An old sketch with a new look

[Chyina]

This is from a sketch I did years ago, and then I "fancied it up" in PS. What do you think?

 

[chrisdesign]

Hi Chyina
It looks very dark on my perfectly calibrated monitor. I can hardly detect the woman in the image, though I can see her very long hair and a slender figure.

 

[IamSam]

I agree, a bit too dark to really tell.

 

[Paul]

Are you related to Clare?

I only say that as it is very much in Clares realms of image making, i like the darkness gives it a warmth and an atmosphere.

 

[Chyina]

That's funny that Chris and Sam see it as very dark. I can see it perfectly on my monitor, but then that's the trouble with internet, everyone has different settings. I'll check on lightening it up a bit though.


Paul, I'm not related to Clare, at least as far as I know, lol, which one is Clare anyway? Maybe she's a long lost sister or something. You never know.

 

[dv8_fx]

That's funny that Chris and Sam see it as very dark. I can see it perfectly on my monitor, but then that's the trouble with internet, everyone has different settings. I'll check on lightening it up a bit though.


Paul, I'm not related to Clare, at least as far as I know, lol, which one is Clare anyway? Maybe she's a long lost sister or something. You never know.

Great... one of our honorable mods may have a long lost relative yonder down under......

ibclare

 

[Paul]

 

[Rajeev Desai]

It looked dark to me too. Did slight lighting up, nothing else edited. Really beautiful artwork, OP!

 

[Tom Mann]

That's funny that Chris and Sam see it as very dark. I can see it perfectly on my monitor, but then that's the trouble with internet, everyone has different settings....

I realize that this thread is couple of weeks old, but I hadn't seen it before and feel that I should make a few comments to try to help you.

Including Rajeev and me, you now have 4 people all in agreement and telling you that the image you posted is too dark. This doesn't mean just a little dark, or somewhat dark, but within the normal bounds of artistic license, but *really* dark.

Chris and I both have monitors and independent hardware calibration systems that by themselves cost more than most of the computers you will see in a store, and have extensive experience in preparing images for publication, so I think you can give some credence to what we are saying.

Yes, everyone's monitor display images differently, but pros go to great lengths to ensure that their monitors are adjusted to internationally agreed upon standards, and these standards ensure that images that you prepare will be seen properly by the greatest number of people, and printed correctly by professional printing firms.

In my experience, it's almost impossible to convince a graphic artist or photographer that their monitor / video system is out of calibration when all of their own images look just wonderful on their monitor. However, this is misleading because these artists have adjusted their images to look good on their own monitor, so saying that, "I can see it perfectly on my monitor" is nothing more than a form of circular reasoning.

However there are some quick and dirty ways for you to tell whether your monitor and video system is substantially out of calibration without relying on outside comments. Carefully examine the attached images (ie, click through to the full resolution versions, don't just use the forum previews). If you can see each and every bar and other feature in these images, you monitor is probably in reasonable calibration. However, because you stated that the original (very dark) image that you posted looks OK, my guess is that your monitor/video system is set to display images much brighter than international standards, so you'll likely be able to see and distinguish the dark bars from each other, but adjacent brighter bars and features will likely be much more difficult, if not impossible to distinguish from each other. FWIW, I can see every feature on these images clearly and easily distinguish the bands and circles all the way from the brightest to the darkest tones, in all colors.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[chrisdesign]

Thanks Tom for posting these images again.
It is very important to do this little calibration test every few weeks. It only takes 10 min. of your time, but can save you many hours of trouble, solving problems with too dark or too bright images.