Pictures dark after calibrating monitor - normal?

dubcat

dubcat

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Amir
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Hi, I bought the Spyder 3 Elite today to calibrate my Dell U2410 monitor which is connected to my PC running Mac OS X. Things certainly do look more colourful and rich now. I don't have curtains in my room right now and even though it is a really overcast day the software had me turn up my brightness significantly. It then did it's thing and the net result is that most of my photographs in Lightroom seem to be about 0.3-0.5 of a stop underexposed.

Is this normal? Is this now more accurate and should result in me getting better prints from online printers etc?

Cheers,
Dub
 
If you have processed your images based on how they looked on your monitor before you changed the brightness significantly it isn't too surprising they don't look right now.
 
One of the things you often notice when prints are made from images done on an uncalibrated monitor is the prints often come out looking too dark and muddy looking. Its because the monitors run so bright that you think the image is bright and contrasty enough until you print it. As you've noticed it seems so much dimmer when you first calibrate, but you do get used to it pretty quickly and you should get much better results when you print after adjusting your photos to look good on the calibrated monitor.

You might even find they still appear slightly less bright and punchy to the ones on your monitor but of course printed images will never look quite like a backlit image on the screen. Good luck with it.
 
OK thanks for that - the odd thing though is that the software had me turn up my brightness significantly - not lower it.
 
they (the software) recommend 120.. so i just went with that. It's a lot brighter than i used to have it.
 
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