Setting brightness/Black-point

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Hi

I've just tried setting the brightness up on my iiyama 413 monitor using the
instructions on AIM:
http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/
Unless I'm misreading the instructions given, I get a far too dark a picture
where shadow detail is lost. The problem seems to be the advice to set the
blackpoint to virtually pure black as contrasted against the monitor's
surrounding mask. I contend that my monitor & no doubt most others just
don't have the brightness range to use this method!

If I use the Gamma chart method that appears to be the standard, the
black-point gets set much higher which results in a solely black screen
being slightly grey looking. As soon as other brightness levels are viewed
such as photographs or a normal desktop the eye/brain renders these less
than black areas as black.

Unfortunately, I've come unstuck in the past with these settings. I can
remember checking my colour temp was set to 6500k late one night. The next
morning, I thought my monitor looked a bit dim but forgot about it. I
preceded to edit some photos & thought at the back of my mind that something
seemed different but beyond being able to pin it down. When I compared
pictures previewed on my Olympus C4040, they seemed far punchier than when
viewed on my monitor. The penny eventually dropped when I rechecked the
brightness settings on my monitor - resetting the colour temp from 6500 (it
was already correct) to 6500 also resets the brightness to the default 50%
instead of ~74% that I'd previously set it to.

The moral here is to not necessarily to believe what you read on certain
sites & to be aware of how your monitor controls interact with each other. I
now tend to check both white & black parts of an important image being
edited by reading their respective values - very handy when ambient light
levels are high such as during a sunny day.

--
Why do CRT monitors have contrast controls when all the advice I've read
suggests setting them to 100%?

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Thus spake David J Taylor:
> Paul Busby wrote:
> []
>> The moral here is to not necessarily to believe what you read on
>> certain sites & to be aware of how your monitor controls interact
>> with each other. I now tend to check both white & black parts of an
>> important image being edited by reading their respective values -
>> very handy when ambient light levels are high such as during a sunny
>> day.
>
> I recommend the chart at the top of:
>
> http://www.jasc.com/support/kb/articles/monitor.asp
>
> and not making any attempt at setting the gamma. This is under
> Windows.

I recommend it too. My Gamma comes out at 2.60 - very slightly higher than
recommended. The AIM method results in high shadow detail compression. If
using the Gamma method:
http://www.normankoren.com/makingf [...] st_pattern
seems to be comprehensive.

--
I set my monitor up using its own controls rather than within the photo
editing or graphics card s/w using 6500k as the CT. Pictures viewed either
from my editing app or Windows viewer look virtually identical.