image brightness, PC versus Mac

[Bill Crosbie]

At 09:20 AM 3/26/96 -0800, Michael Haseltine wrote:
>We've been noticing that images that look great on our Macs are very dark on
>PCs. Subtle details come through on the Macs and are invisible on PCs. Is
>this a remnant of Macs pioneering the paper-white monitor that PCs haven't
>caught up to, or some other phenomenon? What are others doing about it, or
>don't you have this problem?
>


Michael,

This comes by way of the Guide to web Style published at
<http://www.sun.com/styleguide/> by Rick Levine.  He links to the following
site, <http://www.cgsd.com/papers/gamma.web.html> which explains a bit about
the differences in Mac vs PC/UNIX display technology.  

In a nutshell, image brightness is affected by the gamma value of the
monitor.  Macs have built in gamma correction which makes displaying
graphics relatively painfree.  Apparently some higher end PC video cards can
also have the gamma value set for a monitor.  Most common PC video cards do
not.  The result - muddy images when viewed on that platform.  I would
suggest taking some time with <http://www.cgsd.com/papers/gamma.web.html>.
They explain how to make images look good on both platforms.  There is also
a much more in depth discussion of gamma.

Hope this is helpful.

Bill
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