RE: Web Site Horror--Feedback requested

DEAR KATHERINE,
        Looks luminous on my PC!
                CHEERS!
                        BOB

 Please check my website: http://www.bobkiss.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Katharine Thayer [mailto:kthayer@pacifier.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 11:01 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Web Site Horror--Feedback requested

So I went online at the library to look at the cyanotype-gum sharpness
test, since I couldn't access it at home (don't ask me why one of the
symptoms of the death throes of my system is that I suddenly can't open
sites that I could access easily last week, like Mark's site and the
Epson site, but it is so). So anyway I had some time left on my
10-minute allotment, so I decided to look at my website, just for the
heck of it. Well, I've hardly ever been so shocked in my life. Most of
the images look terrible -- dark and dirty, dingy, not at all like the
originals, or like what they look like on my system (or at least how
they looked before everything turned pink).

So I need to understand this. I was always under the impression that
there are basically two gammas that you need to be aware of: 1.8 for
Macs and 2.2 for PCs. When I set up the website, I had the images
adjusted to look right on my Mac at 1.8 and then remembered that PC
users would be looking at them at 2.2, so I changed my monitor gamma to
see how they would look. They were way too dark at 2.2 so I lightened
them so they would look more right on a PC. This made the images too
light on a Mac, but I figured there were fewer Mac users and I dispensed
with them by adding a warning that Mac users should change their gamma
to "uncorrected" to see the images closer to correct. And I've left my
monitor gamma set at "uncorrected" (2.2) and the site looks great to me,
all the time.

But this what I was seeing today didn't look at all like 2.2 on my
system, it looked more like about 2.6 or 2.8. I'm horrified to think
that maybe this is what people have been seeing all along.

For example, the image on my home page

http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/

should have luminous blushing apricots in a dark blue bowl. The apricots
should look clean and clear and luminous, and there should be some
detail even in the darkest part of the bowl.

If what you see is a black void with some dingy yellow speckled fruit,
looking like it's been rotting there for a week or more, which is what
I saw over at the library, I need to know about it, so please let me
know (offlist would probably be most appropriate). Thanks millions,
Katharine
Received on Tue Sep 20 16:43:40 2005