i see your true colours - or do i?

[swedeheart]

A while back I edited (in Photoscape) an image for a friend's site and it went very well with her background colours and looked generally nice.The other day I was looking at her site from another computer and it looked god-awful...! Huge areas of the image were severely affected by a sharp-edged green colour cast that, on my own computer, is barely noticeable. It's there, but discreet and diffused, but on this other computer it was totally tacky...

I know there are web-safe colours and then there's those that aren't but in a case like this where you aren't defining one single colour but editing an entire image, is there any way you can be sure what will work and what might not?

Please explain as you would to your granny:)

[scotman]

Hi Kit

Can't answer your question in particular but doesn't it involve the settings for the actual monitor. Brightness, contrast, colour etc.
The only thing I can suggest is that you download a reasonable spread of browsers and check how anything looks in each of them before finalising it.

John

[Wak]

Hi, all monitors can be set or reset according to operators requirements and obviously can show different results for the same image although they should be set to a certain standard initially.

You can download a Monitor wizard from the following site which will help to reset the colours, the brightness and the contrast.

http://www.hex2bit.co...ducts/product_mcw.asp

Hope this helps.

[Wak]

There's also a Nokia Monitor test Program which you can download from MajorGeeks.
Google for Ntest.exe, download and then reset the monitor as per instructions.

[wildwood]

It sounds like you may have the border colour of images set to a different colour as the background. If so, fix this by setting the border value to nil or change it to the same colour value as the BG.

As said, different browsers/monitors display colours different. If possible, stick to the main colours.

[swedeheart]

Hi John and Wak, I'm not really sure if that is what I'm asking. Cos no matter how standard my own monitor settings are (and I believe they are), there will always be others whose settings are different or whose screens are tired and I couldn't possibly cover all those possibilities. Could I? And it wasn't just that the colours looked different on the other computer, they looked INCREDIBLY, INFINITELY much more different for the image I had edited than they did for the background of the site. The latter looked much the same on computer number 2 as on my own.

Sincere thanks for your suggestions and sincere apologies if I'm mistaken in thinking they won't solve the problem. Don't hesitate to tell me again if that is the case and I just can't see it. I guess I'm asking about "web-safe colour editing" - perhaps Photoscape simply isn't as great as I thought it was? (Considering it's free.)

wildwood I'm sorry but I don't understand your first sentence. You're not talking to me as if I were your grandmother;-) As for sticking to the main colours well I can't very well do that in an editing program were ALL the colours of an image change automatically if I press for instance 'bloom' or if I alter the luminance - or whatever. Can I? Don't mean to sound rude, I'm struggling to understand whether or not you guys have actually given me the solutions and I just can't see it...

[Wak]

I have just put "Web-safe Colours" into Google and came up with this site which seems to tie in with what you are talking about.
http://code.google.co...rty_editor_color.html
Also you could check the following.
Right click in a blank space on the desk top, Select Properties, Settings, then ADVANCED (at the bottom), General tab.
Read about 256 colours and check that you are working in 256 colours.

As long as you think your monitor is OK then you shouldn't worry about any others (unless, you see a lot more which are the same as each other but different to yours.??)

[swedeheart]

Wak I'm sorry to sound so negative but I just don't understand how that site solves my problem...? Then again I'm no whiz kid and English isn't my native tongue... so if you're seeing some solution in there that I'm not seeing, I'm listening.

About the 256 colours I have Vista and it doesn't come up like that, but I'm pretty sure my settings are hunky-dory:)

[ChuckFickens]

Just a thought, was the other computer running their monitor in a low colour setting?

Try setting your monitors colour depth to 256colours and see what the site looks like then, if it looks "god-awful" that's why it looked bad on the other computer.

If my guess is correct then don't worry about it as it's not a problem you've caused on the site, people shouldn't be running their computers in such a low colour depth.

[swedeheart]

Hi Chuck, that sounds like something I'd like to try but I can't find where to do it? I have Vista. Right-clicking on my desktop and choosing Graphics Properties takes me to a small window where one of the choices is Display Settings which reveals my colour quality to be 32 Bit. The only other option is 16 Bit. Is this comparable to the "experiment" you are suggesting?

And, if so, will I be able to change it back easily? The reason for that last question is, I just tried to change it to 16 and the puta was very dramatic about it: "The desktop settings have been changed, if you do not confirm within 15 seconds the new settings will be cancelled." Why the drama, it made me hesitate, lol...

[askyourgran]

Take my word as a granny, listen to chuck, chuck.

[swedeheart]

You're preaching to the choir, askyourgran, I'm a Chuck fan:)

[scotman]

Swedeheart

Regarding changes to colour settings. This is an easily reversible action. All that is does is reduce the number of colours that your computer will use in creating the image to display. When you have seen the effect of the reduction you can repeat the exercise and reset to 32 bit.

Trust Chuck, he knows!

John

[swedeheart]

Arghhh, why does everybody keep telling me to trust Chuck lol, I do trust Chuck:) and I'll do that as soon as da man tells me if his 256 colours equal my 16 Bit. I'm just trying to establish whether or not we're talking about the same thing, John:) Thanks for answering about reversibility. One does assume reversibility, but that only makes the drama more confuddling:)

[rojash]

You are trying to solve a problem that cannot be solved. You have no control over other people's monitors, so what you should do is first calibrate your monitor, and then optimize pictures on that. You can only console yourself with the thought that if anyone has their monitor set incorrectly, then all the sites they visit will look like cr@p, not just yours.
It's just the same if you produce a piece of music. You spend hours getting it to sound just as you want it to, and then some twit plays it on their HiFi with the bass cranked up full, and the treble turned right down. There's nothing you can do about it.

[swedeheart]

Hi rojash, yes I'm sure you're right. It's just that the background of my friend's site still looked okay on computer number 2 (a multi-colour background with a busy pattern), as did the other images on her site - it was just my image - the one I edited - that looked cr@ppy. That puzzled me. But yes I see your point. Thank you, and thanks everybody!

[scotman]

Hi Swedeheart.

Just a suggestion which might help. Can you post the two images(screen prints) somewhere available to this site, one from your PC and the other from your friend's? This might give people like Chuck more to work with.

[swedeheart]

No can do, John, the other computer is not my friend's computer, it's a public computer and the settings don't allow screen prints. Otherwise a neat idea:)