Need serious feedback here, all my skins too light?

[Krusty]

Got an early Christmas present -- a 19" Dell 1905 FP LCD monitor. Set it up and hooked it in, now have dual monitors (my CRT being 17").

Now here's the thing... This monitor is BRIGHT. Too bright. Has an 800:1 contrast ratio. Even turning the bright down to 0% (defaulted to 100%) it's still a hair above what I'd like.

So suffice it to say, like all LCDs its very..... bright.

So I had to try it out in AH, naturally. I was actually shocked how things looked. On my old monitor (about 5 years old) I know I had a little bit of dark color burnout. What I didn't know is that the color quality was shifted a little as well. Compared to the LCD my CRT is yellow tinted. Think of the difference between tungsten and neon lights.

Now, I had calibrated the monitor so that it looked good. In fact it is well balanced if you load a picture up but cannot compare that picture to another monitor. So if you just look at it alone it looks good. It's when you compare it side-by-side to a newer monitor that the colors look off.

So I started checking out the graphics in AH and was shocked to be able to read (well, more able to read) the instruments on new planes. No doubt the folks that created the new skins are all on super bright LCDs, like this one. That puts the CRT folks SOL.

So then I thought.. hrm.... Took up a 190a5 with the yellow checker nose and looked out at the wing. The colors weren't as dark as I remembered. So I went to my directories and checked some of my skins..... Yeesh.

Now here's the thing... I heard a comment that somebody said "all of your skins look really light". Part of that might be because of the dark color burnount on my CRT (partially fixed with color correction). Part of that is probably due to the yellow tint to the monitor.

I need a poll here, how many of you think my skins are too light? Or that the colors are off? I am willing (naturally) to adjust them all a bit.

SECOND POLL: How many of you use LCDs? In game, or just for skinning/desktop work?

I'm going to see if I can adjust my CRT a bit more to the LCD I have next to it. I'll check back for responses in a bit.

[Lord ReDhAwK]

Krusty,

All your skins have looked spot on to me.  No "lightness" in color or contrast.  I have a 21inch CRT with Adobe Gamma corrections.



ReDhAwK

[Pooface]

well, to me they always did looka little brighter than i'd thought they should be. also, your weathering is never strong enough for my monitor. engine smoke needs to be thicker in my opinion

[Krusty]

I copied and pasted all my "preview" images I had into one folder and went through them in quick succession. Perhaps I was overreacting a tad, but these two stood out a bit. Opinions on whether they ought to be "dimmed" a bit?

[Krusty]

Pooface, thank you for your candor. I'm very open to suggestion on exhaust staining. On my 109Es I keep it to a minimum because the planes were apparently cleaned and well kept. On my 109f4 (under production) I'd like to make a larger stain. On my 190s I honestly didn't know how to make a stain that didn't look like crap, so I kept the stain smaller.

[Waffle]

Using dual CRT monitors - one about 3-4 years old - the other less than a year old.

Both samsung syncmaster 995-7 dx series.

Newer monitor calibrated /white black levels and also using adobe gamma.
older monitor -just set up for what looks right. Significant difference between the 2 as far as darkenss. BUT, can see everything fine. I do main drawing on the new one and then A/B with the older one. If I can till see black/grey details on old one...then it should be just about right.

As far as I know, I dont think any of the interiors were done on LCDs. Just properly calibrated monitors.

So the "shock" you saw with the new monitor...well, is probably closer to a correct look, even tough it seems bright to you. I know when I first got the newer moniter - I  thought everything looked really bright for awhile...

but you get used to working with it and it starts looking correct again.


simple monitor cal test below.
http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/

[Krusty]

An idea of what I see now:

I had to go into my CRT OSD and set the color manually. 6500 is just dim, 9000(whatever it is) wasn't enough, so I manually set RGB all to 100% (as bright as it went)... This started my screen flickering a bit as it's not usually this bright, so I had to up my refresh from 60 to 70Hz. Flicker resolved.

Now, loading this webpage the LCD looks good. I can clearly see the grey background of the main frame and the black point looks good. Moving the same page over to the other part of the desktop (moving it to the CRT) the white point looks good but the black point is harder to see. Usually the darker colors burn out first I've noticed over the years. The background of the frame takes on a brown tint. The square within a square of stripes is VERY visible, while on the LCD it blends in much better.

When I use Adobe Gamma, it does not help. I have tried the calibrate hardware (where you select the most neutral grey) and it still doesn't help much. I have tried individual RGB instead of a single gamma slider, and it still has a yellow-ish semi-brown tint to it. It could be the age of the gun in the CRT, I don't know.

Suggestions on how to rid myself of the tint? Suggestions in general?

EDIT: Playing around with it I got rid of most of the brownish tint, but now I can't differentiate between the two blacks on the black point measure on my CRT. Using RGB sliders in Adobe Gamma I have to slide blue all the way to the max just to get it to look right. Red and Green are about the same at about 75%

[Krusty]

After a couple grueling hours of playing with Nvidia's red green and blue color correction channels (what a PITA!) I have actually got an approximation of my LCD's colors to display on my CRT. It doesn't have as much of the bright levels and it still retains a slight yellow tint (those 50% grey tests on all the color balance webpages all show brown-tinted on it).

However, aside from that it looks good. Whew... That took way longer than I expected/wanted it to.

[Krusty]

DANGIT!

When I rebooted I lost the hours of work. Apparently I screwed with the Adobe Gamma before I reset everything and started from scratch. I THOUGHT I had it going but didn't.

[Dux]

Take it from someone who's been in the business a while... color correction doesn't mean a damn unless you have a consistent ambient room light level. If your computer room has windows to the outside, flourescent lighting, white walls which you can see reflected on your monitor, etc, etc... then be advised that you will never get it to look perfect.

There are reasonable compromises, though... you should be able to find a setting that works well enough. Good luck.

[Skuzzy]

6200K is the color temperature which produce the most accurate gray scales.  6500K is a good compromise.  9000 is hot (blue), and is used to so monitors will stand out when on display in a very bright retail store.

Ambient lighting is very critical for a visual inspection of the color.  Flourescent lighting will enhance blues, tungsten ligthing will enhance reds.  There are bulbs you can get which are very neutral, but all of them will enhance a specific frequency,

LCD's cannot produce the range of color an analog monitor can.  As such, they pretty much suck for accurate image work.  Just because the image is a brightly colored one, does not make it an accurate one.


Krusty, you said 6500K looked dim to you.  Then adjust your brightness and contrast.  Or turn down the ambient lighting a bit if you are in a very brightly lit room.

[Krusty]

Well my analog is pretty dang old. I got it working pretty well. To let you know what I had to do, had to tweak the color in R G and B and in was 0 out was 30 for red alone (each color needed a diff tweaking).

I got it "near" my LCD's quality. Although I noticed with the LCD individual pixels are sharp and crisp, but on the CRT everything is a bit "fuzzy".

I had my contrast/bright maxed out and it still was far too dark -- like I said old monitor. I think I found the perfect way of adjusting monitors, too. Easier than the first time I did it.

[DREDIOCK]

Originally posted by Krusty
So I started checking out the graphics in AH and was shocked to be able to read (well, more able to read) the instruments on new planes. No doubt the folks that created the new skins are all on super bright LCDs, like this one. That puts the CRT folks SOL.

Everyones skins have all looked great to me


allied planes instuments look fine and very crisp
The instuments on the other hand  in the LW planes lhave the look like they are literally 60 years old adn aging rapidly
And the Alt indicator in particular is unreadable to me without zooming way in.

The look wonderful. Just for some of us,particularly those of us that no longer have the eyesight of a 20 year old are unfunctional.
I cant tell if Im 10K or 20 K Im pretty much going by guesswork as to how high I am.

anyway. Might be something to consider when designing cockpits that not all of us have great eyesight or supergreat monitors.

Realism is great so long as it remains functional

[Octavius]

I just saw this thread... and I have to say:

HAH!!!

I knew your monitor was hosed.  So much for all your gamma whining

(and I dont use a super bright LCD, standard non-broke CRT)

As for your skins, they're fine in my book, not too light at all.

[Krusty]

Octavious, the monitor being burnt wasn't a surprise, it was how BADLY it was burnt that was the surprise. One makes slight adjustments in one's mind, and I wasn't making enough adjustments, know what I mean?