Testing image quality on different displays/devices

I have always processed my images on my TV in "Graphics Mode", which is pretty dim as it is for reading text and web browsing. Last night I tried processing with my TV in Photo Mode which tunes the display for viewing photos, and also brightens the panel. I was happy with the result below until I changed back to Graphics mode. I can't have my TV bright all the time as it is too bright. I would appreciate some feedback to know how this image looks on various displays and I figured here would be a good place to test. Let me know how the image looks. Too dim? Too bright/stretched? How to the colors look?

Pretty dark and pretty reddish (NGC891). Otherwise not much colour at all.

I agree with @andrea tasselli on this, dark and very reddish/magentaish. FWI I’m looking at it on my iPad.

Dale

Thanks @andrea tasselli and @Dale Penkala . That's what I'm seeing too. I won't use Photo Mode anymore.

Hi, no offense,
But it doesn't look correct.

I recommend maybe also viewing your image on a phone or ipad to see how that compares to your TV. What i'm seeing is a pretty dark NGC891.
Furthermore it is way too red, whitebalance is too warm, i'd recommend using Photometric color calibration for best results, alternatively I found matching the histogram peaks to the same height works alright.

Hope this helped you.

Stefan Pfleger:
Hi, no offense,
But it doesn't look correct.

I recommend maybe also viewing your image on a phone or ipad to see how that compares to your TV. What i'm seeing is a pretty dark NGC891.
Furthermore it is way too red, whitebalance is too warm, i'd recommend using Photometric color calibration for best results, alternatively I found matching the histogram peaks to the same height works alright.

Hope this helped you.

None taken. I didn't think it looked good with a normal or standard display brightness. It looks even darker on my phone.

Is Photometric color calibration a thing in PI? I use Photoshop, I should have mentioned that.

Typically "Graphics Mode" on TVs is for the most part a neutral brightness, color, and sharpness setting, although on my TV it is on the warm side which is what I want when I'm browsing the web or reading documents, as the white parts of the screen are softer on my eyes.

Stefan Pfleger:
Hi, no offense,
But it doesn't look correct.

I recommend maybe also viewing your image on a phone or ipad to see how that compares to your TV. What i'm seeing is a pretty dark NGC891.
Furthermore it is way too red, whitebalance is too warm, i'd recommend using Photometric color calibration for best results, alternatively I found matching the histogram peaks to the same height works alright.

Hope this helped you.

None taken. I didn't think it looked good with a normal or standard display brightness. It looks even darker on my phone.

Is Photometric color calibration a thing in PI? I use Photoshop, I should have mentioned that.

Typically "Graphics Mode" on TVs is for the most part a neutral brightness, color, and sharpness setting, although on my TV it is on the warm side which is what I want when I'm browsing the web or reading documents, as the white parts of the screen are softer on my eyes.

Yes PCC is in PI. I don’t know about all the features in PS so I can’t comment there.

Dale

It's almost like you turned the contrast up so much that you have lost most of the image data in the process (i.e. overstretched). When I look at the histogram you just have a very sharp peak. I tried to tweak it, but there is just not enough data there.

Stefan Pfleger:
Hi, no offense,
But it doesn't look correct.

I recommend maybe also viewing your image on a phone or ipad to see how that compares to your TV. What i'm seeing is a pretty dark NGC891.
Furthermore it is way too red, whitebalance is too warm, i'd recommend using Photometric color calibration for best results, alternatively I found matching the histogram peaks to the same height works alright.

Hope this helped you.

Is Photometric color calibration a thing in PI? I use Photoshop, I should have mentioned that.

Typically "Graphics Mode" on TVs is for the most part a neutral brightness, color, and sharpness setting, although on my TV it is on the warm side which is what I want when I'm browsing the web or reading documents, as the white parts of the screen are softer on my eyes.

Ah I see. I recommend the approach of matching the histrogram peaks then if you are working with Photoshop.
Of course it will help get the colors accurate with the warm mode turned off when editing Photos however.

Furthermore I recommend siril to get the images color calibrated if you haven't tried that yet, it is free.

Stefan Pfleger:
Stefan Pfleger:
Hi, no offense,
But it doesn't look correct.

I recommend maybe also viewing your image on a phone or ipad to see how that compares to your TV. What i'm seeing is a pretty dark NGC891.
Furthermore it is way too red, whitebalance is too warm, i'd recommend using Photometric color calibration for best results, alternatively I found matching the histogram peaks to the same height works alright.

Hope this helped you.

Is Photometric color calibration a thing in PI? I use Photoshop, I should have mentioned that.

Typically "Graphics Mode" on TVs is for the most part a neutral brightness, color, and sharpness setting, although on my TV it is on the warm side which is what I want when I'm browsing the web or reading documents, as the white parts of the screen are softer on my eyes.

Ah I see. I recommend the approach of matching the histrogram peaks then if you are working with Photoshop.
Of course it will help get the colors accurate with the warm mode turned off when editing Photos however.

Furthermore I recommend siril to get the images color calibrated if you haven't tried that yet, it is free.

I align the RGB in DSS then fine tune the color balancing in PS. I tried Siril a long time ago and didnt like it. I want to eventually purchase APP. When I trialed it, it did a much better job stacking than DSS. I was able to extract more data in fainter regions of my images. Just waiting on them to add GPU acceleration support

I bought an IPS screen for editing my astro photos. They have quite good color and contrast rendering.
i used a TN screen before and my images always had too high contrast and strange colors when looked at on other screens.

D. Jung:
I bought an IPS screen for editing my astro photos. They have quite good color and contrast rendering.
i used a TN screen before and my images always had too high contrast and strange colors when looked at on other screens.

I've been looking at Wacom Tablet screens for other projects, and paying attention to the color and resolution specs. I could also use that to judge color and contrast.

In my opinion, one of the most valuable pieces of hardware I have ever bought was a display calibration device. Current suggestions would be something like the ColorChecker Display from Calibrite, or one of the Spyder devices from Datacolor.

Knowing that your screen is displaying a properly calibrated image that will match what you get if you send your image to a professional print studio is hugely valuable.

In the grand scheme of astrophotography, the cost of one of these calibration devices is pretty small compared with most of the kit that we use - I highly recommend it.

Graeme Holyoake:
In my opinion, one of the most valuable pieces of hardware I have ever bought was a display calibration device. Current suggestions would be something like the ColorChecker Display from Calibrite, or one of the Spyder devices from Datacolor.

Knowing that your screen is displaying a properly calibrated image that will match what you get if you send your image to a professional print studio is hugely valuable.

In the grand scheme of astrophotography, the cost of one of these calibration devices is pretty small compared with most of the kit that we use - I highly recommend it.

What particular device are you using?

Dale

Graeme Holyoake:
In my opinion, one of the most valuable pieces of hardware I have ever bought was a display calibration device. Current suggestions would be something like the ColorChecker Display from Calibrite, or one of the Spyder devices from Datacolor.

Knowing that your screen is displaying a properly calibrated image that will match what you get if you send your image to a professional print studio is hugely valuable.

In the grand scheme of astrophotography, the cost of one of these calibration devices is pretty small compared with most of the kit that we use - I highly recommend it.

or, as a minimum (if you are using windows), use the calibrate display colour feature that is available in the operating system

Andy Wray:
Graeme Holyoake:
In my opinion, one of the most valuable pieces of hardware I have ever bought was a display calibration device. Current suggestions would be something like the ColorChecker Display from Calibrite, or one of the Spyder devices from Datacolor.

Knowing that your screen is displaying a properly calibrated image that will match what you get if you send your image to a professional print studio is hugely valuable.

In the grand scheme of astrophotography, the cost of one of these calibration devices is pretty small compared with most of the kit that we use - I highly recommend it.

or, as a minimum (if you are using windows), use the calibrate display colour feature that is available in the operating system

Funny you say that Andy thats what I have done on both my monitors. I should have mentioned this too. I wasn’t aware of this “other” device to calibrate colors and was looking into what this is exactly. Are you familiar with this calibration device?

Dale

Edit: Ok just checked this on Amazon and found this one. Looks interesting. I wonder if this is any better then the Windows calibrate procedure???
https://www.amazon.com/Datacolor-SpyderX-Pro-Calibration-Photographers/dp/B07M6KPJ9K/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1RAJMK3Z55RWG&keywords=Spyder%2Bdevices%2Bfrom%2BDatacolor&qid=1667741896&sprefix=spyder%2Bdevices%2Bfrom%2Bdatacolor%2Caps%2C242&sr=8-1-spons&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0&th=1

Dale Penkala:
What particular device are you using?

Dale

I have the Datacolor Spyder4 Studio kit which includes a display calibration device as well as a device for calibrating printer output. I think the most up to date version from Datacolor is the Spyder5 system.

Graeme Holyoake:
Dale Penkala:
What particular device are you using?

Dale

I have the Datacolor Spyder4 Studio kit which includes a display calibration device as well as a device for calibrating printer output. I think the most up to date version from Datacolor is the Spyder5 system.

Do you see much difference in the display using this verses just the Windows Calibration routine?

Dale

Dale Penkala:
Do you see much difference in the display using this verses just the Windows Calibration routine?

Dale

It's a long time since I tried using Windows built in calibration, but when I did it was pretty ineffective. Could be better now, but I prefer to use my Spyder anyway.

Maybe we are looking at this the wrong way. I frequently take an image from my laptop and send to my phone for sending to friends. When it gets to my phone, go "OMG what happened??".
Between auto brightness and different color palettes….it's pretty difficult to match things up without a common standard.
I'm new to this forum so please excuse my ignorance….
But, has Astrobin ever tried setting up a contrast and color scale on the site so that you can check your monitor against the site image?….or have I just not found it?
In medical imaging we would calibrate to different patterns and contrast ranges in bw and color to at least present images with the same dynamic range. While color hues would be difficult to match exactly, dynamic ranges could be a lot closer.
At least that way, other people's images could display somewhat similar to the way the creator posted. These settings tend to be pretty subjective on your own screen….but at least there would be a way to get close to everybody being able to view an image as intended.
Just a thought.
Bill G.

I'm glad this thread kept going because I never thought to use an external color calibrator to calibrate for prints. I've tried printing to a color laser printer, and found most of them came out good when I increased brightness only. But Andromeda came out too green.

Speaking of professional prints, how do you guys copyright/protect the images you send to the printing companies?

Hi,

Glad to run across this thread as I have a new high performance computer for Pixinsight and wanted to hook it up to my 65": LG OLED TV and having all sorts of trouble.

https://pcpartpicker.com/builds/edit/?userbuild=CQDcCJ

I normally use an LG LCD attached to my laptop and have got that pretty well calibrated since I can unplug the laptop and check the displays back and forth. At one point I had a calibration device but must be lost at the office somewhere.

Since I have the systems right next to each other seems I could adjust the OLED by eye to be pretty close to the laptop and LCD, the OLED seems qualitatively such a better screen that it hard to compare... also I am not sure if the brightness of the OLED remains constant or varies (adjuted) with room lighting...

JY

Well, turns out indeed I have this purchased 5 years ago:=a-size-large a-spacing-none=a-size-large product-title-word-breakX-Rite ColorChecker Classic (MSCCC) Humm, at the time I also downloaded and article entitled "Poor Results with i1Display Pro on PC"…..

Hi,

Glad to run across this thread as I have a new high performance computer for Pixinsight and wanted to hook it up to my 65": LG OLED TV and having all sorts of trouble.

https://pcpartpicker.com/builds/edit/?userbuild=CQDcCJ

I normally use an LG LCD attached to my laptop and have got that pretty well calibrated since I can unplug the laptop and check the displays back and forth. At one point I had a calibration device but must be lost at the office somewhere.

Since I have the systems right next to each other seems I could adjust the OLED by eye to be pretty close to the laptop and LCD, the OLED seems qualitatively such a better screen that it hard to compare... also I am not sure if the brightness of the OLED remains constant or varies (adjuted) with room lighting...

JY

I would be hesitant using any TV for photo editing. A decent IPS PC monitor out of the box will be probably more precise in terms of color reproduction and contrast than any TV. And in the attached photo the TV shows the shadows as blacks; compare the center top part of the images in both displays.

Yes, I see what you say. Dark black make for good movie watching not astrophotography.

I ran the i1Profiler using the device and it ran but did not produce an acceptable profile… too dull. The windows profiler did better.

Do you have any recommendations on monitors? Normally we are using Dells. But they are very expensive.

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