What gamma do you profile your monitor for?

[Ruffles]

Hi everyone. I recently posted a photo on Photosig (here (http://www.photosig.com/go/photos/view?id=1275504) ) and people complained about the heavy clone and brush marks. On my home WinXP system, I had it profiled to 2.2 gamma and the photo looks fine. When I soft proof the picture with my Epson 2200 profile, I can kind of see the problem and if I print it, it is just like the screen. If you know where to look, you can see it but it's certainly not obvious.

I pulled up the image on my laptop and work computers. With these machines (both xp), it's definatly noticeable. I'm not sure how to go about fixing the problem.

I reprofiled my home system to 1.8 gamma and while I think it's a little too bright, I feel I need to keep it there so that I have a better chance at catching this. The reason I'm hesitant to mess with my machine very much is that it appears to be profiled correctly. What I see on the screen is what I get out of the printer. My problem is what other people see on their screen. I believe IE doesn't support color profiles so I don't think that is the soloution. Have you guys run into this? Thanks for your help.

[Eddie the Gnat]

I can't see more than a thumbnail on photosig so I can't comment on this particular image, but I know what you mean as it's happened to me before. I'm using an iBook at the moment with a 1.8 gamma and I find this to be really good, even for fine work, though it's a tft screen. I also find it really useful to be able to tip the screen back and make everything look funny, because when you do this you see the cloning marks stand out. Only works on a tft though.

On the other hand my windows xp system at work, with a pair of 22" crt screens, is calibrated to 2.2 and it's still possible to see fine detail in all areas of pictures. Perhaps your screen simply can't show as wide a range of tones as you need, even when it's calibrated?

Hope you get it sorted. It's frustrating when this happens.

Eddie.

[Ruffles]

Thanks for the suggestion. My home machine has a 21" Samsung TFT panel so maybe the tilt trick will work. I didn't realize that photosig would only show a thumb. The picture is the same one as in the bottom of this thread (http://www.theswampbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7771) .

[Eddie the Gnat]

Ah yes. That is very obvious. You could try using the burn tool for the sky - cutting huge chunks out like that is very difficult to do convincingly.

As for your colour profile, you definitely need to do something but I'm not sure what. Another trick for images like this is to open up the levels dialogue box and slide the midpoint marker way over to the left. It would have shown you the problems with this picture.

It's a very nice picture otherwise.
Sorry I can't be more helpful about the profiling. :(

Eddie

[easternherp]

Usually the monitor should be set to 2.2 as Windows usually are set up for this and can't change it. Macs can set to 1.8 but should be set to 2.2
You may want to recalibrate your screen from scratch.

[Ruffles]

I use Photocal to create monitor profiles so I can set the gamma to 2.2 or 1.8. I'll leave it at 1.8 for a while and see how it goes.

[Linda G]

We have this at work sometimes and the work around for us is to make an adjustment levels layer and lighten it. (it seems it's always the dark areas that hide the clone marks for us) Then we go to the original layer and use the clone tool or healing brush to blend better. Discard the adjustment layer and then you know you've got the correct color for the printer. Headache? Yeah, it's a COMPUTER! :eek: