Mmm, icons

[triskellian]

Last night, I uploaded my fiftieth icon <points at icon>. Well, it's actually my more-than-fiftieth, because I've had others that I've abandoned, but it fills my last icon slot, which is a sad thing in a way, although there are a few of my existing icons that I don't much like, and will be happy to ditch when the time comes.

But this rambling sort of has a point. I made this icon on my laptop (flat screen, Mac), on which the colours and brightness look fine. Now, on my work puter (CRT, PC), it's far too dark, so I need to know how it looks to you guys...

[Poll #303301]
Hmmm. Some people use polls all the time, and seem to consider them the killer app for paid accounts. This is probably only my second or third poll ever - icons are the killer app for me, all the way ;-)

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I don't know how dark it's supposed to be. So it might be the "right" darkness, but darker than I'd prefer.

For comparison, Angel is supposed to be dark. But I cheat when watching it, by turning up the brightness on my TV: I'd rather see the details than get the right atmosphere.

[triskellian]

Nah, it's supposed to be light and bright and cheerful.

And the fact that Angel is supposed to be dark is why I don't mind as much having a similar problem with my puppet Angel icon ;-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's supposed to be light and bright and cheerful.

OK, in that case I change my vote to "Too dark" !

Which is odd. Oh, wait, you drew it on your laptop ? In that case I blame the backlight.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

As a side note, the issue is generally poor contrast rather than poor brightness. For a CRT, the contrast on your monitor should be set to maximum (and possibly for flatscreens too, but I don't know much about them having only owned one for a couple of weeks - they're just not nice).

Macs are more likely to have correct default colour settings because they're used by artists who:

1) Need the settings to be right.
2) Are less likely to know how to change them.

But the software brightness/contrast settings on PCs can be changed if you know how. (I would tell you, but I only ever do it through Photoshop. It can be done without, though, because Beatrice has managed it !)

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

No, modern flatscreens have come a very long way in just a year or two. _alanna's new 'puter came with a 17" screen which I'm very impressed with indeed.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Macs are more likely to have correct default colour settings

There are also different standards at work here - Apple QuickDraw applies its own built-in gamma correction (of about 1.45 according to some bloke on the interweb). Evaluating on a Mac what will look OK on a PC is a mug's game, because even monitors/screens with comparable gammas will come out wildly different. I don't know whether Quartz does the same trick.

Unless your image manipulation software knows the total gamma of your screen, and it is correctly saving this desired gamma in the image, and the PC displaying it knows the total gamma of its monitor, and correctly applies a correction to get from the gamma recorded in the image to the gamma of the system displaying it, then there's no reason the brightnesses would match.

[triskellian]

I'm not expecting them to match exactly, I was just hoping that something that looks roughly OK on the laptop would look roughly OK on my work puter. Most of the point of this exercise was to figure out which one of them was most 'off' (by the standards of the people who read my LJ, since they're the audience for most of my graphical playing around), so I could adjust accordingly.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I'm not expecting them to match exactly

1.45 is actually quite a lot of difference. CRTs typically range from 2.2 to 2.5, and it's all multiplicative, so 1.45 represents about triple the difference you'd normally see between different monitors. Since your image is composed entirely of midtones, it's exactly the kind of thing that is most sensitive to errors of gamma correction, because shifting midtones destroys the contrast.

Try creating an image with several very pale grey shades - if it then looks *more* contrasty on your PC, then it's the gamma rather than the contrast making the difference.

Anyhoo, this is just a suggestion - if you can find an "assumed gamma" setting anywhere in your OS or image software, you might be able to deal with the problem without having to mess about changing the brightness of your laptop (and thereby makeing everything other than this icon too bright).

[triskellian]

I'm utterly clueless about the tech/science behind image manipulation, so this is all helpful stuff which I'll try - thanks!

Gamma

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I've never really understood the logic behind all that cr*p actually.

To my way of thinking, there is a unique correct way for a monitor to display a picture with a certain set of RGB parameters (for a fixed position of the monitor's twiddly knobs). Gamma corrections on a given platform are there to fix this, not to get creative with the settings.

The whole point of all this being that you should be able to save a picture on one system and have it look pretty much exactly the same on another. (And when this fails, at least one system has its gamma set wrong.)

Ian always claimed otherwise, but was never able to satisfactorily explain to me why not.

Re: Gamma

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

The only satisfactory excuses I've ever heard are that gamma correction used to be quite expensive, and that computers can't measure the gamma of the screen they're attached to. But even the second of those ought to have been fixable with PnP. Beyond that, all I can think is that if someone is used to a value, they'll get confused if it changes.

So yes, it basically sucks in that printers have a gamma of 1, so a monitor with anything other than that makes things tricky. And woe betide if your monitor has different gamma values for different phosphor colours. But since most graphics setups can't apply a variable correction, we're basically stuck with it.

[triskellian]

Cheers - I'll do some fiddling with contrast levels.

I'm not at all fussed about 'correct' colour settings, since most of the stuff I do on my laptop isn't for print, but for my LJ readers, and for me, on the laptop.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

The sad truth is that currently, LCD screens suck for making decent art. Your best bet would be to get a testcard which looks good on your CRT, then use it as a comparator on your laptop. Something like Photoshop's Image>Adjustments>Levels allow you to play with the general output until they look similar.

Alternatively, use the testcard to set your laptop screen to a lower brightness... but then you get a dark 'puter ;-(

[triskellian]

LCD screens suck for making decent art
Yeah, I figured it was something like that. I do use Photoshop to fiddle with levels and stuff, but it's not much use if the screen I'm viewing the image on is lighter than average ;-) I'll have a look at testcards, too - ta!

[zandev.livejournal.com]

Also note that on a Mac, in System Preferences -> Displays there is a colour calibration utility.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

I'd have said that the image would be just fine for brightness and contrast if it weren't Eeeny Weeny. The loss of detail when you resize leaves you needing to emphasise what detail is left.