Ok, just posted a mammoth post and it disappeared.
Let me try again.
Please have a look at the photo below :
I edited this on my laptop last night and was quite happy with it. I intended the darker leaves to be just barely visible, only the 'veins' really visible.
But when I uploaded it here, on my desktop with a CRT screen, it was really dark, only the patch of sun and backlit leaves visible.
So I brightened it a bit and uploaded it.
Looking at it now on my works LCD screen, it's way brighter than I intended.
Now I know you can get a calibrator for your screen, but my budget is a bit tight right now.
I'm hoping that if people can give their feedback I can kind of connect the dots and get the 'calibration' in to a degree.
And attempt to alter any display settings you have access to (brightness, contrast, etc.) to try and get the results for those tests to be as close as possible to what they should be (as described on the test pages).
I suspect from your description that you will find one, possibly both, of your displays are quite a long way out on the 'black level' and 'white level' tests. (I'm pretty sure that your CRT will badly fail the black level test).
These tests are very useful to gauge how accurate a given display is quickly -- if you can make both of your monitors pass these tests, your photo should look pretty much the same brightness on each.
Unfortunately laptops generally have very limited adjustment controls (often only a brightness control, although there may be more controls in the display settings, depending on the laptop). This means you may be limited in how close you can get it. A calibrator can do clever tricks that you can't do via manual adjustment to get a closer result, although bear in mind that even the most expensive laptops generally have very mediocre screens in terms of accuracy of rendition.
Note that going through the above tests will only highlight and allow you to fix brightness issues. How an individual colour is displayed can still be quite incorrect even if these tests pass with flying colours. The only way to test for colour accuracy is to obtain an accurate printed colour chart and compare it to how the colours appear on screen, and the only (realistic) way to fix issues with colour accuracy is with a calibrator.
@semjaja No problem. The other thing worth mentioning is that you can use the histogram to get a real (i.e. unaffected by display issues) indication of the range of tones in the photo.
Here's the histogram from the image you posted:
As you can see, at the very left edge of the histogram, the graph is empty. This means that there are no true blacks in your photo. The histogram starts to rise relatively soon, so there are dark greys in the photo, but because there are no blacks, this means that you described aim that 'I intended the darker leaves to be just barely visible' will not be how the photo is seen on a well-calibrated display. There are no true blacks so nothing will be 'just barely visible' -- the darkest area of the photo will display as dark grey (as it does on my monitor).
This probably means that your CRT is too dark and your laptop screen is too bright, unfortunately!
@abirkill you sir, are a legend! I admit that I'd kind of forgotten about the histogram, I'll try and 'calibrate' tonight and then keep an eye on the histogram (which I'm going to read up on now).
Thanks again, whereas it's hardly accurate, I think I can kind of sort this problem out now.
@phillyphotos@semjaja Following Paula's comment, I have found that downsizing the image yourself with good tools down to 1028 on the long side, the bicubics in Photoshop CS6 for instance, helps the 365 image considerably. Taking charge of your own resizing and then adjusting again, usually not necessary, can make a considerable difference to images such as these. The tools 365 uses to resize do not appear to be as accurate or comprehensive as Flickr, for instance, and others, it seems. 1028 of course is the "view large" limit.
@semjaja Worth a try. If you notice anything it will be when you go to the 365 page. Russ will actually thank you since he won't have to store all those wasteful extra large images that do nothing useful on 365. Yet.
@semjaja@frankhymus for a while all my photos were slightly blurry if I emailed them, but clear if I uploaded them directly from the computer. 365 has always made the colors a bit less vibrant and bright for me.
@frankhymus 1024px on the long edge is the view large limit -- uploading at 1028px will force an extra resize and resharpen down to 1024px, just as for any other size larger than 1024px.
If you are going to resize manually to try and 'beat' the site algorithms (I don't find it necessary for 99% of my shots), then you'll probably get the best results if you aim for a size that means they don't have to run -- either 1024px on the long edge if you want to optimise for viewing large, or 550px on the long edge if you want to optimise for the normal view size (although you will, of course, then lose the ability to view an image 'large').
@phillyphotos If your photos turn out less vibrant when you upload them here you're almost certainly using the wrong colour space for uploading to the Internet. They may look correct for you on Flickr, but will look incorrect to others, depending on what browser is used to view the site.
You can read more on how to fix your settings here:
the fun thing is that while you can calibrate your screens, and it'll be better when you go to print (providing the printers have also been calibrated) - others lookng at your images from work / home may not have theirs calibrated :)
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http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
Specifically, the gamma, black level and white level tests:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gamma_calibration.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php
And attempt to alter any display settings you have access to (brightness, contrast, etc.) to try and get the results for those tests to be as close as possible to what they should be (as described on the test pages).
I suspect from your description that you will find one, possibly both, of your displays are quite a long way out on the 'black level' and 'white level' tests. (I'm pretty sure that your CRT will badly fail the black level test).
These tests are very useful to gauge how accurate a given display is quickly -- if you can make both of your monitors pass these tests, your photo should look pretty much the same brightness on each.
Unfortunately laptops generally have very limited adjustment controls (often only a brightness control, although there may be more controls in the display settings, depending on the laptop). This means you may be limited in how close you can get it. A calibrator can do clever tricks that you can't do via manual adjustment to get a closer result, although bear in mind that even the most expensive laptops generally have very mediocre screens in terms of accuracy of rendition.
Note that going through the above tests will only highlight and allow you to fix brightness issues. How an individual colour is displayed can still be quite incorrect even if these tests pass with flying colours. The only way to test for colour accuracy is to obtain an accurate printed colour chart and compare it to how the colours appear on screen, and the only (realistic) way to fix issues with colour accuracy is with a calibrator.
Here's the histogram from the image you posted:
As you can see, at the very left edge of the histogram, the graph is empty. This means that there are no true blacks in your photo. The histogram starts to rise relatively soon, so there are dark greys in the photo, but because there are no blacks, this means that you described aim that 'I intended the darker leaves to be just barely visible' will not be how the photo is seen on a well-calibrated display. There are no true blacks so nothing will be 'just barely visible' -- the darkest area of the photo will display as dark grey (as it does on my monitor).
This probably means that your CRT is too dark and your laptop screen is too bright, unfortunately!
Thanks again, whereas it's hardly accurate, I think I can kind of sort this problem out now.
If you are going to resize manually to try and 'beat' the site algorithms (I don't find it necessary for 99% of my shots), then you'll probably get the best results if you aim for a size that means they don't have to run -- either 1024px on the long edge if you want to optimise for viewing large, or 550px on the long edge if you want to optimise for the normal view size (although you will, of course, then lose the ability to view an image 'large').
@phillyphotos If your photos turn out less vibrant when you upload them here you're almost certainly using the wrong colour space for uploading to the Internet. They may look correct for you on Flickr, but will look incorrect to others, depending on what browser is used to view the site.
You can read more on how to fix your settings here:
http://365project.org/discuss/general/13954/why-are-the-colors-less-vibrant-in-my-uploaded-photos