Photos too dark - monitor or editing problem?

[Marcia]

This might be a monitor issue, not quite sure where to post it.

When editing photos in Photoshop, they'll look fine but when uploaded look darker than when in the program. Photos on other sites are also looking too dark and a litte fuzzy, with not as much contrast as they should have.

Is this a problem with the photos themselves, or is it a monitor problem that needs adjusting?

[mivox]

Sounds like you need to adjust your photoshop colorsync settings... Make sure you have a specific color management profile set up just for images destined to display on the web. (And remember to use it! ;) )

I set up specific profiles for 4-color offset press output (which needs to be adjusted to display a little darker on-screen, judging from the way my business cards turned out!), a profile for the local copy shop's Docutech printer (conveniently downloaded from the Xerox website), and a profile specifically for web images (RGB output, with gamma set at 2.0... halfway between Mac default 1.8 and Windows default 2.2)

Really interesting things happen when I forget to use the proper one for my current project!

All that said, I could use some tips for getting a profile set up for truly consistent (as close as possible, anyhow) web display... How best to minimize effects from people's varying monitor settings?

[Marcia]

For mine I'm just readjusting and retesting, but the main concern is that other people's also look hazy and dark to me.

It started with someone having a problem with their images because of AOL image compression, but I started noticing more and I'm seeing fuzzy dark stuff all over sites now :)

>How best to minimize effects from people's varying monitor settings?
I just found out that people using AOL browsers have to turn off something with their image compression; it all looks different to them.

[minnapple]

Pantone is the default supplier for color guides.
They have a RGB product that could be your solution.

[Marcia]

The photo on the left here looks so dark it's almost hard for me to see at all. How does it look - all dark or some contrast with lights?

[webmasterworld.com...]

[mivox]

Odd... That image looks fine to me.