Viewing Photographs ...

on the computer screen is a tricky business. I never know what a given system setup, browser, JPEG or GIF rendering application will do to the picture that I massage on my screen. Recently, I posted a page with a picture that someone else had given me. When he looked at it, he said the colors didn't look as saturated as they were on his Windows desktop where he uses the same picture as wallpaper.

It made me curious, of course. I use a Power Macintosh with an older 16" RGB monitor and 24-bit display driver to create my pictures. I figured some effort to calibrate another monitor to mine might be useful if you want to view the pictures the same way they look on my screen.

Calibration Strips

I constructed the calibration strip in PhotoShop 4.0 set into RGB, 24bit mode. I used a linear gradient fill from 100% black to 100% white for the black and white test strip. I then used a linear gradient fill to wrap around the color spectrum from red to red at median saturation for the lower strip, and saved it as a JPEG image. In order not to bias the viewability of these strips, I've made the background color of this page a 75% flat gray color and the text is simple black.

You should see a smooth transition from end to end on both strips, and the full range of values your monitor can produce in black and white if your display hardware is set to 24 bit mode ("Millions of colors") and the Brightness and Contrast controls are set correctly.

Another Grayscale Calibration

I copied the stepped grayscale bar below from Don Krehbiel's website as it presents another possibly more precise way to adjust your screen contrast and brightness controls, particularly for black and white images.

"Use the gray scale above (divided into 5% increments) to adjust your monitor brightness and contrast. The black area should be maximum black, and the white pure white. Each step should be distinguished from its neighbors."
- Don Krehbiel: "Minox, Metol & Macintosh"