kathywilson Posted May 20, 2005 Share Posted May 20, 2005 After seeing numerous comments on my photos about "subtle" colors and "not overly saturated" etc I came to the conclusion what I'm seeing and what they're seeing are two different things. I've just discovered this is due to the gamma setting in Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop 7 - I'd always thought PS7 showed the photos WAY too light - and Painthop was just about right. Gamma for PSP is set at 1, and PS7 is set at 1.8. I did some reading and saw that PCs are set to a default of 2.2. What on earth do I set the gamma as in PS7, PSP and/or my monitor? I know there's a calibration thing to be done with the monitor but a couple hundred bucks for the hardware is out of the question. I've tried using the charts, but get nowhere. The very best I can get is with brightness and contrast set at 100% for both... and I have no idea if there's a "gamma" setting or if that's controlled by brightness/contrast. HELP! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kathywilson Posted May 20, 2005 Author Share Posted May 20, 2005 Oh, I should probably mention I have an LCD flat panel 1800FP(Analog) monitor from Dell, and the gamma setting on it (after a long search!) is .95 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erik scanhancer Posted May 20, 2005 Share Posted May 20, 2005 The standard monitor gamma on a Mac is 1.8. Your monitor should be set to that value as well. However, when calibrating your monitor, gamma 2.2 is mostly recommended for the sake of standardising over different systems. (Prepress workers generally are using 1.8, photographers use 2.2) On my Mac system I am using a Mac Cinema Display (an LCD) which is calibrated to a gamma of 2.2. Photoshop will correctly convert your used color space to what you see on your monitor because it will use the info from your monitor profile for the translation. So either set your monitor to gamma 1.8 or 2.2 and tell that to Photoshop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellis_vener_photography Posted May 21, 2005 Share Posted May 21, 2005 <I>The standard monitor gamma on a Mac is 1.8. Your monitor should be set to that value as well. </I>That isn't really true anymore. Use a monitor gamma setting of 2.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kathywilson Posted May 21, 2005 Author Share Posted May 21, 2005 I use Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 - and when I set the gamma to 2.2 it all but whites out everything. There's no possible way that view is normal. I turned brightness down to 10 (of 100) and contrast at 86 before it approached anything I could possibly look at for more than 5 minutes. Absolutely everything was washed out! So I tried 1.8 which was only moderately better. I've got it on 1.0 at the moment and that's about as bright as I can stand it - though I can see each block on those black-white scales which I couldn't before, so is that progress? I don't get this at all... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_houghton Posted May 21, 2005 Share Posted May 21, 2005 Since you are running PSP, you must be using a Windows system, in which case are you using Adobe Gamma (from the Control Panel) to do a basic monitor calibration? You can set the gamma to 2.2 in that. A monitor profile will be created and loaded on system boot by Adobe Gamma Loader. The monitot adjustment is then system wide, not just for Photoshop. You can check the gamma setting with the tool at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~efros/java/gamma/gamma.html John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gary m Posted May 21, 2005 Share Posted May 21, 2005 <A HREF="http://www.normankoren.com/color_management_2A.html">THIS</A> page has a visual test for gamma settings as well as an explanation of the gamma setting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_clark Posted May 21, 2005 Share Posted May 21, 2005 The Norman Koren chart linked above is one of the most correct gamma charts available as far as I can determine. Personally I never got along all that well with Adobe Gamma, I recommend WiziWYG instead for free visual calibration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmic_c Posted May 21, 2005 Share Posted May 21, 2005 Hello Kathy<p> your use of the graphics card configuration to adjust your monitor gama needs a little clarification. The value shown in the configuration is not an absolute value like 2.2 or 1.8, it is the extent of the change that is to be made with a value of 1 indicating no chnage. So setting this value to 2.2 will give the results you saw.<p> It is possible to get reasonable results without hardware calibration, look at the link below for detailed step by step instructions.<p> <a href="http://www.photo-i.co.uk/BB/viewtopic.php?t=183">monitor calibration without hardware</a><br>. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kathywilson Posted May 21, 2005 Author Share Posted May 21, 2005 Thank you all! :) Gary and Steven's option worked out best for me, though I think my eyes have gone crazy from those charts! After a while I didn't know if I was seeing things or not :) But I believe I now have the thing set right, and it wasn't as huge a change as I thought it would be, though the effect on my photos is rather dramatic considering I thought they were so much darker/saturated than they are. This is going to take a little getting used to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_rodney1 Posted May 21, 2005 Share Posted May 21, 2005 -->The standard monitor gamma on a Mac is 1.8. Your monitor should be set to that value as well. However, when calibrating your monitor, gamma 2.2 is mostly recommended for the sake of standardising over different systems. Its a bit more complicated than that. Displays have a native Tone Response Curve (TRC) specified by a gamma value, which is a result of their natural behavior. Gamma is a specific formula (output = input gamma ) that describes a very simple curve. This curve, the result of this gamma formula, in the case of a display, describes input amplitude (voltage) and the corresponding light output (brightness). Various values for gamma produce different curves. So we can use a single number to describe this type of curve. However, many devices do not follow this formula, their curves are far more complex and are not gamma curves nor should we use gamma to describe them (tone response curve is the accurate term). There is no difference between a display a user will connect to a Macintosh versus a Windows system. The operating system does make some assumptions about gamma. The TRC gamma assumed by the Macintosh is 1.8 while the TRC gamma assumed by the Windows operating system is 2.2. Over the years, most Macintosh users were under the impression that the correct TRC gamma to use as a target value was 1.8. This is due to the early Macintosh operating system attempting to produce a screen to print match on devices that also used a TRC gamma of 1.8; the LaserWriter printer. Since color management didn?t exist back in those days, producing a native TRC gamma of 1.8 assured that the Grayscale output and the preview of images on the Macintosh were closer. However, the display?s native TRC gamma was not close to this gamma assumption. The native TRC gamma of most displays is in the neighborhood of 2.0 to 2.2. Today the use of 1.8 gamma within the Macintosh OS is simply a legacy and not useful. If a user calibrates the display to something other than a TRC of gamma 1.8, the appearance of color outside ICC-aware applications will appear darker or lighter. There are compelling advantages to calibrating a display as close to the native, physical TRC gamma as possible. The farther the display calibration is from the native gamma of the display, the more adjustments have to be produced at the graphic card. Macintosh users should set their TRC gamma target value to 2.2 instead of 1.8. The slight darkening of images outside ICC aware applications is not severe enough to present a problem and the results of keeping the display calibration closer to it?s native condition is less aliasing of images. Since TRC of the display set for calibration is recorded in the ICC profile and this information is provided to Photoshop and other ICC-aware applications images outside an ICC aware application like Photoshop may appear a bit dark. However the soft proofing previews in Photoshop are correct. This is how a Macintosh user and a Windows user can view the same image with the same color appearance even if both systems are assuming a different gamma. The natural TRC of an LCD is a severe S curve and doesn?t even remotely follow the gamma formula. LCD manufacturers want to have their displays act like CRTs. End users who don?t use color management expect the colors to be at least ?in the ball park? of what they are used to seeing on CRTs. To achieve this, the LCD has a built-in 8-bit LUT (Look- Up Table), which makes the LCD follow the gamma formula, usually gamma 2.2. By converting 8-bit input data into 8-bit output data, the result is banding (aliasing) in images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kathywilson Posted May 22, 2005 Author Share Posted May 22, 2005 Good God. So is my monitor too bright now, or what? I'm having a hard time getting used to it...it just seems wrong somehow, but I want my pictures to present as I see them - I know that's not completely possible because it seems everyone on the planet has a different setting on their monitor, but shouldn't it at least be close? When I print these pictures (from any application) they are only *very slightly* lighter than what they look like on my screen. I'd thought this meant stuff on my side was "correct" - but then it just seemed like no one saw it the same. And so maybe I wasn't seeing other photographer's work as it was supposed to be.... like all those pictures I thought were too dark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_rodney1 Posted May 22, 2005 Share Posted May 22, 2005 -->So is my monitor too bright now, or what? Brightness (luminance) has NOTHING to do with Gamma. Your profiling software with instrument will ask for a target value for luminance (specified in cd/m2). This is based on the ambient light around the display. For an LCD, try a setting of 120 cd/m2 or 95 cd/m2 for a CRT (assuming in the later case a pretty low ambient light of about 20 LUX). Andrew Rodney www.digitaldog.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordonr Posted May 24, 2005 Share Posted May 24, 2005 The exact gamma setting is not too important. What is important is that you should be able to see at least 7 (preferably 8 or 9) equally spaced grey-scale bars on you monitor once calibrated. This should allow you to view 90% of the images on the web. Example: http://www.capetownskies.com/grey_scale.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_rodney1 Posted May 24, 2005 Share Posted May 24, 2005 The exact TRC gamma setting for a display is not all that important unless your goal is to produce the least amount of aliasing in image previews. The best gamma is the native gamma but only one product I know of, now discontinued (Sony Artisan) can actually target for that native TRC gamma for each individual display. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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