Started by gemma_beckett, 1 Oct 2026. 8 replies, 276 views
Bit of a daft one probably. Since it's got dark in the evenings I've been doing all my editing at night on the sofa, laptop brightness right up, big light off. The autumn walk photos look lovely on the laptop. Then I look at them on my phone the next morning, or my sister sees them on Facebook, and they're muddy and dark, especially the woodland ones.
I'm using Lightroom on a fairly basic Windows laptop. Do I need one of those calibrator things or am I just doing something stupid?
G
You're not doing anything stupid. This is the single most common editing problem there is, and the darker months make it worse.
Two things are going on. First, your screen is far too bright for the room. In a dark room with the backlight cranked, everything looks luminous, so you pull exposure down to compensate and end up with files that are a stop darker than they should be. Second, a budget laptop panel is probably nowhere near sRGB and nobody has ever measured it, so its idea of middle grey is a guess.
Fix the first one for free tonight. Turn the screen brightness down to somewhere between a third and a half, and put a lamp on behind or beside you. Edit there and see if the problem mostly goes away. It usually does.
A calibrator (around £150 for a basic one) fixes the second, and imo it's a better buy than your next lens. Target about 100-120 cd/m² and D65. On a cheap laptop panel it can only do so much though, the panel is the panel.
And check the histogram, not your eyes. If the woodland shots are all piled up on the left with nothing past the middle, they're dark no matter what the screen tells you.
gemma_beckett said:laptop brightness right up, big light off
yeah that'll do it lol. i edit gig stuff at 2am in a dark room and learned this the hard way when a band put my shots up on a projector and they were basically black
rawtherapist said:Turn the screen brightness down to somewhere between a third and a half, and put a lamp on
Well that's embarrassingly simple. Will try tonight, thank you!
I had exactly this trouble two winters ago. I bought a calibrator and spent an entire afternoon with it, and the conclusion was that my screen had been far too blue and far too bright for years. Worth every penny, although the software insisted I create an account before it would do anything, which I continue to resent.
Kind regards
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gemma_beckett said:my sister sees them on Facebook
phones are brighter than people think as well tbf, and facebook squashes everything, so even if you nail it on a proper screen it'll look different on there, I wouldnt chase that one too hard
Tried it. Brightness down to about 40%, lamp on. Went back through last weekend's Malham ones and I'd been pulling the exposure down nearly a full stop on most of them! Redid three and they look near enough the same on phone and laptop now. Calibrator is going on the Christmas list.
Thanks all, G
gemma_beckett said:Calibrator is going on the Christmas list
That's how they get you. Then its a new monitor, then a new laptop to drive the monitor. Ask me how I know
gemma_beckett said:I'd been pulling the exposure down nearly a full stop
About what I'd have guessed. Glad it helped.