Poll; How many use Macs, how many use PC here?

For your comparisons, are you comparing well-calbrated (to same standard) computer+display configurations? Do you also account for the effect of lighting environment around your computer setup, etc?

Just checking since you say they appear "much different".

Also, doesn't the Mac use gamma 1.8 while Wintel platforms mainly use gamma 2.2? So you might need to account for that if you're using the same kinds of display for both Mac and PC.

Also, your Mac is probably set up to be colorspace aware while your PC (and/or whatever software you used for viewing images) may not be. In that case, if you view images that use AdobeRGB colorspace or something other than sRGB, it won't look right w/ most software on the PC -- as most typically assume sRGB.

With all this stuff going on, I wonder when computer video (and digital imaging in general) will also end up being dubbed w/ a similar rep ("Never The Same Color" twice  ) as NTSC video by the mainstream populace here in the USA. :wink:

_Man_

 

I use PC, but my Mac-using mate has his gamma set to 2.0 as a sort of compromise solution. His images don't seem to display any differently on my monitor than they do on his and vice versa. I should add, "At least since I got a good monitor and discovered my old cheap POS was the reason why I thought all my images looked soft (now only some of 'em look soft   ).

Neil

 

Are you comparing images on the web between mac & pc, or the same image locally on each computer hard drive?

If your viewing via the web, there are many reasons why the look different.

The most important will be color profile. IE & Windows computers assume sRGB and ignore the imbedded image info. With Mac, and most Mac browsers, it will display the color profile of the image. If the profile is missing, it will revert to the default display profile & not sRGB.

This is important when viewing images from online hosting companies such as smugmug. They strip the profile out of the image when it is resized to save on bandwidth. I've had long discussions about this with the smugmug owners, and have been pulling my hair out. An out of the box mac install & safari will display washed out images when there is no embedded profile. To resolve this, I have designed my own site, and I'm moving all my galleries there.

I have done way too much research on this, so if you have any questions, let me know.

Dave

 

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax;

 

You eat Mac's at that Burger Place which was 50 years old yesterday.

PC's are what you do computing on..... :wink:

 

One of the problems w/ LCD is black level (and consequently DR). LCD just cannot have as good DR as CRT although I heard you can get one reasonably close to a good CRT from Apple(?) for a pretty penny. The problem is LCD panels use a bulb to light the entire thing, and the light usually leaks too much to allow decent black level. And if they try to tone down the blacks, they will make the whites dimmer than what most people want. Most people tend to just assume brighter is better and don't think much about blacks (and the overall grayscale) or that maybe it's good to watch TV w/ a dimmer lighting instead (so that blacks are more pronounced and super brightness is not needed).

And that's part of the reason why TVs (and monitors) are typically set to overly blue WB for that extra push in perceived brightness on top of the over-the-edge super bright "torch mode" default settings needed to combat brightly lit showroom floors (and other competing TVs). And depending on how blue the WB is, the maker will also apply some red push to compensate, which is why you often see burning/glowing red faces/skin tones on people who have a reddish skin tone and plenty of blooming/bleeding reds as well -- that's besides whatever mess the settings arrived at after being played around by some shoppers of course.

Hmmm... Actually, I wonder if that's also roughly what's going on w/ the D70's default color balance. There's a touch of blue/green bias in the WB, and maybe they compensate w/ the red push, which tends to blowout reds.

_Man_

 

It's a small sample, but Macs appear to constitute a quarter of the machines used. The sales of Macintosh computers is somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of all the computers sold, so they seem to be 3 or 4 times more popular here (amoung digital photographers) than in the general public.

Thanks Scott for running the poll. Too bad few software developers will see this result, but those who do will have an advantage in peddling digital photography software.

 

I do all my photo work on a G5 Dual 2.5GHz Machine with the new Apple 23" LCD screen. At first I was leery about leaving my Apple Studio CRT which I used to use...but this new Apple Cinema Display is beautiful.

As far as the difference between Mac and PC, thoughts have been given...the main variation for those PC screens that are not calibrated is mostly gamma. For that reason I've calibrated my screen to be a little bit of a compromise so my online photos will show up nicely on PCs.

Regards,

Paul

 

For what its worth I use a PC with a crt monitor that I calibrate with an Eye One.
Jarrell

 

i use pc...but if i won the lottery...i would be a mac...the mac system seems more practical/efficient with graphics...although the cost of all the software and availbility of mac sucks...

maybe all the hype got me caughtup?