# post processing for screen.



## thepancakeman (Feb 21, 2012)

Now that I'm working on getting a color managed workflow, I'm realizing that there are completely different needs between print and screen.

So how do you manage output between the two? People's screens differ so much, how do you pick an "average" to get it looking good on the most number of screens? The two biggies that come to mind are brightness and sharpening. I use Lightroom, and on the export there is a "sharpen for screen" option--do people use that or figure that they have the appropriate sharpness before the export? Is there any kind of "brighten for screen" (or would it be darken for screen??) on output, or how do you put that in the workflow?

Thanks!


----------



## alipaulphotography (Feb 21, 2012)

Get a monitor calibrator. Anyone that does anything to do with imaging should have one in my opinion.
That will ensure all your colours, black and whites on screen are 'correct' and how they will come out in a print. The difference in brightness is probably due to your backlight being on far too high. The calibrator will tell you to correct this.

I keep my entire workflow in sRGB and what I see on screen matches my prints so I have no reason to use adobe or prophoto.

I use various actions in photoshop to resize and sharpen my images for prints or for my website. My sharpening is very light.

The calibration tool is use is the Spyder 3 Elite. Works great on my 27" thunderbolt display.

Hope that helps!


----------



## Wedding Shooter1 (Feb 21, 2012)

thepancakeman said:


> Now that I'm working on getting a color managed workflow, I'm realizing that there are completely different needs between print and screen.
> 
> So how do you manage output between the two? People's screens differ so much, how do you pick an "average" to get it looking good on the most number of screens? The two biggies that come to mind are brightness and sharpening. I use Lightroom, and on the export there is a "sharpen for screen" option--do people use that or figure that they have the appropriate sharpness before the export? Is there any kind of "brighten for screen" (or would it be darken for screen??) on output, or how do you put that in the workflow?
> 
> Thanks!



You can't. There is no way of telling what other's screens look like. You just have to make the image look the way you want, what you think it should be and what looks best to you on your screen. If you are all set up and things are perfect with all calibrations you should be getting the same thing for web and print. What you see on your screen should match your prints and those can then be made into websized versions for online. 

You can certainly add some sharpening to web sized images in Photoshop.

The only thing you have to do is to assign an sRGB color profile to anything you want to be online so it will look as intended. If you don't do that colors and stuff may be off in peoples web browsers. For example if you edit in Adobe RGB and leave that as the profile it will look perfect in Photoshop but not online in web browsers.


----------



## tt (Feb 21, 2012)

thepancakeman said:


> Now that I'm working on getting a color managed workflow, I'm realizing that there are completely different needs between print and screen.
> 
> So how do you manage output between the two? People's screens differ so much, how do you pick an "average" to get it looking good on the most number of screens? The two biggies that come to mind are brightness and sharpening. I use Lightroom, and on the export there is a "sharpen for screen" option--do people use that or figure that they have the appropriate sharpness before the export? Is there any kind of "brighten for screen" (or would it be darken for screen??) on output, or how do you put that in the workflow?
> 
> Thanks!



Ok - don't take this as an advert - because it's not. 
Went to SWPP and some one of the Nik guys show off their wares in a hour or so demo. 
One of the things was their Dfine Output sharpner filters - basically having a side by side vertical slider over the picture to see how it'd look being printed on various printers, paper, sizes etc vs web. 
I believe you can get a demo from http://www.niksoftware.com/site/ if you want to try it out or check out the manual. Likely their are videos on their site on how to use it for that.


----------



## Maui5150 (Feb 21, 2012)

I use one of the Spyder tools and calibrate both my monitor and laptop.

This way I know at least the color I think I should be seeing is what I am seeing at least calibrated.

I also use the Color Checker Passport when I shoot to correct the lighting as well. It is easy to use and with Lightroom or PhotoShop very easy to adjust all shots. 

I work in the Adobe RGB space because I like having more color to work with, but for anything I send out, I generally convert to sRGB since that is a limiting factor. 

If I know someone if going to get printing done off of the photos, especially for Agencies, I ask what color profile they prefer the images to be in. 

There are many many tools that are out there. First step is understanding that monitor to monitor varies and what you see is not necessarily what someone else will, but if you color calibrate, and they color calibrate, it should be closer.


----------



## tt (Feb 21, 2012)

tt said:


> thepancakeman said:
> 
> 
> > Now that I'm working on getting a color managed workflow, I'm realizing that there are completely different needs between print and screen.
> ...



From what I saw on the projector - it was doing a decent job of it.


----------



## thepancakeman (Feb 21, 2012)

Yup, I get the whole calibrated monitor, etc. 

Maybe let me ask this a different way: you have 100 photos that are both going to print and publish to web. Do you just calibrate the image for printing and ignore the web side of things, or do you handle each destination separately, and if so, how?

I realize that everyone's monitors are different, however that doesn't mean you should just ignore that part of the equation. Just like making a decent audio recording, mixing it to simply sound good "on my speakers" isn't very professional. You have to mix it so that it will sound the best it can on a wide variety of playback systems and environments.


----------



## elsyx (Feb 21, 2012)

> I realize that everyone's monitors are different, however that doesn't mean you should just ignore that part of the equation. Just like making a decent audio recording, mixing it to simply sound good "on my speakers" isn't very professional. You have to mix it so that it will sound the best it can on a wide variety of playback systems and environments.



You can't control how your images will look on anyone else's monitor. But if you have a calibrated monitor, then it is more likely to look as good as possible on as many other monitors as possible.

It's the same in audio recording. Professional mixers use professional monitors that are calibrated to have a flat (normal) frequency response. They mix so that it sounds good on the reference monitors, and then it is more likely to sound good on as many other speakers as possible. If you're mixing on speakers with an unknown frequency resposne -- or adjusting colors and tone curves on an uncalibrated monitor -- then the results are unpredictable, unless you have a very good sense for the peculiarities of your specific setup.

Bottom line, calibrate your monitor, and adjust your images so they look good to you there.

As far as sharpening, I personally use Lightroom's default export sharpening set to "low" for most cases, but try a few experiments and see what works for you!


----------



## awinphoto (Feb 21, 2012)

This is one thing where you may be fighting a loosing battle in which I've struggled most my digital era age. One of my clients for example, prefers that I clip out the backgrounds of my product shots so they can then put the tiff file of the clipped subject in just about any application such as web, catalogs, flyers, magazine, etc without having to fuss with the background. That's fine but their internet's background color is white. The problem being once I throw in a white subject or a clear or even natural color subject in that white background, While they may look good on my color calibrated screen, a manager who may have their crappy late 90's monitor next to a large window, and poor calibration, the objects can then get lost within their white backgrounded website. You can darken the edges, but then you get complaints that it looks too illustrative with hard edge lines... You could make the whole thing darker or less contrasty and then it may look great on their screen but look hideous to modern monitors. You can see how this can get very dicey, especially when dealing with their clients who may be that 70-80 year old chairman in that corner office with a bad monitor. The irony is they always praise my print work such as catalogs, flyers, banners, etc and say that want that quality on the web, but they cant figure it out that they are getting that quality, but if they tried looking at my print files on their bad monitors/set-up, it will look like crap. I've learned to slightly reduce contrast to bring in more mid tones for bad monitors and dont let it get to me because there is almost nothing you can do about it other than have some disclaimer on the site saying that colors may vary depending on monitor calibration and maybe even have a link or two to colorrite or mcbeth monitor calibrators.


----------



## alipaulphotography (Feb 21, 2012)

Once calibrated, the images look good both in prints and on the web.

If someone else is viewing the web on a crappy monitor then that is their problem.

The only thing you should change for prints and web is sharpening. I provide clients with one set of high resolution images with a light sharpening which can be used for prints and a low 'web ready' 800px wide images with my 'web sharpening' action.


----------



## awinphoto (Feb 21, 2012)

alipaulphotography said:


> Once calibrated, the images look good both in prints and on the web.
> 
> If someone else is viewing the web on a crappy monitor then that is their problem.
> 
> The only thing you should change for prints and web is sharpening. I provide clients with one set of high resolution images with a light sharpening which can be used for prints and a low 'web ready' 800px wide images with my 'web sharpening' action.



You would think so, but the older the client, the older your clients clients are, the more hardset they are in their minds. Such as my client, the marketing manager, who also has calibrated monitors, fully agree's with me and my stance on my photos, but in the end, if their client cannot view the inventory and if they get complaints, all the arguing that they need to calibrate their monitors will eventually fall on deaf ears and it will reflect on you. Is it fair, no, but it is what it is.


----------



## Grigbar (Feb 21, 2012)

Theres not much point in calibrating your monitor if your using one of the 6bit displays that comprise the vast majority of monitors out there. No matter how you calibrate it will never give you accurate color representation. You need a 10bit display in order to reveal the entire RGB color profiles.  An 8bit IPS display is a lot better than a 6bit POS but even an 8bit doesnt come close to reproducing all the colors.

If your using a good printer you need to use the ICC profiles for that printer because your printer can not do what a 10 panel can and what you see on your screen is not what your printer is going to reproduce.


----------



## Maui5150 (Feb 21, 2012)

Grigbar said:


> Theres not much point in calibrating your monitor if your using one of the 6bit displays that comprise the vast majority of monitors out there. No matter how you calibrate it will never give you accurate color representation. You need a 10bit display in order to reveal the entire RGB color profiles.  An 8bit IPS display is a lot better than a 6bit POS but even an 8bit doesnt come close to reproducing all the colors.
> 
> If your using a good printer you need to use the ICC profiles for that printer because your printer can not do what a 10 panel can and what you see on your screen is not what your printer is going to reproduce.



Color is color. More depth is definitely nice, but it is still worth while calibrating a monitor, especially when using something like the Color Checker Passport or an 18% gray card, because you can take what is shot in your camera, and match it up so at least in photoshop or lightroom, that 18% gray is 18% gray. 

You may not have depth, but at least your color shift will be close. 

That is a hell of a lot better than doing nothing.

My Desktop Monitor is a hell of a lot better than my laptop screen and I learned the hard way doing a lot of editing on my laptop, then opening up on desktop and thinking what the hell was I doing. This is especially true when matching up Gamma. 

I still get better color depth on my Desktop, but at least if I do exposure correction and basic edits on my laptop, when I open them up on my desktop they look reasonable and not overexposed/underexposed or serious color/tint shifts


----------



## RedEye (Feb 22, 2012)

Anyone have any thoughts about how to either PP the photos or adjust the hardware if the goal is to display the photos through a home network onto a HD television such as a Samsung HD LED screen with several million colors and shades of gray? 

I've found to disable any color saturating features of the TV. Other feedback welcome. 

Thanks!

Red


----------



## Admin US West (Feb 22, 2012)

RedEye said:


> Anyone have any thoughts about how to either PP the photos or adjust the hardware if the goal is to display the photos through a home network onto a HD television such as a Samsung HD LED screen with several million colors and shades of gray?
> 
> I've found to disable any color saturating features of the TV. Other feedback welcome.
> 
> ...



If your HD TV has not been calibrated, all bets are off. Calibrate your image editing monitor so that your images are the correct color and brightness. 

Then, if they do not look good on your TV, it needs calibrated as well.


----------



## unfocused (Feb 22, 2012)

Maybe I'm missing what the OP is referring to...but...

When you say "output for print" do you mean photographic prints or do you mean photo books?

If your final destination (so to speak) is a printed book, even one of the short-run custom press books, you need to convert your files to CMYK and adjust accordingly. After having a very bad experience with one publisher, I posted a similar question a few months back. I got some very good advice from some color professionals. I was also directed to the "Blurb" help site on color management, which was really excellent. I followed their advice, had a small test book printed to see the results, was pleased and then went ahead with my proof copies. 

Some printers don't require you to convert to CMYK, but be forewarned that they are going to be printed in CMYK anyway, so you are really just taking a shot in the dark if you don't do the conversion yourself. 

But, while you need CMYK for printing, you would never want to use it for web displays. 

As far as monitors and web colors go, as others have said, unless you want to go around the world and personally adjust the monitor of everyone who looks at your images, there isn't a whole lot you can do. I have the nasty habit every time I go into an electronics store of going to their computer displays and punching in my website address to see how my site displays on their browsers and monitors. 

Usually I find that the images display okay, although there can be quite a bit of color variation. I just look for images that are really out of whack and then do some soul searching about whether or not I need to delete the image from my site. Usually, a bigger and more annoying issue is when the browser doesn't display the site properly. 

I'll tell you that most images look really, really good on iPads. But, because Apple doesn't play nice with Flash, they will only display in HTML. So, you need to make sure you have a program that defaults to HTML when Flash isn't available (SimpleViewer is one). 

If I were in this for paying jobs, I would invest in a nice tablet and build my promotional materials around that tablet, so I could take it with me to show clients the images, rather than risk having them look at them on their monitors with their 1995 version of Internet Explorer. 

As I said, I have no idea if this is where you were going, but it's my 2-cents worth.


----------



## archangelrichard (Feb 28, 2012)

CMYK (Carmine, Magenta, Yellow, Black inks; for print these are standard while screens use Red, Green, Blue Phosphors (and there is a difference between sRGB and standard RGB) - you need a program that does both well

YES, Grigbar, the number of bits does make a difference; it's just that ho one else is using them so it's a moot point (kind of like the Betamax / VHS or Blu-Ray / Regular DVD argument - everyone has regular DVD so that is your standard

When you say "screen" it depends on what you are talking about; all screens will differ in how they display any color so you can't be color-critical like you can in print; we all set the brightness where WE want it; even screen widths are different so don't be so picky about it and adjust for what YOU want, that is the best that you can do


----------



## xROELOFx (Feb 28, 2012)

i'm actually not really worried how my pictures look like at someone else's monitor. if i post proces them and they look good on my (calibrated) monitor, they should also look fine on other monitors. if they don't look good, other things won't look good either. so if a monitor is badly calibrated, or has weird saturation or brightness, it would not only affect the photos but everything the monitor displays.


----------



## Janco (Feb 28, 2012)

archangelrichard said:


> CMYK (Carmine, Magenta, Yellow, Black inks; for print these are standard while screens use Red, Green, Blue Phosphors (and there is a difference between sRGB and standard RGB) - you need a program that does both well



I thought C in CMYK stands for Cyan, which is something blue'ish, while Carmine would be a pigment of a red'ish colour...? ;D


----------



## xROELOFx (Feb 28, 2012)

Janco said:


> archangelrichard said:
> 
> 
> > CMYK (Carmine, Magenta, Yellow, Black inks; for print these are standard while screens use Red, Green, Blue Phosphors (and there is a difference between sRGB and standard RGB) - you need a program that does both well
> ...


yes, you are correct. it's cyan, magenta, yellow and black.


----------

