I am at my wits end on this issue. For some reason my render looks great in Poser. I export it as a tif or bmp (same outcome regardless), bring it in to Photoshop and *poof* it looks like crap and no matter what I do I can't seem to fix it. I have seen this on occasion with photos out of my digital camera as well. Take a look at the images here. Can you see the weird look about her neck and hair? Almost like an over exposure or like I used a burn tool or something? Trust me, it looks clear as a bell after the rendering within Poser. What am I doing wrong? Thoughts?

Interesting. Because on my computer the bottom picture looks better. The top one is so dark I can barely see any detail in it. Maybe you have the brightness setting on your monitor set too high? Look in the tutorials for a monitor calibration tutorial.

Agree with Fazzel. The top image is far too dark. Your monitor needs calibrating.

Ok. I'll buy that. My confusion comes in with the fact that 1) Everyone else's art looks great on my monitor 2) She looks perfect when in Poser it's just when I export it and bring it into something else it looks totally different. 3) If it truly is the calibration, then why does it not look the same in both Poser and Photoshop?

The top image doesn't look that dark at all when in Poser. I did want it to have some "mood" lighting so it was meant to be somewhat dark but not as dark as it comes out in Photoshop. I checked my brightness settings and right now it is 50 % brightness 50% contrast. I am re-rendering with a brighter light on her face and will see what comes out this time. Meanwhile, what is the best way to re-calibrate a monitor?

Message edited on: 07/08/2005 13:58

Here is another sampling. I have circled the areas of concern. Maybe I am just seeing things due to my monitor. LOL!

So now they look different than they do in Photoshop. Gee! They look great here! At lease the second set. How do I calibrate just photoshop?

I like the way the third picture looks. I don't see any problem with the circled area on it. Nor do I see any problem with the circled area on the other two pictures. Again the 2nd picture is so dark as to completely obscure almost all of the detail. I can make out the eyes and the nose and that is about it.

Don't auto level :) That seems to be the problem. Do the leveling yourself. I have been adjusting photos for years and I really don't like what auto level does. All it does is basically push the picture so there is a white spot and a dark spot but it doesn't really look at the picture. What you can do is this. Open levels, there is three little triangles, one black, one white and one gray, drag the gray one over so it almost touches the white one. The white one is the white point, the dark one is the black point, gray is middle. When you drag it over you can se how much white you have, you can then take the white one and push it to the middle to actually get a white spot (or just to lighten it), do the same with the dark and then take the gray one back to the middle at 1.0 and then lighten it if you need to but look at it on the screen and you decide rather than the auto level.

Here is the original image after a couple of seconds of adjusting. I am not positive what you were going fo but you said you wanted it kind of dark so I left it a bit dark. Hope that helps.

I know this may be frustrating. Believe me, it is for me too. blush But when I brought even this image into PS, the lower right darker areas of her cheek and chin look like they have a burn tool over used on them and appear extremely grainy and overdone. Is there a specific .icc profile I should be using for photoshop that will not affect my entore monitor setting? Thank you all SO MUCH for taking your precious time to respond. I'm starting to wonder if this shouldn't be in the Photoshop forum, but then again...

Wouldn't hurt to ask there too. I have Paint Shop Pro so I have no clue as to how Photoshop works.

Thank you ALL! I think I just found the issue. When I clicked on View, Proof Setup, it was set for Working CMYK. When I change it, say to Monitor RGB, it totally changed the look of my image!!! Perseverence is paying off. I will resolve this if it's the last thing I do! LOL!

Message edited on: 07/08/2005 18:11

The end result :-) http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=997014

Very nice. Glad you were able to resolve it.

Glad you figured it out .. I always adjust in RGB and then convert to CMYK.