Damien Symonds

Then the important question is: Is your indoor lighting bright enough and white enough?

Actually, natural light streaming in isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as there's no glare on your screen, and as long as you're not too close to the window such that it impedes your vision. However, that then creates a problem that you can't edit at night. Your room must be well lit, and must be lit the same at any time of day or night (whenever you edit).

Can you please read this and confirm your setup is good? https://www.damiensymonds.net/2012/01/light-around-your-computer.html

Also, this: https://www.damiensymonds.net/2011/09/cropping-tutorial.html

Ooh ... um, no it's not. I see from your profile (and your edit!!!!) that you don't have a calibrator. This is very bad, and you must get one as soon as you can. In the meantime, have you compared your screen to prints and made what manual adjustments you can for it to match them?

Wonderful! So go ahead and do your raw processing, then post the photo for me again and we'll discuss the pants.

Hi @Siobhan Wolff, thanks for posting. Actually, Channel Mixer plays no role here. It should be a fairly simple Levels adjustment, which I can help you with. Did you shoot this photo in raw mode?

Have you followed my instructions here? Including the troubleshooting part?

@agreen we need to fix your calibration problems. Which Spyder do you have, and what screen?

Sorry I missed this. I'd suggested to Sheree that she try using the "DisplayProfile" app that I mentioned in this article. Also, I reckon it would be a good idea to simply recalibrate, before searching for complicated causes and solutions.

I'm so sorry, I don't know. Nobody else has mentioned this yet.

So far so good! I hope you and yours are too.

Yep, they'll be in here: https://www.damiensymonds.net/actions.html

If it's only a little bit, maybe just aim for 6800K and see how it looks?

Hi @Lydia, You can't input a previous profile into your new calibration, and you don't need to. Once you do the new calibration it will over-ride the old one anyway. Just follow my instructions here: https://www.damiensymonds.net/calibration.html

Yes, the list is up to date. I hate that you've got a touch screen. But for now, just get the calibrator and see if you can get a good result with it.

Yeah, I think the calibrator is cactus, sorry.

Brian, for context, see the genesis of this discussion here.

Do you have a different (older) screen in the house you could try calibrating with the Spyder instead?

No. The purpose of that lab print is to test the GAMUT of your screen. That is a secondary issue. It only happens after you've finished a successful calibration. Then you get the lab's soft-proofing profile to check how accurate it is. This confirms my fears, I think. A screen's "warm" setting should definitely NOT be this high. So either it's a terrible screen (vaguely possible) or your calibrator is terrible at reading it (most likely). You need to buy - or at least borrow - a newer calibrator, sorry.

Oh gee, a touch screen. They make me nervous. It's likely that your calibrator is too old to properly calibrate that screen. But let's not give up right away. The first thing to do is throw this stupid thing in the bin: You must only use your own photos to confirm calibration. Are you following my calibration instructions here? https://www.damiensymonds.net/calibration.html

Thanks. And what screen do you have?

Which one?

Which calibrator do you have?

Honestly, it doesn't matter. If it suits you, do all the Levels work first, then return to the Background layer and duplicate it then run the filter.