My monitor dies this afternoon with a pop and fizzle. Something in it rattles now like a old lighbulb So I went out and bough a new minitor. To my horror, my images recently now look aweful to me. They look grey and dark. I think my older monitor was inherently pale despite callibration. I feel like a slop who just realized my zipper has been open for awhile. :0 Oh the horror of not knowing what true color is. "Whatif what I think chicken really tastes like doesn't taste like chicken at all. Mabey what I think chicken taste like really tastes like oatmeal or tunafish...." -quote from Mouse in The Matrix Arrgg. What is the true color of peach? Anton

Despite my fast and slopping typing I really do know how to spell. Honest. :)

Ouch, dude. Have you tried gamma correction, to make sure your current monitor really is calibrated?

Oh, yes, I have had this happen to me, too! What a horror to view on the new monitor what you thought looked great on the old monitor. You have my sympathies, Anton!

I just checked your images in your gallery, and I'm pleased to reassure you they don't look grey and dark; not by themselves and not in comparison with other images on the site. I've got a good monitor here, and it's set up pretty well.

lol Anton... I dunno what "true" colors are. John and I are working in the same office, - he with programming and I with graphics. I got the better deal when it comes to monitors. But I'd have to say that when John yells at me.... open this file, - check the colors... Are they OK??? And then if I say... Uh... nope... the inside of your table doesn't match the outside... he needs to chek it for himself. on MY monotor.... So Now I understand why I also have the 'puter with the most RAM. It's disgusting how many windows I have to have open at the same time. lol Britt pssttt... uhm... you're fly is open! :P

I don't have to worry 'bout my fly bein' open ... - cuz - ... if he can't get up, he can't get out! ;=]

Maybe that's WHY chicken tastes like everything :)

I know how you feel. I've got this beautiful Del flat monitor that I bought from a place where Del's go to be reborn. I don't have drivers for 32-bit color for this monitor, nor know where to get them. So, here I am working only in 24-bit color and hoping my images look as good to others as they appear to be to me on my monitor. Cheer up, a tech friend told me that no two monitors are alike, even if they came off the assembly line and were right next to each other. And Geep's right....don't have to worry if it can't get out the fly....ha!!!!!! Liz Pope Dreamspinner

I'm surprised a professional like you doesn't use a specropho... er, spectro... one of those things to stick up against the monitor to measure .... whatever it measures to make sure you're getting the right colors. Dual monitors help, too.

lol. Me a professional? Well, I don't use those new fangled gizmos.

They don't look grey and dark to me, Anton. Btw, thanks for all your little tips you've given. :o)

nope no two monitors are the same..i have two 17" ones in front of me...both the same manufacturer,one just a model revision newer than the other,both have the same CRT and specs but both are different...i find the best way to get em looking ship-shape is to use the "adobe gamma loader" software that ships with photoshop.the really important bit is to get the phospher/white point specs for your particular monitor to plug into it[these are often listed on the manufacturer's website]this makes a huge difference,it takes a lot of the guess work away...but i still need to fudge a bit to get them looking the same:)

Ben
MessianicArt.com

In the thumbnail above, you can see the errors if you have a bright monitor. I can't see them without making the picture brighter . . . praise the Lord the problem is fixed now though. ben

oh I see. Up and around the sickle it is dark brown.

Hey, I updated my video drivers (to make vue4 behave) and found things looked completely different afterward (for the better I must say, but that cool, eerie effect I thought I had achieved in vue wasn't nearly as cool, nor eerie with the updated drivers :( It's not even your monitor that can decieve you. The suckers are everywhere trying to lead you astray. Seriously, if you are going for real accuracy, one of my boss's has some software that aids him in calibrating the video drivers. Check out some of those web sites (tucows, or whatever is the best place these days) where they have loads of demos and links. I'm sure this guy read about the program in a book, or a magazine, but there has to be something to it on the 'net (I think photoshop offers something similar, if you have a recent copy of that program) eric

I just had my eyes checked and I need new glasses.. so monitors are not the only thing that fool the eyes.

Most monitors are not calibrated when you get them and you need to mess with the brightness and contrast settings till they look right. Get a something white (like the text box I'm writing in) :grins: and just mess with them til it looks WHITE. That should take care of everything. I've had to do that with every monitor I've ever had. Hope this helps Anz

Some monitors go darker with age, and some fade. If you have any monitor more than a couple of years it will change so slowly that you won't notice. Brands differ, too, as does the LCD flat-panel display from CRTs. So it is always a good idea to look at final work on another monitor. Your testers won't know how bright or aetherial or contrasty something is supposed to be... they'll just know if it is acceptable to them. Your own eyes will tell you if it is acceptable to YOU. Carolly

If you have Photoshop you will also get Adobe Gamma which lets you calibrate your monitor. It may be on the demo, so you could try installing that.

Here are some sites that may assist you in getting your monitor behaving itself. A good place to start with brightness and contrast settings is something like 50 percent brightness and 100 percent contrast. http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/colortest/ http://www.scarse.org/adjust/black.html and http://www.scarse.org/adjust/white.html http://www.wodaski.com/wodaski/gamma.htm With this last one, don't worry too much about trying to match all the colours to the supposed Mac 'correctness'. You'll likely make your head explode, and there's no 'right' or 'wrong' with this, just conventions. http://www.webarchitects.co.uk/tools/gamma/

Dreamspinner wrote: "I don't have drivers for 32-bit color for this monitor, nor know where to get them." You shouldn't need drivers for colour depth on a monitor; in fact, I don't think you really need specific drivers for monitors at all. I have set up 'unknown' monitors by lying to Windows about what they are, and they've run fine. The important thing to avoid is running them at a refresh rate that is too high. I have a Dell 19" flat screen monitor, and it is a plug'n'play device. Windows recognises it as a Dell P991, and I didn't load any sort of driver for it. My 32bit colour depth comes from my video card driver (a Matrox G450). If your video card has enough poke, you should be able to run any modern monitor in 32bit colour.

PJF is correct. It really has very little to do with the monitor, or even any part of the computer hardware/software that isn't the video card. For some reason (and this, by the way, has nothing to do with VRAM), some video cards can only go so far in resolution and color depth. My last video card, a Matrox with only 16MB VRAM, could do 1920x1440 with 32bit color on my 21" monitor; my current card, a TNT2 with 32MB VRAM, can only get to 1600x1200 in 24bit color. In the beginning of this message I said "very little" as opposed to "nothing." The reason for this is that, in some cases, some monitors can actually define max resolution. They don't controll the max color depth, but they can say that the computer can't take it any higher then, for example, 1600x1200. I think this is only really a big deal in LCD monitors, however. At any rate, I wouldn't worry, Anton! Your images look great to me! Although, it's always possible that my eyes are inherently pale! ;) Aaron

Hi Anton!- Yep, I know what you mean, SMV wouldn't have been quite as skinny if I'd made her on my current sysyem, where the video runs 1280 x 970, instead of the one I used then, which ran 1280 x 1024. The current Oxygen card has totally different brightness and contrast, too, to me a long time to get it halfway adjusted right. Adjusting monitors is sort of a black art, when I taught the Photoshop monitor adjustments as part of a Photoshop course I was always suprized how blind most people seems to be to to setting the adjustments. "Gee, don't you notice how blue your monitor is?" I finally decided most people were better off not touching it!