I think that before someone begins voting on a contest, their display should be checked first to ensure they are seing the photos properly.
I propose that each contest should have a password(s) that need to be read from a picture of proper contrast.
Ex:
You should be able to read a word in both the black and white sections, the words are the color of the blocks that are 1 over from black and white.
Now it may not have to be this drastic but I think that some check should be in order.
I can only read the white . . . unless I look at my display from an angle. Then I can read the black. I can't read the black straight on no matter how I set my contrast or brightness.
You must have an LCD, It is still possible to get it right on an LCD, I have tested it on both a LCD and CRT. LCDs change gamma from diffrent angles.
Yeah, I have an LCD. I've run it through the Adobe Calibrator that comes with PS, and thought I had it set fairly well.
Okay, I fixed it. I'm running an nvidia card and fiddled with the contrast and brightness in the monitor setting options. It's got a whole lot more control than the monitors adjustability. Thanks for the post RebAl.
The topic probably goes both ways. There are people like me with crappy monitors who miss stuff and get scored low by the people with great monitors and then there are the people with great monitors...actually, unless there's a TON of detail in the SUPER LOW shadow areas, I don't think many people are going to vote down. If that's the case, your photo probably won't do that well anyway...there has to be SOMETHING else there to look at.
As far as calibrating monitors, I see your point, but seriously, even everyone's eyes see everything differently. Maybe with brightness and contrast, but more importantly with color.
I calibrated mine a while ago with adobe whatever and it made my screen way too bright. The way I see it, when my screensaver comes on, my room should get dark -- the way it had it, the screen still illuminated the room quite a bit even with a dark screen up.
One of course one could set different profiles for different purposes, but I wonder how many people are not as PS proficient as some others. I received several comments on my image saying it was "washed out" and was probably scored down for it eventhough the image is actually well saturated with neither hot or cold areas. It was very frustrating at the time but realize that not everyone has the bucks to afford a good let alone great monitor. On this site the grey scale is located at the bottom of the image page, it only takes a second to see if its your monitor or the image.
Personally, I am not going to recalibrate my monitor, which is set to high end output at the lab and for press, to be perfect on this site. I just don't have the time to dink with it.
I just think in scoring a little latitude should be shown by those doing the scoring. IT IS NOT A PERFECT WORLD. And as was mentioned everyone sees color and contrast a bit differently
Alexander, that was really good of you.
Instead of just moaning about everybody's lousy monitor calibration, you presented something useful to check (and perhaps improve) our monitors.
You certainly inspired me to download and install the latest driver, and to calibrate my monitor. It's done now and I am pleased to say I can see everything.
I actually have two monitors and both now look the same!
Thank you.
