House & exterior

[raistlin]

I think this looks great. My only comment is that it looks dark on my monitor, and I have my monitors calibrated with a Spyder 3. I think a brightness boost would help a lot with a little punch of contrast then it should look really good.

Ok ! Could you send me the brightness/contrast value to correct that please? I've also a calibrated monitor but sometimes i've ffedback like yours from some of my printers... And always thanks for all your interesting comments!

[jujubee]

I don't have specific values as I do everything by eye, but I just ran your image through PS quickly:


Basically took the underlying layer and tweaked the levels. Copied all and added a new layer. Ran the "autocolor" and it took out a lot of the yellow. Then I realized maybe the original appeared "too yellow" to me, so I lowered the opacity on the new layer until it got to a happy point. Then I added a little more brightness/contrast. I'd reduce the saturation just a little bit to make it appear more natural.

But that's just my vision which is kinda messed up to begin with. On my monitor this looks normal to me.

One more tip - might want to take a dodge brush (whatever the one that lightens) and hit some of the plant leaves with it to give it the look as if they're reflecting light for that added pop.

[Crayox13]

Thanks for the explanation raistlin!

[raistlin]

Thx jujubee! Really informativ answer ! I have to look at that on PS for the next, but I can say that i've done the "yellowish" appearance intentionnally, i want to "warm" my pictures, just because i like it! But for the contrast, wow it's really impressive how it could be correct on a calibrated monitor... I've a Nec LCD3090WQXI which have a cell to correct the luminosity every minutes and strong factory's parameters... But you're right! it's not also correct than a spider... I've to look on that... Thx again!

[jujubee]

Well, if your monitor is a certain settings or colors are off it will appear different to you than to me anyways. Calibration simply ensures your whites are white, blacks black, and average RGB values. It also takes monitors and attempts to average them all together so it's consistent.

If I send a client this file and his colors are way off on his screen, it's still going to look way off. However, it will correctly match a printed output (if the print settings are good and correct.) All I can really do is guarantee that it's properly adjusted on my end for a "best fit" situation.

I have three monitors side-by-side - two on this computer. Each one of the monitors look vastly different color-wise from one another... I simply choose to go with the most vibrant LCD I have as my main.

I realize the warmth was intentional - you could always lower the opacity on the second "corrected" layer to introduce the yellow back into the image. It appeared too yellow on my screen but I guarantee I print this, it will come out exactly as it looks here.