Images too dark on external display

Hello,
I use Lightroom on my (Lenovo) notebook. Because of the small screen size, I tried using it with an external (Samsung) display. However, when I open Lightroom on the external display, all the images suddenly seem way too dark. It is the case that this display is generally too dark, because when I view the same picture in a photo viewer or a browser it is not too dark. See for example this screenshot. On the left hand you see an image (export from Lightroom) in my browser, on the right hand the same image in Lightroom. You can clearly see it is much darker. When I view both images on the screen of the notebook itself, there is no difference between them.
Actually, when I move the Lightroom window from the notebook display to the external display, you can clearly see Lightroom adjusting the images from light to dark.
Does anyone know what causes this, and how I can prevent Lightroom from showing the images too dark?
Thanks!

I guess you misunderstood my problem. It's not only that images on the external display are way darker than on the notebook, but also that on the external display images in Lightroom are much darker than when I view the same image on the same display in a photo viewer or a browser. In the screenshot pictured above both the light and the dark version of the image are on the same external display.
However, in the meantime I found a solution. Changing the Windows Color System device profile to a non-WCS-profile did the trick: Photos appear as black, gray rectangles | Lightroom | Windows
Thanks anyway for trying to help.

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Images too dark? colorsync issue or corruption?

I am not sure if this is related to Aperture, or not, but it is impacting the quality of my experience in Aperture...
I have noticed that my MBP2007 display profile seems too dark, and I think there is some preference or application that is loading at startup that is interfering with it. I am using the default LCD profile for the MBP, and have made sure there are no other profiles selected (selecting other profiles does not appear to change the results in any positive way).
Here is what I have observed: I noticed in Aperture that all my images seemed to need correction for being too dark. This is strange, since my Nikon seems to be taking perfectly balanced photos. So I started to dig around and remove all preferences that were associated with any color application I have used. I restarted and noticed that when the desktop image first appeared (a photo I had taken) it looked like it had the correct tonal range. Also, all the images in Aperture looked correct! However, this was short lived, and now each time when I restart, the process starts the same way, with the image appearing correctly at first, but then, as the menu bar started to appear, the image suddenly became too dark, as though a profile had just been applied! I have looked at the Console log, but cannot see anything that looks suspicious in terms of something that may be loading and interfering with the profile. I have tried to delete colorsync preferences, but have not been able to correct the issue again! Any ideas? I am really stumped by this!
Thanks for any help!

Hmm ... interesting. The ICC type MNTR Monitor profile for the display should be shown in the Devices section of the Apple ColorSync Utility.
A generic ICC profile for the make and model of display is shown as Factory Profile and a measured ICC profile for the specific calibration state of the display is shown as Current Profile.
The ICC MNTR profile shown in Apple ColorSync Utility > Devices > Display > Current Profile should be the same as the one shown in System Preferences > Display > Color.
Apple ColorSync 2.5 introduced the VCGT Video Card Gamma Tag that sets the state of the video system to the state described in the measured profile.
This was - and is - intended to do away with the difficulties caused by competing gamma utilities e.g. Knoll Gamma for Photoshop that tried to take control of the video system on startup.
(selecting other profiles does not appear to change the results in any positive way).
The intention of some who were involved in the ICC architecture was that working space profiles would by type SPAC Color Space, but then Apple and Adobe wanted type MNTR Monitor profiles to do this job.
This produced the problem that type MNTR Monitor profiles have to do double duty, both as monitor profiles in which equal amounts of RGB do not produce gray and as working space profiles in which equal amounts of RGB do produce gray.
So, this is why System Preferences > Display > Color shows both measured monitor profiles and monitor profiles for RGB working spaces such as sRGB, eciRGB, adobeRGB and so on and so forth. If you click a profile that is not your measured monitor profile, you reset the video system.
Instead of resetting the video system, as you may be doing, install a good ICC profiling packing, calibrate your monitor, and characterise that state in a monitor profile that will be automatically installed by your ICC profiling package.
Not all problems are configuration problems, some are bugs too, but if one has a sense of what the different dialogues do and how they are supposed to work together then problems produced by system misconfiguration can at least be eliminated in troubleshooting.
/hh

Images too dark on Samsung monitor - please help!

We've just upgraded a Samsung 21" monitor to a Samsung 30" (305T).
In just TWO applications, Photoshop CS3 and Windows Photo Gallery (Vista64), all photographic images are much too dark. Not subtly, about 3-4 f-stops too dark.
EVERY other of our applications INCLUDING ADOBE BRIDGE AND FIREWORKS, and even Photoshop itself during Save to Web, displays the photos as they should appear.
I've tried setting various profiles in Windows Color Management as the default, including the ICC profile sRGB IEC61966-2.1 (which my reading says we should be using), as well as WCS profiles sRGB virtual and scRGB virtual, and tried using no profile at all. None of these changes makes any apparent difference at all to the images we're seeing.
In Photoshop, I've tried various options too. If set to Monitor Color (Monitor RGB - * wscRGB) Photoshop then displays images as it should. However the Camera Raw display when loading Nikon images is still much too dark, and the Photoshop Save to Web images are much too light. Arrrgh!
The monitor does not include any driver software, just electronic documentation (poorly edited) which offers no advice about this. I've seen references to various Gamma utilities, but not sure that's what I need. Is it?
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Thanks Peter & Sid. I appreciate the advice, but it doesn't match our experience over 12 years of designing web applications so I'm having trouble understanding what's different, can I ask for any more advice you might have?
If we calibrate the monitor using the recommended tools, will Photoshop images look 2-3 f-stops brighter (i.e. as they should look) and will images in all other apps (which look fine now, have always looked fine) look 2-3 f-stops too bright? Or would we be changing JUST the way Photoshop sees the images?
Through probably a dozen different previous CRT and LCD monitors, we've never calibrated anything. Even on our immediately-previous Samsung 213T monitor, images appear pretty much the same in Photoshop as they do in all other places. That includes published web sites viewed with several popular browsers and viewed on literally hundreds of different systems inside and outside of our office.
The previous monitor was being used with exactly the same software and hardware as the new one. The only thing that's changed is the monitor.
Peter asks about brightness or white point luminance. I haven't used any tool to determine that. The monitor is set to 50% brightness, for whatever that's worth, but I can tell you that it is substantially BRIGHTER on white than the previous monitor. The previous Samsung monitor is being run side-by-side with the new one, and it looks quite dull and yellow beside the new one (and we thought it was a great monitor!) The new 30" Samsung has MUCH whiter whites. Does that help even a little?
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Keynote graphic images too dark

Keynote Mac Users,
So I have finally figured out the display problem with keynote and Dark Ultrasound images. Here goes:
1. I put another hard drive (rescue) on my mac and loaded stripped version of Snow Leopard (10.6) and Keynote (5.0)
Result of image display was great
2. Mac OSX (10.6) and Keynote (5.0.3)
Result of image display was great
3. Mac OSX (10.6.1) and Keynote (5.0.3)
Result of image display was great
4. Mac OSX (10.6.2) and Keynote (5.3)
Result of image display was great
5. Mac OSX (10.6.2) and Keynote (5.3)
Result of image -> crap!!!!!
Therefore the problem was Mac OSX 10.6.3 upgrade!!!!
How you can fix->
Clean install of Snow leopard (10.6) and add Upgrades 10.1 and 10.2
If you have the luxury of having another hardrive like me - Install these on another drive and startup from there
You can get upgrades from Apple support URL:
Unfortunately cannot place other pictures associated with this email illustrating the problem.
Good Luck- Call me if needed. I wil report this to apple to see if they can fix!
Michael J. Lambert, MD, RDMS
Fellowship Director, Emergency Ultrasound
Advocate Christ Medical Center
Oak Lawn, IL 60453
708-684-4077

I guess you misunderstood my problem. It's not only that images on the external display are way darker than on the notebook, but also that on the external display images in Lightroom are much darker than when I view the same image on the same display in a photo viewer or a browser. In the screenshot pictured above both the light and the dark version of the image are on the same external display.
However, in the meantime I found a solution. Changing the Windows Color System device profile to a non-WCS-profile did the trick: Photos appear as black, gray rectangles | Lightroom | Windows
Thanks anyway for trying to help.

Presentation is too dark on external monitor

I have a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MBP 17" with 4GB of factory RAM running OS 10.6.3.
At the last two meetings I've been at, my presentation on the external VGA monitor for the audience (large room, 1000 people) has been a bit too dark. The presentation looks great on my screen. Someone from the audience said that this is a known issue with a new Mac software update, something to do with the gamma curve, but I don't really understand what this means.
I have a Mac in a corporate PC world, where many folks are just looking to find a reason to "dis" Mac technology. Any suggestions as to how to fix this bug would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

It is indeed a known issue (see, for example, http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11408594) and there are a lot of users waiting with bated breath for a solution. In the meantime, the only way to 'correct' the problem completely is to revert back to 10.6.2 (instructions provided in the thread quoted above). Short of that, some suggestions that others have made that might help:
Go to Displays in System Preferences
Select Color and Display all profiles
Selecting Generic RGB Profile or perhaps Wide Gamut RGB
This is a serious problem for me as I am a university professor and rely on my laptop to give lectures. And I too am conscious of the PC users that love to heckle while glowing smugly at the slightest evidence of a Mac bug. We will always have the last laugh, however.

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Hi there
Having a problem here. The RAW images from my Canon 1D Mark IV come in a stop too dark!
When I open them, they lookfine; a second later they switch to a too-dark version. I am using Camera Standard, and no other adjustments.
It's not just visual: the histogram of the opened file is shifter a stop to the left compared to the same phoito's histogram on the camera.
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www.michaelwillems.ca

Hi M, the question is simple, but the answer is complex. I'll provide an example to try to illustrate. The attached image is a downsampled version of a JPEG from the 1D Mark IV. It's a test picture of a color chart. I've drawn a red circle around the 2nd gray patch in the 4th row. When I take a picture with the 1D Mark IV zoomed into this patch at this exposure, I get a histogram all the way to the right. And indeed, when I open the file in any image editor (e.g., Photoshop, or DPP), and use a color picker / eyedropper to sample the values, the average value of that patch is (255,255,255). So this is like in your example when you say you look at the histogram (e.g., in DPP or on the camera LCD) and it's all the way to the right. In other words, the histogram effectively says this patch is clipped to the max value.
However, if we look at the average raw values in this example for that patch, they are actually (on an 8-bit scale) about (72, 209, 187). In other words, the actual camera-recorded raw values are still pretty far away from clipping to 255. (I should also mention that the camera-recorded raw values aren't white-balanced, which is why the green value is much higher than the red & blue values, above.)
So you can see there is a discrepancy between the camera-produced JPEG and the actual raw values. In this example, the camera histogram and JPEG values indicate a clipped patch at (255,255,255). If you are going by that histogram, then you would conclude reasonably that this patch is overexposed and clipped -- when actually it is not.
More generally, there are always discrepancies / differences between camera-recorded raw values and the histogram shown on the back of the camera (as well as the JPEGs rendered by the camera). This isn't error. This is preference. Cameras and software apply "preset" exposure and tone curve processing (and possibly sharpening, noise reduction, etc.), and the histograms you see on the back of the camera are based on those presets (not the actual raw data). This is why your histogram on the camera will change depending on your in-camera settings of white balance, tone curve, contrast, etc.
There is nothing wrong with the 1D Mark IV. Many Canon DSLRs currently leave a lot of highlight headroom, i.e., when metering they will be conservative on the highlight side, and expose a little less. As I recall (don't have my full notes in front of me), the 1D IV spot meters about 3.5 stops below the actual clipping point. In other words, if I had spot-metered that gray patch in the attached example, and started with the meter needle in the middle, I could then increase the exposure by about 3.5 stops before I actually clip that patch. That's quite a lot.
To summarize: you have to be careful when interpreting camera histograms. In many cases, it is easy to interpret that something is clipped when in fact it is not. If you see a histogram that appears bunched up to the right, the tendency is to decrease the exposure, and therefore make the histogram move to the left (so you aren't overexposing). In reality it is possible the original exposure was fine (without overexposure), and all that's happened is that now the image is even more underexposed.

Gray scale images – too dark

CS5.5 or CC – I have experienced several times that flat grayscale imaged - corrected and nice in PhotoShop turns up much too dark when placed in InDesign.
I make sure no effect or colors are applied to the frame or picture, but still no effect.
If I force transparency on the actual spread (by placing two white items on top of each other, the topmost multiplied on the master page) then it looks correct at once.
It makes no difference if it is a flat grayscale jpg or a psd, even a psd with a white background turns out this way.
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BR Nina Storm

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http://forums.adobe.com/message/6123199#6123199

Grayscale images too dark in InDesign

Hello everyone,
Whenever I place a grayscale image in my InDesign (CS 3) document, it looks far too dark (compared to what I want and what I prepared in Photoshop).
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Hello nicoleeted,
Welcome to the HP Forums, I hope you enjoy your experience! To help you get the most out of the HP Forums I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide First Time Here? Learn How to Post and More.
I understand you are having issues where when you watch a movie it is too dark and you cannot see it properly. I would encourage you to post your product number for your computer. I am linking an HP Support document below that will show you how to find your product number. As well, if you could indicate which operating system you are using. And whether your operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit as with this and the product number we can provide you with accurate information.
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Please re-post with the requested information and I would be happy to provide you with assistance. Thank you for posting on the HP Forums. Have a great day!
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Also be sure to mark my post as “Accept as Solution" if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others who face the same challenge find the same solution.
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Primary screen goes dark when external display is added

Hi,
Earlier, when I was on Mac Lion, I always used to face problems whenever an external Monitor was added to the Mac through the firewire to VGA converter port.
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Update:
I installed PSE9, which comes with ACR 6.1, and the issue was not resolved. So, I downloaded ACR 6.2 - same problem: EOS 7D raw images (thumbnails and when opened in raw converter) are 1 stop under-exposed. As stated above, Canon's DPP doesn't exhibit this problem, nor does FastStone Image Viewer, only ACR. Anyone else having this issue? Thanks for any help.
Ed

Images too dark on external display

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