As of late, I haven’t had much time to watch anime. Reason behind this is the fact that I have to go through over 250 wedding photos as my mum has been bugging me about it. But of course since I didn’t have the awesome equipment like the professional photographer, a lot of the photos I took turned out a bit too dark or a bit too bright. So I’ve had to go through each and every single one of them to correct them so she can print them out. But alas I came across a slight problem today.
Recently I’ve had problems viewing videos and pictures properly. Having upgraded my video card drivers, they adjusted my colour scheme settings and making the screen rather bright. Bright enough to burn the retinas in my eyes. So adjusting the brightness etc helped keep eye strain down. But soon enough did I realise that this also affected all the image editing I have been doing for the past few days. So in other words, since I turned down the brightness, gamma etc, every time I brighten an image it appears over-whitened on other monitors. Therefore all my painful work of slaving through all the photos, wedding and some of my own photos, was just wasted as I now have to go back and fix them. Oh such a pain.
But now I have the brightness just under the default setting, my monitor will start to burn my eyes even moreso and I’m god awfully tired. Damn I hate computers.
Have you tried batch processing? Just about any version of Photoshop, even Photoshop Elements 3 (I use 4), lets you apply Quick Fixes, auto contrast, auto levels, sharpen, etc., to a folder full of photos. This should be enough to get the majority of the photos to look good. Then you can just pick out the ones that the batch processing didn’t get right and save yourself a lot of time.
Also, even with pro-equipment, 90% of what was too bright or too dark would have turned out the same way without the knowledge of when to apply exposure compensation, what metering mode would work best for your conditions, and what to meter off of when using the more taregeted metering patterns.
Sorry to hear that, sounds like a pain. Personally, I’ve had good luck with the “auto contrast” button in Picasa cleaning up pictures–I had one picture from Japan that was so dark you couldn’t see the massive Buddha statue behind me at all, but after punching Auto Contrast it appeared like magic. What’s frustrating for me is when I get something looking good onscreen, then have it sent to be printed and it’s darker/lighter than it looked on the PC…computers can definitely be a pain in the ass sometimes…
No shit. This is a common problem and why all monitors should never be adjusted once calibrated. But yeah I have the same problem.
super rats: I’ve tried batch processing with auto leveling etc, but they turn out to look the same. This applies to a lot of photos I do. You do have a point with the pro equipment, though at the time I would’ve had the photographer point out stuff to me so perhaps some might have not turned out so bad.
suguru: I’ve had that problem happen quite often. I’ve had stuff look awesome on screen, but look not what I expected on print. At least digital printing is dirt cheap these days.
tj han: But on default settings, my monitor is just too bright, and I prefer to not burn my eyes.
My sister’s getting married this year and she asked me to handle the multimedia. Last night she gave me 7 CDs worth of her photos… not to mention there’s more.
Get some rest or maybe wear a sun-glasses when you look at the monitor. Sound stupid but I tried it before. ha ha
oh my god poor thing..
I don’t think wearing sunglasses would do me good since I wear glasses when I sit in front of the computer.
Ouch, sounds like a real pain. Doesn’t seem like there’s much you can do about it, take a nap and occasional break and keep slaving at it. Good luck =D