After lengthy discussions with the legendary Les (::Purmusic), I have made, what was too me, an astounding discovery. I believed, for a long time, that my monitor and graphics card were setup perfectly.

It was only after these discussions with Les, with regard to my 'Living Dead' image, that I discovered the truth.

People had mentioned that some of my images seemed a bit too dark before but, having the 'perfect' setup, I believed my images were fine and it was just a few other peoples screens that were too dark. Les posted a reworked version of the above image HERE. The response then made me think Les was right.

So, I had a look for an answer as to why I was wrong when everything on my screen looked so perfect and crystal clear. I discovered this very useful site, which helped me correct my setup and finally see the light...

displaycalibration.com

It's worth taking a look at this and checking your setup. Even if you think everything is fine, like I did!

The short story of what you should see on the page...
There are 3 bars on the page. The top bar should be white on the left and very pale grey on the right. The middle bar should also be white on the left and a slightly darker shade of grey than the above bar, on the right. The bottom bar should be black on the left and very slightly lighter on the right (very dark grey).

Keep in mind that you may have to adjust your graphics card (or onboard graphics) as well as your monitor settings.

The results surprised me, but hopefully most of you should need little or no adjustment.
My results certainly show that it doesn't pay to take things for granted, especially monitor 'auto-adjust' options and default graphics card settings.

Ahh, wonderful, Paul! I have long suspected my monitor isn't calibrated properly, but had only seen expensive devices available to correct this! Thank you so much for sharing the link, going to check it out now!

Thank you Paul for the link ... I have been to the site before, but it's been quite awhile.

Edit : Just finished checking my monitor settings & set up. Had to make a few minor adjustments, so hopefully I'm good to go. I bookmarked the site & plan to check the settings more often.

Thanks again Paul.

Link.

Thanks for adding that noah... every little helps!

Paul, I just viewed your image "Living Dead" as well as Les' (&purmusic) rework. I had followed your link above several days ago & calibrated my LCD monitor, which I found to be a tad darker than it should have been. Viewing your image on my LCD (TFT) monitor the background is dark, though I do see more detail in the church & the outline of the trees are better defined.

On my CRT monitor, which was calibrated about 6 months ago, the image is darker yet. For some reason my fractals / abstracts appear darker than what they are rendered at, so I always adjust the monitor's brightness a tad higher. Photo's do not seem to be affected quite so much ... strange. I plan on calibrating this monitor as well with the link you provided. If I see any significant difference, I will let you know.

Hopefully this will be of some help.

Sherree