Too contrasty!

Does anyone know if there's a way to reduce the contrast on my iMac as it seems a bit too contrasty? The blacks are too black and the lighter tones are just too bright.
Thanks.

Hi there,
Go to System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing ... display section will have a contrast slide, all the way to left is normal...
The only other place to adjust contrast may be in the System Preferences > Displays > Color, you calibrate an existing profile under expert mode which will allow some fine tuning of display...
Good luck, Rick
iMac G5 iSight 20" - 30G iPOD in Slimming Black - Mac OS X (10.4.7) - HP Pav 15" WS and Toshiba Sat 17" WS LP's - Canon 20D & A620

Similar Messages

Display problem - Too Contrasty

I am using Mac Mini, connected to a HP widescreen LCD monitor via VGA-VGA cable using the adaptor came with the Mini.
It was all fine before. But now the display gone too contrasty. I have changed the cable and even the monitor itself (as I thought the monitor was faulty and returned for a new one), still the problem exists. I have to plug out the VGA cable connected to the Mini adaptor (sometimes including the adaptor itself) and re-plug it in, and that seems to solve the problem. I have to do that everytime I start up the Mac Mini.
Can anyone please let me know whats wrong and how to solve it?
Thanks.

I will try both again when I get home.
I work on photo editing a lot, so, calibrated the monitor using SpyderExpress. I don't really want to use option 2 you mentioned as that might not give me accurate color. But I will try option 1 you mentioned.

Printing too contrasty and saturated in CS6. How to correct?

i have just upgraded from Mac OS 10.5 and CS5 to Mac OS 10.8.4 and CS6 printing on Epson 9880. Struggling to get calibrated prints - before it was excellent. Now printed images are WAY contrasty and saturated compared to the monitor, a LA Cie 324, which I calibrate with la Cie Eye One puck. If I use settings "Let Printer" manage color, the print is much less saturated and contrasty than if I use the settings "Let PS" manage color; all this relates to using icc profiles for Epson Premium Photo Paper Glossy, or other papers, Ilford Galerie Prestige Smooth Pearl, for example. The overall color is ok, it is an issue of contrast and saturation at the moment. As with all of these issues, very frustrating!
Any suggestions for resolving this?

Epson does have a problem with the "use 16 bit" checkbox in the Epson print settings that can cause similar issues.
Try turning it off.

Iphoto Prints: good but too contrasty?

I liked my experience with Iphoto
I wanted to make a photobook for my family using iphoto. I adjusted the photos to where I thought they would look good and sent the request online. I just got them in the mail and they look good! The paper has a good thickness and it has nice presentation. (Though it says "made on a mac on the back") The pictures themselves came out a little contrasty though.
My whites are blown and some semi-darks are gone. But, it is print after all, what can you do? Also, the borders that iphoto puts between photos seemed uneven. Some were thicker than others. Anyone else experience this?
Imac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I don't know why but I can no longer see the date of a photo before importing it, only the entire range?
I usually just plug my iPhone in and I can see the date of a specific photo simply by selecting it. This is a major draw back for me as I build up a collection of photos before importing them to iphoto and often I can't remember which photos are associated. For example I take lots of photos of my baby boy and the location is the same making it hard to distinguish occasions.
Come on Apple, you've paid at a whole lot of money to developers only to go backwards? Do you need to spend a few million on ensuring better quality control? I'm sure Steve could just sit at his desk for a moment and try it for a sec, didn't take me long to work out there's some big draw backs.
All that was needed really was the little fullscreen button which I'm surprised wasn't implemented ages ago.

Colour profiles problem - images saving too dull. Please help.

I realise you have probably had this question a million times before and I have looked at enough related threads, but I am still at a loss as to what to do. Please note I'm not the most computer-savvy.
For the record I am using Photoshop 7 (yes it's old, but it suits my needs just fine!) and Windows Vista Home Premium.
What I do is take photographs of my artworks, edit them in Photoshop until they look accurate, then post them online. Images have always looked identical in every program, and I had never had any problems, until I got connected to the Internet on Tuesday. This computer has not been connected to the net for a good few years, and so lots of updates got installed. I'm not sure which ones exactly, as my boyfriend took care of that, but I'm convinced this has caused the problems I am having now:
First I found that an image I had edited and saved as .jpg for web use was showing up overly saturated and contrasty in the Windows Photo Gallery preview. I assumed I had saved it wrongly. I re-opened the jpg in Photoshop to check - it looked exactly as I had saved it. I figured something had messed up with Photo Gallery during updates, so I uploaded the jpg to the Internet. The image that uploaded was the overly-saturated, contrasty one.
After realising that suddenly ALL the images I had uploaded online, and all the images saved on my computer, now had this awful over-saturated look, and yet the thumbnails on my desktop looked fine... I realised it must be something to do with the colour profiles, and tried to find out the answer online. My monitor colour profile was set to "21.5 inch monitor" so I changed that to sRGB as default. I can't remember what Photoshop was set to, but at any rate I set it to sRGB also.
I thought I had it fixed, as it seemed to just be Photo Gallery that was not matching up (it was displaying my images with less saturation than as I saved them).
However today I took a new photo of a drawing I'm working on, to load onto my blog. I had to take it into Photoshop to make edits and correct, as always. I opened my photo in Photoshop... lo and behold, far too contrasty and saturated!!
This time, Windows Photo Gallery preview is showing the (unedited, straight out of camera) photo as it should be... Photoshop opens it too contrasty.
I made my edits anyway, saved for web as .jpg, checked the jpg in Photo Gallery before uploading... It saved duller than it should have done!
Uploaded the jpg to the internet... and I have the dull image uploaded.
So first they were too contrasty, now they're too dull. I have tried to follow advice given on similar topics, to no apparent avail.
Being an artist who displays work online and has a certain reliance on the internet... my images have to be accurate and consistent all the way through. Is there anything I can do to set things back to the way they were before?
I appreciate any help.

eartho - All my images are already converted to the sRGB colourspace by default, as far as I can tell. My images out of camera, the ones I have edited and saved as jpg - I even checked some old images. Through Mode/Convert to Profile, they're all already set to sRGB.
emil emil - Thank you. I will do that in the morning - right now my head hurts and I need my bed.

Prints dark and contrasty-display looks good

i use imac 27" with 10.6.6
i calibrate display with eyeone ver 3.6.3
i print from LR3 and CS5.
my problem is that the prints are always darker and more contrasty than indicated by the display. I have tried printing the same image after converting image profile to sRGB, adobesRGB, and prophotoRGB. the prints made after converting image profile to sRGB are best but they are all poor.
i have searched various fora and found little that i understand and can't get a handle on my error. i have thought perhaps my display to bright causing me to develop a little darker than i should........but i would be greatful for some advice.

i neglected to add that i have printed to my on epson and to costco and walgreen online print services, all giving the same too dark-too contrasty look.
vince

Mac Pro display contrast too high

I recently moved to a 2.66 ghz Mac Pro from a G5 and am finding that when I use the Display Pref's calibration settings my La Cie photon20vision display is way too contrasty. On my G5 it worked fine and the contrast was fine. I started as the Disply Pref's instruct by setting the contrast to 100% and continuing as I have numerous times before. For some reason the calibration seems skewed to be way too contrasty. I sent a photo done on my monitor and sent it to someone and they asked what was wrong as everything was so washed out and flat on their monitor.... on mine it looked fine

Hi, my info is below- I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8
Graphic card:
Chipset Model:    NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
Type:    GPU
Bus:    PCIe
Slot:    Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width:    x16
VRAM (Total):    256 MB
Vendor:    NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID:    0x0393
Revision ID:    0x00a1
ROM Revision:    3004
Model Name:    Mac Pro
Model Identifier:    MacPro1,1
Processor Name:    Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed:    2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors:    2
Total Number Of Cores:    4
L2 Cache (per processor):    4 MB
Memory:    3 GB
Bus Speed:    1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version:    MP11.005C.B08
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Horrible colors in Safari 2.0.4

Along with the new Mac Pro came Safari 2.0.4, and a surprise that I could do without. The images on my photo-site - www.Peermann.com - are way too contrasty and saturated when viewed in Safari 2.0.4; almost as bad as in ancient versions of Internet Explorer.
When viewed in Firefox and Netscape on the same machine and monitor, they look identical to the original image in Photoshop. And Safari 1.3.2 on my iBook displays them correctly as well.
All images have an embedded sRGB color profile, which should make them look better in Safari than in any other browser, since only Safari is able to read color profiles. Kinda ironic that it is the way around, but I am unable to laugh about this.

Matt wrote:
I was logging into a web site yesterday and Safari asked if I wanted it to remember my log-in details; I accidentally said "Never Ask Again"...
Barry, I'm pretty sure from Matt's description that we're not talking about cookies, but rather Safari's own function to save usernames/passwords in the Keychain. The prompt above is the wording Safari uses.
Matt, try the following:
Go to Safari > Preferences and click on the Autofill tab.
Click on the "Edit" button next to "User names and passwords."
Scroll through the list to find the web site in question, where you should see "Passwords never saved" in the "User Name" column.
When you find the entry you're looking for, click on it once to highlight it and click the "Remove" button. Then click the "Done" button.
You might want to quit and relaunch Safari to make sure this change takes affect. Then go back to that web site and try logging in again. If all is well, Safari should now ask if you want to save your user name and password.

LG Monitor for video... or what else?

I'm interested to buy the LG L246WP 24" monitor, to use with my Kona 3 HDsdi, and the HDlink to DVI converter.
Has anyone used this monitor for critical HD monitoring?
Does anyone else have another suggestion that works well for critial LCD flat panel that won't break me?
-Eric
\

Concur with Z. as I usually do.
The words "critical" and "computer monitor" aren't ones that I might use in the same sentence.
For people who are just coming to this arena... this is an old debate, and a lot of water under the bridge, in fact, its water down the river, out to sea, evaporated, condensed as rainfall, run down the river again, and so on, several times.
Computer monitors are great for presenting text. Thats about it. They are way way way too bright, way way way too contrasty... they don't have anything to do with broadcast presentation at all.
Anything else is manufacturer bs designed to fleece you of your money. I don't even care about the signal processing LUT/signal-massaging boxes. You are, in effect, screwing up your good signal so that it will look roughly similar on the wrong monitor to what a clean send-through would look like on the right monitor.
Critical grading on a monitor that "looks good" is not the aim here. The monitor must speak the unvarnished truth, without intervention. It is up to you to make it "look good", and then it will BE good.
Joe

Iphoto 2.0 to iphoto '08 - printing goes from spot on to dark

Just upgraded a swivel neck imac to a brand new imac and have subsequently gone from iphoto 2.0 to iphoto '08.
Using a Selphy ES1 printer, the photos from the old imac and 2.0 printed fairly accurately (close enough that it doesn't cause complaints). Using the new imac and '08, the prints are now about a stop to a stop and a half too dark, too contrasty, and subsequently over-saturated.
I imagine I'll have to compensate using the Canon driver, but I'm bewildered as to WHY the change in print output. Same driver, same printer, same photos.
Is this a colorsync issue? That's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head.
Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

(I saw your post on luminous landscape as well)
I've just bought a Selphy ES1, and I'm also finding it way too dark in printing, regardless of which application I use for printing, be it iPhoto 6, a recent version of GraphicConverter, Preview or Canon's own ImageBrowser.
Now after reading your post I thought I'd try printing from my old iBook 800MHz, which is also running 10.4. Using Preview (the only imaging app on there at the moment) it also printed dark - in fact even a little darker than the MacBook!
I wonder if this is more of a System/ issue. Your old iMac would have been running 10.3 or 10.2; your new one is, like my two machines, running 10.4.
I don't have a solution yet. I'd be interested to know what settings you use to correct the issue in the Canon driver itself, or if there's a standard filter you apply to the photos in iPhoto or another imaging app.
I've tried using the "Lightness Increase" quartz filter option (presumably from Colorsync), which helps a bit. This seems to work similarly to +1 Brightness in the "Color" settings under "Advanced" in the Print dialog. It's a bit of a blunt instrument though.
Perhaps it'll be something that 10.5 will fix. I want this to "just work"...

Lightroom 2 colour/darkness vs Lightroom 1

I have just upgraded to lightroom 2 and all images appear too dark, too contrasty and with a slight colour cast. The strange thing is that lightroom 1.4 is still on my machine, and, when looking at the same picture through Lightroom 1.4, the result is fine. Photoshop is also correct.
So, it can't be hardware.
Perusing the forums indicate that lightroom uses the colour space defined by the monitor driver, while photoshop CS3 bypasses it. This would indicate a problem with the monitor driver if LR 1.4 appeared incorrect. But that is the puzzling thing: LR 1.4 is OK.
My relevant specs:
Vista 64-bit, 4Gb RAM
Dual monitors - Samsung Synchmaster 226W and 245B.
Nvidia 8800 gtx (718 Mb)
Can anyone suggest anything?

Then why are we back (in LR2) to the pre LR 1.4.1 printer profiles not working correctly when printing in 10.5.x. The workaround of setting the same profile in the Colorsync Utility for the paper selected has to once again be implemented.
Just someone answer this question.
When I brought this up in the beta forum this is the answer I got. "might I point out it's called BETA for a reason?" Yet this problem was know with 1.3.1 and earlier, corrected in 1.4.1 and now it is back with LR2. And know one has any answers for this?
While not really belonging here what about IDCS3 and the monitor profile being introduced in the RGB Printflow.
If they know what they are doing where are the answers to these problems?

Tone Curve in Profile Help

Hey all,
Hoping the more talented tech gurus can help me out a bit here?
I have custom camera profiles for each of my cameras, so that my colour is consistent across bodies. They're all dual illuminant, some made in the old DNG profile editor, more recent ones in the Lightroom plug in from Xrite (Passport).
The colour is excellent, but I always find the tone to be too contrasty for my preference. When I look at the values on the step chart (greyscale patches) part of the McBeth checker they are not uniform / linear but rather already hold a contrast adding tone curve. What I do in Lightroom is to take the TAT tool in the curves panel and move these points per patch until they are almost "linear" again. In effect I apply a custom inverse S or reverse S to the image. I then save this curve per camera and invoke it on import setting along with the colour profile. I LOVE, LOVE the files I now get with this calibration, skin tones especially.
BUT
I now have my curve area of Lightroom being used essentially for calibration purposes, which robs me of it's use for creative purposes. Thus, I'd like to do this tonal adjustment at the profile stage, in the .dcp file to free me up to use the curve panel to suit my artistic vision.
SO
The question is how do I visually target the tone curve in DNG Editor (or passport) to match those which I have created in the curve panel now? I can eyeball it so they look similar, but it's a bit vague. Either that or a way to visually adjust the tone curve while viewing the grey swatches within the DNG editor?
The result should be the same as my custom camera profile plus my bespoke lightroom tone curve but all done in the .DCP file.
Am I missing something? Willing to be schooled always!
Many thanks if you made it this far.
(Note: I have posted this in LuLa too, so apologies to those who may frequent both)

Here's a Lightroom tone curve (saved):
<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 5.5-c002 1.148022, 2012/07/15-18:06:45
">
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
<rdf:Description rdf:about=""
xmlns:crs="http://ns.adobe.com/camera-raw-settings/1.0/"
   crs:Version="8.1"
   crs:ToneCurveName="Custom">
   <crs:ToneCurve>
<rdf:Seq>
<rdf:li>0, 0</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>99, 92</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>166, 156</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>231, 223</rdf:li>
<rdf:li>255, 255</rdf:li>
</rdf:Seq>
   </crs:ToneCurve>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>
and here's the same tone curve in a .dcpr file:
<dngclr:ToneCurve rdf:parseType="Resource">
    <dngclr:Edit0 rdf:parseType="Resource">
       <dngclr:X>0</dngclr:X>
       <dngclr:Y>0</dngclr:Y>
    </dngclr:Edit0>
    <dngclr:Edit1 rdf:parseType="Resource">
       <dngclr:X>99</dngclr:X>
       <dngclr:Y>92</dngclr:Y>
    </dngclr:Edit1>
    <dngclr:Edit2 rdf:parseType="Resource">
       <dngclr:X>166</dngclr:X>
       <dngclr:Y>156</dngclr:Y>
    </dngclr:Edit2>
    <dngclr:Edit3 rdf:parseType="Resource">
       <dngclr:X>231</dngclr:X>
       <dngclr:Y>223</dngclr:Y>
    </dngclr:Edit3>
    <dngclr:Edit4 rdf:parseType="Resource">
       <dngclr:X>255</dngclr:X>
       <dngclr:Y>255</dngclr:Y>
    </dngclr:Edit4>
</dngclr:ToneCurve>
If that's not enough to go on, do tell..

Loss of Image Info on Cinema Display

I recently jumped to a 2 year old G5 and 20" cinema display combo and am getting screwed.
Basically, my screen is not showing me what's actually going on with the files. The screen seems too contrasty / punchy / hot... I'm a graphic designer, and since I need to be able to (at least marginally) view on screen what information is in a file, this has made image manipulation nearly IMPOSSIBLE. My epson printouts DO show me this "lost" information, but I certainly can't work off of printouts alone for the life of this machine.... In the meantime, areas of an image that are as dark as 10 or 20% grey are showing up on screen as PURE WHITE. And this is probably only the loss that glaring enough for me to notice... (Although, when I watched a movie the other day, the blacks also felt WAY too dense, and seemed to eat many of the scenes...)
I've tried every calibration option the ACD seems to offer, to no avail. I've checked to make sure my video card works with my monitor, as answered in the affirmative with the following thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1125196&tstart=0
At this point I don't know if the problem is in my G5, or the monitor, or what....
Can anyone help?
Some more information that may be helpful/relevant:
1) The "hotness" is not application specific. It occurs in Photoshop, Quark, in PDFs, everywhere....
2) The G5 was refurbished when originally purchased.
3) Before I jumped to this set-up a few weeks ago, I was on a very reliable emac running OS9 (no snickering please...) and what I saw on the screen there was pretty bang-on with what I was seeing in my print outs and final files.
4) I'm using the same printer and scanning devises that I was with my emac, so I don't think they're the problem... but JIC, they are Epson Perfection 1640SU Scanner, and Epson Stylus photo 1270 Photo Printer.
Let me know If I've left out any key, relevant info.... And Thanks!

Make sure the "Enhance contrast" slider in the "Seeing" tab of "Universal Access" system preference is all the way to the left.

Cannot disable Auto Tone on import of PSD files - ruins edits !!

Hi - I am a LR 5 expert and we have an issue with the latest release that I need to overcome or it is unusable.    Please direct this to an expert level support person as I have already networked around and have not been able to resolve this issue.    The issue is consistent with other users as well - we have tried this on several computers and the result is the same.     It is possible that is pilot error but I doubt it - we have disabled apply auto tone everywhere we could find it...
I believe this is a serious bug in the way LR handles files on import - and I am also hoping there is an immediate work-around as the issue has TRIPLED our workflow time.
Example #1   -   Edit DNG - Export as PSD with "add to catalog" checked - LR exports the file and then imports the PSD,   but in doing so applies auto tone and destroys all the edits. The re-imported images are too bright and too contrasty.       Auto tone on import IS disabled.
We tried to work around the issue by trying to edit outside LR and re-importing but that does not work either -SAME RESULT !
Example #2 -   Edit DNG files, export to PSD, do not check "add to catalog" - make the edits needed in Photoshop, then import using "add" and LR applies Auto Tone once again destroying all edits.      You can actually watch the auto tone being applied to the thumbs as it imports them. - they get brighter.
In all cases the edited images end up too bright and too contrasty and are otherwise unusable.        Our workaround is to export to PSD, edit in photoshop, then use Photoshop's   scripts to produce the final images and leave the PSD files out of the catalog - this has added a TON of time to our workflow and has corrupted our file management - UNACCEPTABLE !!
We have also tried reading the external meta data option - same result - bright files.
Please let us know how we completely disable auto tone on import and fix this issue it is a deal breaker for using this version.   We are using LR 5.6
Thanks, Mark
Head Janitor, 6IXGUN.COM

Looks like we solved our own problem -   either edit or delete the preferences files and restart lightroom. If you delete it, it will of course wipe our your template settings, etc but that was far less of a hassle than not being able to use LR with PSD / exporting. We were able to make a simple edit and it was fixed.   Also make sure you have unchecked "apply auto tone" in the >preferences>presets   dialog box - we did not have it checked but it WAS enabled in the plist file.       I would definitely consider this a bug - the issue was not present in the last version of LR, it was introduced upon installing 5.6.

Exporting Canon 5D Mark ii footage..

I'm fairly new to final cut, im running a Mac Pro, 2 X 3 Ghz processor, 10GB memory, 10.6.2 snow leopard... and i still find myself having to render at every edit in the timeline, and now im having trouble figuring out how to export correctly to get the highest possible quality on youtube and/or vimeo
here's what i have done and researched so far:
i took my original canon 5d footage into MPEG streamclip and converted the files into Apple ProRes 422 (LT) at 30fp, i then created a custom setup in final cut 7 with the following presets:
SEQUENCE PRESET: Canon 5D Mark ii footage (duplicated an Apple ProRes 422 (LT) 1920X1080 30p 44.1ghz audio)
CAPTURE PRESET: DVCPRO HD 1080p30 48kHz (i won't be capturing in fcp since i've been using MPEG streamclip
DEVICE CONTROL PRESET: FIREWIRE NTSC
VIDEO PLAYBACK: (sometimes i have this set at Digital Cinema Desktop Preview - Full Screen so that i can take advantage of my other monitor, but it tends to drop frames faster in playback, so i usually have it set to "none")
AUDIO PLAYBACK: Default
now my question is, how do i correctly export this? i tried a couple different ways, some had skipped frames... others the audio was off... another setting made the colors way too contrasty after exporting...
also how can i solve this "rendering" issue... did i make a mistake in the beginning in setting up the timeline (btw , the sequence matches the same settings as the footage... ) i'm also playing back at "safe RT, medium quality, half frame rate..." not sure if that matters..
so yeah, my two main questions are, correct export for this file, and any help with render issues?
thank you..

oops.sorry...
here is a link to what i uploaded using Quicktime X directly to youtube..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3q19YDSdWE
it doesn't look as good as i think it could...and it has a HQ option instead of HD? i don't have quicktime pro so i couldn't export with exact settings, just directly to youtube... how can i export w/ final cut .. when i export using quicktime conversion and using Apple Pro Res, it ends up being a 1.34gb file and its only 1 minute... would i then need to compress it?
and yes i need to get rid of all the layers i have in the timeline.. maybe that might help but it was giving me the rendering "RED" color even in the beginning when i had 1 layer..
i changed audio to 44.1 because i read it somewhere online i believe it was under phillip bloom.. suggesting to change from 48 to 44.1 for all canon 5d footage.. ? im not sure why though..

Too contrasty!

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