Inline:
blue2lip wrote:
> O.K., Pop', my screen resolution is set at 1440 x 900 pixels and color
> quality is set at 32 bit.
Perfect. Also, assuming you're North America, scan rate should be 70 Hz or
higher, whichever gives the cleanest looking no-flicker display. I work at
1024 x 768, 75 Hz most of the time and it suffices well; Gamma I think is
about 1.4 in my case; maybe 1.38. I keep digital exposure times at 1.1 and
occasionally up as high as 1.4.
I use Millers Professional Imaging lab for
> my work. However, I am a bit new at all this digital stuff. I do
> have another computer, a Compaq Presario desk top with a Mag
> Innovision monitor that are both about four to five years old. (I
> can't remember) but it seems to do o.k. I just set up that monitor
> to match the Millers color management guide. Although they ask you to
> set up to daylight temperature, I did not have that option on either
> monitor.
Perhaps it's a setting on your video control panel for the video card?
The contrast on the HP Pavilion seems to be extreme,
> however, and I had a very difficult time not having whites washed
> completely out.
That's going to be your problem, I bet. From your description it sounds
like it's not a minor saturation issue but that your colors are blooming and
bleeding all over each other; you'd never see fine detail with that, I don't
think.
I think your issues are around either: The display monitor you have (which
I said previously wasn't the case, I know), or, more likely, the
brightness/contrast/saturation/gray levels settings. Yes, "gray" levels,
and I understand it's color prints your'e working with.
IMO, you should display a known-good previously edited image on the screen.
Set the monitor settings as best you can for the best display.
Next open your video card controls and further adjust things to your
liking.
Now:
You mentioned "Millers color management guide": I don't know what that
particular one is, but NOW try to set IT up. It's very important when
you're setting pure colors that there is no pattern of any kind visible in
the pure color, IF you have the option of doing so.
"Daylight Temperature" might have a different name in your
system/programs. What it's talking about is the color depth for various
times of the day; sunlight, shadow, flourescent, that sort of thing, if that
helps any.
Are you using sRGB? Perhaps you have the wrong color space chosen?
> ... To fit the image to a 5 x 5, I added more
> black to the top and blended the colors to even out the change.
I'm not sure what you mean there. Resizing an image should not in and of
itself require any color manipulations. I assume you used your image editor
for the resizing, right?
I
> know, this is probably not the best way to do this, but, as I said,
> I'm a bit new at all this digital stuff.
You've got lots of company, believe me!
This time, I did not turn
> the monitor down, I simply could not see the problem at all. The
> last time, the problem showed up on the final images. This time, my
> assistant caught it before it went to print.
That's good at least. It sounds like you at least have a control point
where you can get things checked out until you get things right.
You might not expect this, but here's another thing that can greatly change
how your images show on screen: YOUR printer.
IFF you could install the same printer drivers as your assistant has,
then it's possible to come pretty close to being able to see the same things
onscreen. You do NOT have to have the printer; you simply need the printer
installed and chosen as the default printer while you are working on your
images. I've done that several times in order to "see" what my destinations
"see" and it served me well. Just don't forget to change that printer
before you print anything real or you might spit out a lot of sheets of
garbage! I did that, too!
Usually print shops will have requirements for submissions such as file
size, print size, dpi or ppi to dp, eRGB, CMYK, and on and on, depending on
the printer. Are you able to meet those requirements with any reasonable
closeness?
Any help or suggestions
> would be great. I got this computer at Costco, and I know I could
> return it easily (that's why I love shopping there). But if there's
> a way to get it to work, I'd like to give it a try.
I'll offer you two things if you wish to pursue it:
-- Give me your exact computer model number and I'll see if I can check out
its abilities. A URL would be even better, but I can find that on my own.
-- Send me one good and one problem image, preferably a before/after, and
I'll take a look at them here and see if I have anything to suggest about
them. If you want to go this route, I'll give you a "real" email address to
use, and of course I'll need yours also in case you use throw-aways.
-- Have you pursued the link I gave you for photoshop talk?
Regards,
Pop`
>
> Thanks for your response and help.
>
>> blue2lip wrote:
>>> I just purchased this HP Pavilion laptop computer and as I am a
>>> professional photographer, it is important that I can see extreme
>>> detail in the images I work on. I just worked on 14 images in
>>> photoshop and sent them to my assistant to get out to the lab. When
>>> she brought the images up on her computer, she was able to see where
>>> I had darkened the black background to cover the pants and parts of
>>> the white flesh showing on the customer I had photographed. Even
>>> though I know exactly where the imperfections and corrections are,
>>> when I bring these images up on this computer, I am not able to see
>>> the detail she was seeing on her computer monitor. Is there any way
>>> to adjust this monitor so that the details are exposed, and thus,
>>> corrections can be made? If this is not possible, I need to find
>>> out what laptop computer works for professional image manipulation
>>> through photoshop or other image manipulation software.
>>
>> For that gross a mismatch, I doubt it's the quality of your monitor,
>> but it's possible. What resolution do you have the monitor set for?
>> Minumum, it should be 1280 x yyy or higher. 800 x yyy or lower will
>> help to mask out some of the details, which is not what you want.
>>
>> I don't know Photoshop any longer (I currently am using PaintShop
>> Pro 9 and/ore 10) but I hang out with a lot who do. I think there
>> is a tool or section where you can "set up" your monitor. It
>> usually consists of modifying colors and grays in panels until a
>> center section exactly matches the parts on each side. Visually it
>> looks sort of like you're doping out a moire pattern and exactly
>> matching colors/patterns. It's easy to do. Not as accurate as say
>> a Pantel panel, but I think plenty for what your problem is.
>>
>> The newsgroup
cnews.corel.com has a corel.PaintShopProX group there
>> and you'll find a lot of photoshoppers there too. There are some
>> usenet PSP groups too, but ... they're full of the usual shenanigans
>> so culling out real info can be more difficult. They can likely
>> help you out with setting up for things like that.
>> If you go there, share your operating system/version, cpu
>> version/type, photoshop version, amount of RAM, Video Ram if
>> applicable, and your video card model # at least; that will get you
>> a much better targetted set of responses.
>> To be brutally honest, your post as it is, is poor to terrible for
>> getting much useful help; way too little detail. The first thing
>> that came to my mind, for example, was whether you were using a
>> clone tool, a copy tool, a mask, how many overlays; all that sort of
>> thing when you apparently tried to replace certain pixels in a
>> cleanup effort. Then, reading it over again, I decided that
>> you're in a more basic area and probably need more basic assistance
>> than that.
>>
>> Assuming you were able to do this same work on a previous machine
>> with photoshop and had no problems (you included no info that way),
>> then it certainly should be able to be done on your HP with
>> TrueColor and 24 or 32 bit video settings at 1280 or greater. In
>> particular, for instance, if you are set for 16 colors, you'll never
>> see the kind of things your'e talking about. BTW, I'm not saying
>> things lke 800 x 600 because I don't know the shape of your screen;
>> 4:3 or 16:9 or whatever, so I leave it at 800 x yyy.
>>
>> At this point I'd be careful of investing big bucks in a professional
>> monitor: There are too many other areas that can give the problems
>> you talk about, including your video card and/or Video RAM, etc etc
>> etc. It wouldn't hurt to try another borrowed/whatever monitor,
>> but I suspect that isn't your problem for what you've described.
>>
>> HTH
>>
>> Pop`
