http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

All looks good on the test images, but I happened to load up a render I did a couple of weeks back and the black horse's torso (especially the backside) is practically a silhouette on both monitors; does it look that way to others?

Thanx for any feedback...

Hmmm..no....not the same on mine. I can see detail in the black hair the whole way across. In the mane and tail too. I can even see detail in the hair on the far back leg that's in shadow. I have two Samsung monitors...just recently calibrated too.

Laurie

nope WandW, it looks like a dark grey horse to me..not actually black black

Looks great to me.  Well, aside from the fact that it's levitating.  ;-)

The horse looks fine to me.

Now, there's some very clever people here who know a lot more about this kind of stuff, but I've been well served by the Monitor Calibration Wizard...

http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp

It's freeware and you can easily undo any changes you make if you don't like it, and you can even have different profiles, for example for daylight and nighttime.

Perfect to me.. Also Samsung monitor

looks good to me , some odd streaks in the mane but thats in a very closeup view.

Thanx for the input, all!  

For some reason Windows will no longer load the monitor profiles I generated in PSP, giving an 'incorrect paramater' error when i try to reload them.  Recreating them didn't help either so I used the Windows monitor calibration utility.  All looks good now image-wise, although the calibration chart from the website shows I can't distinguish black levels lower than 6, but my renders look like they should...

Worth having a look at the histogram for the render in an image editor - the dark areas aren't clipping, but there is a lack of contrast. The highlights are barely above mid-gray. Such a compressed tonal range makes the image appear much darker and less detailed than it actually is.

Horse looks fine to me, again on Samsung monitors.  I calibraite using a Spyder 3.

looks fine, blackish grey with all details.

Dual samsung with regular Spider calibration over here.

I'd expect the tonal range to be small, caisson, as it is the shady side of a black horse.  All is well again on my desktop, tho'  

Don't mean to come across as pedantic, but I know a little about correct exposure, and a low-key image should still have a full tonal range or it'll look technically wrong ...

Looks fine to me.  I can see variation in the black.

I use the following test pattern that I save to the HD: http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

I use Powerstrip to get the changes to stick because my monitor controls only go so far (Acer): http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

Powerstrip can also adjust the temperature if your monitor is off a bit there too.  It can do much more than that too.  It is around $30 and worth every penny.  Running Windows 8 here.

Hi

I'm in the process of setting up my new monitor today.

Getting it synced between Photoshop and Indesign I was having some problems.

New computer and monitor.

I finally think I have it about set, and my desktop looks right.

I can see detail in the horse all over even in the thigh area, but it is dark, it also looks like it's supposed to look that way not like its under exposed if you get what I mean.

It doesn't look like an image that should be lighter and is too dark, if that makes any sense.  You can see by the shadow that it's back lighted and that's how it looks.

Mike