeping. Tonal changes using highlight and shadow manipulation on the curves is not quite a strange idea.
I'd agree with that but the other one appears to be too soft, somewhere in the middle would probably be perfect.
Images on web pages are shown at their standard pixel size unless a different size is specified in the markup. The only variables are the monitor size and what the resolution is set at.
The human eye can see about 200 to 300 DPI at viewing distance which is the distance you might hold an image at in your hand or be sitting from a monitor. For example my monitor has a physical width of 20 inches and resolution of 1920 for the width.
1920/20 = 96PPI in this case since we're discussing monitors.
This of course is far below what my eye can see, the image could have much more detail. If the physical size of the monitor is smaller but still the same resolution the image is much more detailed BUT it now has much smaller physical size. Of course you also have the color differences in monitors, graphic cards and a bunch of other things. In other words it's a cluster .........mmmmmmmm you know what I'm getting at.
Until the resolution of monitors exceed what the human eye can see there is no parity between different ones at least as far as the detail goes.
If you cannot create an image that looks great; straight out of the camera
YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG!!
I shoot RAW and to the right, and my images look like crap straight out of the camera. That's because I concentrate on capturing DATA, not a picture. I then turn the data into a picture during the RAW conversion at some future point on the computer. I may be doing it all wrong, but I ain't changing.
I shoot RAW and to the right, and my images look like crap straight out of the camera. That's because I concentrate on capturing DATA, not a picture. I then turn the data into a picture during the RAW conversion at some future point on the computer. I may be doing it all wrong, but I ain't changing.
As do I. I am always learning.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
