Hello, I am wondering what most people keep their monitor settings for brightness. I had mine up to 100% and a few times people said my images were too dark. When I decreased it to 50% brightness, I could see what they mean. What brightness is your monitor set at so I can get an idea what to set mine to for doing renders? Thank you in advance. Warm Regards, Nancy (SophiaDeer)

1. Responses are going to be all over the place. 2. Every manufacturer and model and type (CRT or LCD) varies in what is considered 100% brightness. How each display appears depends upon many factors. 3. Apple and other LCDs tend to differ in brightness, Apple's being brighter than most. My CRT monitor is set to 60% brightness, but in Standard mode. There are three modes: Dynamic, Standard, and Professional. Each has its own 'brightness/contrast' added to the monitor settings. You are going to have a difficult time trying to cover everyone. :)

Thank you kuroyume0161! I did not realize it was so complicated laughs Thank you for taking time to explain. Warm Regards, Nancy

Attached Link: http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/calibration/blackpoint/crt_brightness_and_contrast.htm

Here's a useful site I linked to a day or so ago when someone else asked almost the same question.

Thanks EnglishBob! This helps a lot. Warm Regards, Nancy

Good luck with that. For years I've found my brain seems to automatically shut off after about a paragraph and a half on this subject. One time I went from the houses of two separate neighbors looking at the same image on their different monitors. Funny thing, one of them was/is a real techie, but she - like me - had no clue. I still don't, LOL. Larry F

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 Laptop. The brightness is what it came with. I don't know how to change it. I do notice a HUGE difference in the brightness of images when I view them on my laptop and when I view them on my desktop. I don't know which one is right :( I work on my laptop and the images look good on it. But when I view them on my desktop, the images are really dark. When I do them on my desktop and view them there, they look great. However, when I view those images on my laptop it looks like the brightness and contrast they almost look like over exposed developed pictures. Again, I'm not sure which is the right one. I just hope that people who are viewing my images are viewing them the SAME way I am when I look at it on my laptop.

Remember that most monitor default settings (until you get up into the upper $ pro bracket ones) are pre-set to look good in a very highly lit showroom floor. If you operate under that much fluorescent (or mercury vapour - ugh) light then the settings might be right for you :-) Ditto the colour temperature - 9500K is desert sun equivalent. But note if you set your monitor to a reasonable 6500K (lowest settings of 5000K equates to tungsten light bulbs), then anything done at 9500K is going to look "dark." Then there is gamma (even tougher subject), but be aware than Mac runs at different default gamma than PC, so anything created on Mac is going to look "darker" on a PC monitor (assuming both still at default settings). Finally the brighter the CRT the quicker the phosphors burn out - although these days something else may well fail before the phosphors get too dark t use the monitor. But 3 years is not unknown for a heavily used monitor set to max bright. The above is true for CRT type TVs too. There have been many postings about this aspect in the past.

Thank you everyone for your replys.

Attached Link: http://www.easyrgb.com/index.html

Every monitor has a different color and brightness profile, and those profiles change over time, like layingback wrote. Professionals often use calibration tools, not only to get the best possible image on their monitors, but also to get consistent results. These calibration tools, including spectrometers, can be quite expensive. There's also a range of online calibration tools. They're not as sophisticated and accurate as the professional tools, but they certainly help to set up your monitor better than the factory defaults. They can help you create images that have the brightness and contrast that you intend it to have, and if a viewer has calibrated his/her monitor too, the viewer will see (almost) the same brightness/contrast you do. I've calibrated all my monitors using the online tool in the link below, and images look (almost) the same on all my monitos.

Thanks for the link and information Steve. Warm Regards, Nancy