burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That's a great test image. I use it myself, along with many others. HOWEVER, it is possible to mis-set color management options and make a great, perfectly calibrated and profiled monitor look bad, OR make a print look bad.

All the device profile conversions must be made correctly. It's easy to use the wrong paper profile, to use an old monitor profile, to print an Adobe RGB image at a lab that assumes it's sRGB (believe it or not, many do!), or to print an image in a wide gamut color space that has had the EXIF and ICC profile stripped off in post-production, forcing lab software to assume sRGB. From my perspective in the lab, a few years back, I saw all of that on a daily basis.

Another culprit is often auto-leveling of the tonal scale. Clipping white and black points can result in plugged shadows and blown-out highlights.

Then there is just plain old over-processing.

Used subtly, post-processing can enhance the experience of an image. But if your work appears "other worldly," lots of folks will be distracted by that and find it jarring. There's a point at which HDR and over-processing in general lose their appeal.

Take the test at https://www.xrite.com/hue-test to see whether you have significant deficiencies in color vision. The very expensive physical "arrange the tiles" version of this test is used in hiring folks for critical color evaluation and adjustment roles. We used it on all the people we interviewed for our color correction department in the portrait lab. It separated the color blind and color deficient from the fully sighted. We hired about one out of five who took the test...

Photomac Loc: The Dalles, Or

We all spend a lot of time and capital on quality monitor, but oft forget the color environment in which we work. It has a significant impact on that color. Working in the dark, and or with a hood around the screen, neutral colored walls and a 5500 viewing light all impact color perception. Retinal decline affecting our color vision, particularly yellow and blue, from about 20% at age 58 and declines rapidly over age of 70 affecting about 50%. Men are more affected than women.
The two examples above are modestly over saturated in my view, and incidentally, notice the blues and yellows.

NatureRocks

There is a built-in assumption that almost all of us make, namely, that we perceive stimuli in identical fashion. Lots of research in hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, etc. makes it clear that that is unlikely to be true. But even as people have tried to 'calibrate' sensory experiences, how would one do that? Inevitably one has to revert to language as a mechanism of comparison, but language is fraught with the same lacks of precision that our senses manifest.

An experimental approach taken many decades ago posited that various people 'should' be able to perceive what was termed a Just Noticeable Difference, or JND. One was blindfolded and then given a square or rectangle to feel. When the felt object quit being a square and instead was a rectangle, that was deemed the JND. But, of course, different people had different points at which they perceived the difference. The same with circle and ovals. Also was applied to auditory stimuli with similar results.

But the take away is that each of us sees, hears, smells, tastes, etc. differently. Clearly there are commonalities to those sensory experiences, but not equalities. I've always wanted someone to see if twins experience in highly similar fashion; one would think so, but, you never know. But, then, regards colors, I'd say print what you see as optimal and forget trying to make it exactly as a monitor seems. Of course, some calibration probably can save on print supplies.

Spiney Loc: Reading, PA

I’ve been using a Dell Ultrasharp model 2413 a 24” LCD Monitor. I’ve been very happy with it. I Calibrate it using Display Cal and a Spyder 5-Pro. If I had to do it again I’d buy a Color Munki or X-Rite Pro because they have a better reputation. But I have had my prints either from a Lab or my Canon Pro-10 and Pro-100 match very well.

I saw your images on another post and I like the color. I used to hang glide so I really appreciate that image. Welcome to UHH.

JohnR Loc: The Gates of Hell

I have a 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display, a 24” Apple Cinema Display and a 15” MacBook Pro with Retina display. Side by side with the same photo displayed they all give very very similar, to my eyes, accurate colour without resorting to anything other than Apples built in calibration. I have looked at your posts Richard and on my displays I would rate the colours as bold rather than oversaturated. I think they’re great shots. Keep doing them. Cheers JohnR

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Are your finished files 8-bit JPEGs with sRGB color space?

If so, most people will see what you see... more or less.

If other peoples' monitors aren't calibrated, they will see some variations.... But there's nothing your or I can do about that.

Post some examples... and take your best feedback from people who are using calibrated monitors.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

If you check the OP’s posts, he has uploaded several photos and to me they’re all over processed.

SteveFranz Loc: Durham, NC

Many years ago on an Epson printer site, there was a discussion about vision after a few members had age related eye surgery. One observation made by all was the major difference in color perception after their surgery. It was most noticeable to those that had one eye done at a time. Because our minds are very adept to adapting (how's that for phrasing?) we don't notice any color shifting - just consider what you see after wearing tinted glasses for a time.

If I wasn't such a 77 year old chicken, I'd probably put eye surgery on my bucket list. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of color fidelity.

hassighedgehog Loc: Corona, CA

Part of the perception of oversaturation is what you are used to. In the case of older people they may be trying to see the screen through cataracts or other vision problems that wash out color. I've noticed that shots from the southwest tend to get that complaint from those outside of the area who expect lots of haze and other color reducers in their areas. I'm not sure if this is true for Disney World in Florida, but a good comparison is how Disneyland is very clean to the point of straining belief the first time you visit.

Nigel7 Loc: Worcestershire. UK.

Interesting discussion. However, I've been photographing the landscape for over 50 years and have never seen colours like those in your lighthouse and balloon photos. If you want to be creative and step up the saturation like that, of course you can do so. They call it Art. However nobody can possibly believe that the scenes actually looked like that naturally. Assuming you aren't manipulating them like that, something is clearly wrong. Do they look like that straight from the camera or only after you have edited them on your computer? I'm Competition Secretary of my local photography club and I hate to think what any of the panel judges would say. Generally they expect landscapes to look natural.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Thank you Burkphoto for linking to the Xrite test at: https://www.xrite.com/hue-test

Having had cataract surgery just done on both eyes, I was curious to see how I would score (and it came out 0 which is perfect). I know I would have failed this test miserably prior to the surgery. My wife used to say that images I thought were on the mark made her eyes hurt because of the intense color.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

One of the cool things I did when working in a portrait lab, running the color correction department, was to test my ability to correct color, on the same 10 images, both before and after cataract lens replacement surgery.

What I learned was startling and unexpected. Although nearly everything looked brighter, crisper, and "much nicer" after the surgery, the color balance I achieved was nearly identical, both before and after. The surgery really didn't change my ability to see and adjust digital image color RELATIVELY.

I still had the same minor deficiencies in the yellow-green part of the spectrum that I had previously. But the overall color balance — before and after — was within our lab standards, which were pretty stringent.

I had expected to see a big difference of some sort, based on my refreshed ability to see blues and greens with much more intensity. Instead, I got very similar results, with no particular bias shift.

Of course, everyone's experience may be different. Vision is NOT the same perception for all of us, but what matters is that we see the same *relative* differences in color and brightness, and adjust images accordingly, when working in critical applications.

Our collective experience in the color correction area (24 people total working up to 9 on each of three shifts) was that many things alter daily visual perception.

Caffeine, nicotine, cold and allergy medicines, alcohol hangovers, and many other mind altering drugs can make vision temporarily different.

Simple fatigue from lack of sleep and/or stress can reduce the accuracy of color adjustment, too.

Coming in from eating lunch on the patio in bright sun was a HUGE no-no. It took 20 to 30 minutes to dark adapt from that!

Pregnant women experienced vision shifts that tracked with their hormonal fluctuations. The department supervisor reporting to me was pregnant one year. She voluntarily avoided adjusting images for months! The rest of our staff covered her duties in the hot seat. (She brought it up with me, as I had no idea that was a factor before her experience.)

All of men on our staff absolutely did not see color as well as most of the women. Consequently, we had mostly women adjusting color! I remember hearing at a Kodak seminar that men can discriminate among approximately 3500 to 4000 hues, while women can see differences among 7000 to 8000 hues. No wonder there was this funny scene in *Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House*: https://youtu.be/s33ScN4D-HU

To help keep our eyes neutral, the walls were painted middle gray (Munsell N8 paint, which isn't cheap!). The nine identical monitors had black hoods on them. Monitors were calibrated and custom-profiled weekly. Lighting was dim and indirect, low-wattage 5000K photo-grade fluorescents, bounced off a white ceiling for a very soft, diffused ambient environment. Windows desktops were set to middle gray colors. The Task Bars were set to auto-hide. The physical desk and table tops were also a middle gray color. Operators wore gray smocks. Combined, adding those measures made a HUGE difference in the stability and consistency of the work going to the servers and printers, by reducing visual fatigue.

anotherview Loc: California

Thanks for your experienced view of color correction.