It might be a good idea to do so, especially in the light of some of @Guenterm’s comments about things to definitely avoid.
I called ASUS, and they sent me links to the “quick start guide” and the “user guide” for this display with my serial number. So, lots of reading to do, after which I can document the existing settings. I can then make changes as needed.
I will be surprised if anything “special” is selected or checked. But, good to know for sure.
Yes, the OOC picture is a lot underexposed (far from ETTR) and needed some work …
BTW, as you experimented with 182 cd/m² …
I set my screen to 6500 Kelvin / 120 cd/m² (often recommended as most users don’t know otherwise)
and took care to choose about the same contrast ratio as with my 80 cd/m² settings.
Then, I edited another pic of Mike (sailing boat surrounded by someone pulling his speedboats) and
had to reduce the exposure by - 0,35 points to get an equivalent impression as with an untouched version at 80 cd/m².
To compare different settings / levels, my Eizo CG 2730 + ColorNavigator software allows to switch instantly between (up to 6) custom settings.
Now, watching the darkened pic with screen setting 80 cd/m², I had to bring the exposure up by + 0,35 points to be comparable to the untouched version … (still, people don’t believe).
BUT, I don’t like the 120 cd/m² brightness setting. It strikes my eyes and when switching forth and back with 80 cd/m², I didn’t see shadows any better (same contrast ratio). So, that’s no solution for me.
The SmartLighting Spot Weighted tool …
I always used it to correct the exposure for important parts of the picture, but nether thought about to simply bring it over shadows and bright portions to get them under control. – Thank you to remind me of darkroom days.
To set black and white point I use Tone Curve or Selecive Tone >> Blacks / Highlights, depending on what is easier / more precise.
Ah yes, I also have been cutting highlights with Ton Curve, but then the picture not only is missing its brillance, but the first bright portion with textures don’t show up any more, as they meet the new whitepoint.
So, checking with SmartLighting Spot Weighted tool can help. 
Joanna, I combined many of your suggestions into the above document which I will print out, and use as a guide for the next image I edit - maybe a different image taken yesterday. I have already edited it “my way”, but I will try to restore it to the original settings, and then do the editing based around what you have written, in addition to the things I normally do.
My work path seems to be:
1 - open image and think about it - what do I want it to show
2 - fix any tilt in the horizon
3 - crop
4 - adjust the brightness of the image (will now do this your way)
5 - since the images are usually “dull”, fix that (will now do this your way).
6 - from then on, I start correcting things I don’t like. Before I did it my way, now I’m using “local adjustments” and “control points”, and usually darkening the sky a little.
7 - I usually turn up the vibrance to make the colors brighter
8 - Fine tune the cropping - is the image “balanced”?
9 - apply sharpness and deep prime. and use the eyedropper for white balance
10 - stare at it and think of what I might have missed. Fix mistakes or things I hadn’t noticed.
11 - export
My goal in the order of things is to do the “biggest” things first, and work on down to the fine details.
The list I printed is not to say it’s in any particular order. It’s mainly to use the tools you use, rather than the tools I have gotten spoiled by, to the point where you and others used to say I over did it, especially “clear view”.
Oh, and you wrote: “If I were you I would create a new folder and copy the files plus my .dops, so that you don’t confuse PhotoLab’s database by conflicting different .dops.” …my plan is to lump all my previous work into a folder labeled 2020, and start a brand new folder labeled “2021”, so I’m starting out with an empty slate January 1st. Will this accomplish what you were concerned about?
I watched about ten videos on the ASUS, and only one got into the kind of thing I wanted to find out about:
youtube.com/watch?v=8A_Rf-8rwAk
After that I read all the documentation, and followed the on-screen instructions.
#1 - The ASUS is definitely in “STANDARD” mode.
#2 - I selected the appropriate option to bring up this screen:
From what you’ve written, I probably need to lower the Contrast setting of 80.
I have the proper user manual for my display, that ASUS sent me this morning. I guess one of my next steps is to read about adjusting the contrast.
Hi Mike,
in post # 128 you supported us with a user manual for your screen.
“I did fine the exact user manual for my display:
https://gzhls.at/blob/ldb/4/0/e/6/64c620a3ed2d2657cc233a243dbce8174806.pdf
2.01 MB”
which is from 2019 (check page 2).
This one from Guenter (post # 150)
is from 2014. – Both versions describe on pages 3-7 to 3-9 how to enter System Setup and how to revert to the factory default mode with All Reset, which is what you said you never changed.
I suggest to check!
[BTW, no need to get mad. People here are solely trying to help you, knowing that it is complicated stuff with so much detail you maybe never heard of.]
All required settings are part of the OSD / On Screen Display (black screenshots in your manual).
In the calibration process the X-Rite i1Studio software will show you 3 checkboxes to choose from
(at least in my windows version)
- Contrast
- RGB (= Colour)
- Luminanz (= Brightness)
Only WHEN ticked, the i1 Studio software takes you to the equivalent ‘test page’!
(In your / Joannas’s screenshots so far I’ve only seen that one about the required luminance level).
Now, your monitor OSD:
Here you can / have to adjust Contrast, Colour (R-G-B) and Brightness, to match the required levels, that you chosed beforehand in i1 Studio as your calibration targets.
STOP, to adjust your screen’s colour by hand (e.g. to approach another screen), leave that for when you need to AND know how to!
– quick info: The settings for the 3 colour channels R-G-B are not only responsible to correct the colour, but they also influence the brightness. Therefore one adjusts the Brightness level last. – As older monitors (my second Eizo must be about 15 years now) commonly have lost brightness over time, you don’t want to ‘lose’ to much brightness and leave them set at lower settings, just because you found the correct colour setting (be aware, it’s tricky). –
Now you know, why you have to dive in your monitor’s OSD, when to calibrate properly.
What I read from the manual: your Asus covers 100% sRGB (I have no idea about your iMac).
Whatever colour space you set your camera to (ok, stay with AdobeRGB ), PL will develop your
raw-file in AdobeRGB colour space to give you maximum freedom. But to export for web like smugmug etc, make shure to explicitly export as ‘sRGB’ and not ‘as shot’ or ‘original’.
And then, there are small notes in the manual, that several settings would be ‘hardcoded’, that is you couldn’t change settings (e.g. sRGB, which should be a hotkey to that mode). – Simply try out how you can change Contrast, Colour temperature and Luminance. You don’t ‘break’ anything and know already how to reset, just in case.
Oh, I just wanted to upload this text ,when I saw your post # 165 – you found OSD!
In the screenshot Color Temp is set to 6500K. – Remember to always choose the equivalent calibration target in i1 Studio and vice versa!
BTW, your and Joanna’s JPG-files don’t show EXIF-data. When you export to JPG, have you checked ‘remove EXIF data’? – While PL4 says ‘RGB’ (of course it’s an RGB-file and not CMYK), ExifTool doesn’t show any colour space.
But when I do so and check ‘remove’, ExifTool still shows ‘sRGB’ (note: for web it’s recommended NOT to remove colour space tag). – Is this another difference between MAC and Windows?
You may bookmark this post for later (Guether already mentioned how to), when your brain is reset again.
have fun, Wolfgang
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After reading those instructions, and learning how to negotiate the menu system on the ASUS, it is now fully reset. Immediate difference - it is MUCH brighter, like it was before I used the i1Display Studio.
I will now do another i1Display Studio setup.
Thanks!
Wolfgang, calibration is finished. There are buttons at the top right for “before” and “after”. They are identical. I think this confirms what I expected, that I never changed any of the setup values.
The procedure tells me I will be manually asked to adjust contrast, RGB gains, and brightness, but in the test I was only asked to match my luminance with the 120 luminance which the program selected for “photo”.
Thanks for the “push”; I am much too overly cautious doing things I don’t understand, but after reading three manuals and watching a YouTube video of someone explaining the controls, my concerns mostly went away - but I was relieved when it finished and everything still works.
I guess I will go back to editing an image that I never finished yesterday, then post it. If yesterday’s images were acceptable, this one should be as well.
Once again, THANK YOU and everyone else who helped!!!
Display is now calibrated, but it’s essentially the same a the settings yesterday.
Two photos that intrigued me, and how I made them look like what I “saw” with my eyes. I was having fun trying to take what was in my mind, and turn it into a photo. I don’t think I would enter either of them into any kind of photo contest, but they were fun to work on. This is from before Joanna gave me a list of better ways to do things. Oh, and it’s almost impossible to “see” when I was looking into the sun. So much of what I saw was covered by “glare”. I tried to add that - not sure that was a good idea…
_MJM2267 | 2020-12-29-Biscayne, boats.nef.dop (14.1 KB)
_MJM2270 | 2020-12-29-Biscayne, boats.nef.dop (16.3 KB)
I love the effect, but I’m not sure how to use it. In my photo of the pier, I can go into DxO Smart Lighting, select “Spot Weighted”, which brings up the tool. I changed my setting to “slight”, and the image instantly improved. I think I remember the sun appearing slightly golden, but the reflections on the water were white. Originally the left side of the image was much too light, and the right side was much too dark.
I made a virtual copy, then clicked RESET.
Now I’m thinking that there is no way to get what I was trying to do, and I should just delete the image and try again. Maybe early in the day, not at sunset.
Hmmmm, maybe I’m just slow - with the smart lighting tool, I just found I can draw a rectangle around the area I’m interested in Great. Now it sounds obvious - sure wasn’t before.
Yes, I am using “Standard” mode, and all the fancy tools are turned off. The videos on this ASUS say it is an sRGB display.
You know, there’s one thing to think about, but it’s not correctable. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it applies to everyone.
As the calibration test is running on my ASUS, I can relax my eyes, and shift my eyes around on the screen as the test is running. For every color that the screen lights up with, if I shift my eye, I can see the “original color”, and the color that my eyes have acclimated to.
I assume you know what I mean. Stare at a colored shape for several seconds, then shift your eyes, and you’ll see a similar shape in the “opposite” of that color.
How is it really possible to be adjusting colors on my display, when my eyes are constantly changing? After a second or two, the color I “see” is no longer what it was at first. I mostly ignore this, and sometimes I look away from the screen for a few seconds, then come back to it, and instantly decide if it good or if it needs more work.
Yes, that can be really useful.
I downloaded this image and its .dop and the first thing I saw on your version was that there was quite a lot of over-exposure…
So I used the Spot mode Smart lighting (Medium) and added two areas of interest…
Then, to regain the contrast, I altered the Selective tone…
… and the Tone curve…
This got rid of the over and under exposure warnings.
As for local adjustments, I only used two:
- a graduated filter to lift the black levels (not the exposure) for the right hand side…
… and a couple of dots with the brush tool (highlight and tint)…
… to try and control the flare spots. I find getting rid of flare spots to be one of the most difficult things to do - I have to decide whether I don’t mind having them or want to spend hours messing around trying to minimise them, which is rarely 100% successful.
Anyway, here’s a jpeg preview of my version…
… and the .dop file with both your and my versions
_MJM2270 | 2020-12-29-Biscayne, boats.nef.dop (34,9 Ko)
With this image, apart from the over-exposed areas, there really wasn’t anything “wrong” with how the image appeared. My suggestions are more about learning other (possibly simpler) ways of getting a result in PhotoLab.
Oh, and either avoid getting the sun in the frame or use a lens shade if it is only just outside the frame. But then you knew that didn’t you - you just didn’t have a shade with you and you forgot you could have used your other hand 
If I am ever taking “serious” photos with a low sun, I use a tripod and a compendium shade that allows me to adjust the position and angle of cutoff, but my hand, or a piece of card can work just as well if I don’t have it with me.
I’ve read your post twice, as well as looking at the photos, and my imagination is coming up with thoughts based on what you wrote - but where I was “thinking wrong”. Your third photo from the top shows the use of the graduated filter for BLACK LEVELS, not EXPOSURE. Since I first got access to an enlarger in the 1950’s, the fix for areas that were too dark was to hold my hand in front of the enlarger lens to reduce the light reaching the printing paper. So, for this photo, without another thought, I used the graduated filter (right choice) from right to left (your angle is something I never even considered), and used the “exposure” tool to make the image lighter. To reduce the “black levels (not the exposure)” wasn’t in my vocabulary, literally. Seeing the photo you posted here once again was worth its weight in gold. I’m speculating that most “average” people using PL4 are also unaware of this. Of course, now that you’ve shown how to do it, it all seems “obvious”, but until now, to me, it was more invisible than obvious.
You wrote: “Oh, and either avoid getting the sun in the frame or use a lens shade if it is only just outside the frame. But then you knew that didn’t you - you just didn’t have a shade with you and you forgot you could have used your other hand…”
Actually, the day before I had gone through every place in my condo where I might have put my lens shades, and I found a 52mm Nikon F lens shade from 1959, that seemed to work. I used it for all my shots the day before, and it was great. But for this day’s photos, I dug around some more until I found a non-working Nikon polarizer filter. With some penetrating oil and elbow grease I got to to work perfectly - four the lens (which rotates when focusing) then use the polarizer which cut out most of the reflections from the sun in the water. The polarizer already has a lens shade attached to it, but it’s not as long as the shade I found earlier. The real problem here is MY FAULT. I deliberately allowed a little of the sun to be included in the photo. I can see now that this was a very poor choice on my part. Lesson learned.
I like your version more than I like my version (obviously) but I think I made another mistake. I know the reflection in the water looked “white”. I’m not so sure the sky looked as yellowish as I made it, which was based on my possibly faulty memory. If you look at my “original” print up above, it’s becoming obvious to me that the color of the sun area in the photo, and the color of the reflections in the water, should be similar. They aren’t. This looks better in the original photo. If I re-do this photo later today, I will fix that - but I’m tempted to write it off as a learning exercise, and not try to fix this photo - instead, I will re-take it without the sun.
Question - how did you get the overexposed areas to become so obvious? Is there a tool in PL4 that I haven’t learned about yet?
Finally, when you were using spot mode (medium) to fix the areas of interest, apparently I can use the “Selective Tone” while using spot mode? I will try this today.
About the photo below. Right hand works the camera, left hand gets the focus close, then adjusts the polarizer filter, then fine tunes the focus and the focal length, and I take a photo and immediately look at the histogram views. If the histogram is reasonably centered, I assume I have a reasonable image, then take one more image trying to pretend I’m a tripod. Aperture is set on the lens, but the camera has no idea what aperture was used. The camera itself looks, and can almost be used, like a 1959 Nikon F. …and if my primary goal is resolution, I’ve got the D750 sitting in a drawer, getting dusty.
Oh, I didn’t forget to use my other hand as a lens shade. I never knew that from before. Now that you’ve mentioned it here, I will add it to my mental gadget bag.
Yes, if I raised the exposure, that would have been similar to dodging on an enlarger. Raising the blacks only would have required something like using multigrade paper with a high contrast filter as well as dodging.
Aside
A number of years ago I got to know a master printer who explained a little of what he did to achieve his prints - including making 27 partial exposures under the enlarger for one particular print 
The main problem with a circular shade is that it doesn’t shade the middle of the top of a landscape shot particularly well.
A relatively cheap alternative, that gives you a straight cutoff edge, is something like this. Sometimes known as a “French flag” it is simply a piece of dark plastic on a flexible stalk, that can be attached to the hot shoe and then positioned so that it is just out of shot but shading the inside of the lens.
Which is because it was over-exposed but can be allowed as it is classed as specular highlights.
There’s memory and then there’s how you want it to look and feel. I rather like the warm look. once the over-exposure was fixed, they became a similar shade.
There are two buttons to the bottom left of the histogram that activate PL’s equivalent of the blinkies…
They are separate tools. There is no reason why you couldn’t use both if it suited.
I like the “old-fashioned” look but must admit to preferring a digital camera with a few more bells and whistles, hence my D810. If it were my choice, I, personally, would be using the D750 
What’s more, you didn’t have to buy it 
After reading those instructions, and learning how to negotiate the menu system on the ASUS, it is now fully reset. Immediate difference - it is MUCH brighter, like it was before I used the i1Display Studio.
I will now do another i1Display Studio setup.
Thanks!
Halleluja!
Are you going to do YOUR thing or are you going to follow Joanna’s instructions?
Well, in the 1970’s, I took a photography class from Professor Davis at the University of Michigan. I listened to him, but continued to do things the way I thought was best. I got a “D”. I took the same class over again the next semester, and did everything exactly as he wanted, not trying to re-think him. I got an “A”. When all was said and done, he corrected problems that I wasn’t aware yet were even problems. Bingo.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I was creating what I thought were perfect images. Then you guys (and in particular Joanna) explained that while those images looked great to me, on my display, (which was using the default brightness setting, which now I think was 180 or something… not sure), but I didn’t understand that, nor did I understand the implications - mainly my “overly bright” screen showing a nice image meant that the same image being viewed on a screen with correct brightness, would show up as quite dark on a properly adjusted display.
My imagination then filled in all sorts of blanks, and display calibration (which I never really thought about before) became essential.
So to answer your question, for now, when there is a choice of my way of doing something, or Joanna’s suggested way to do it, I will think of her as Professor Davis, and do things her way, not mine.
Left unsaid is that if doing it her way somehow seems worse than doing it my way, I’ll need to do a lot more thinking about it.
Also worth considering is that I had my own collection of “tools”, and for me, PL4 was just another image editor. Much of what I’m learning here is what a lot of you, including Joanna, are showing me how PL4 has tools that are better than what I’ve been using in the past - and why.
I guess my real answer to your question is I’m going to do MY thing, using the tools and techniques that I learned here, so many of which are from Joanna. (Which is why as soon as I finish typing this response, I’m going to go back to one of the scenes I shot two days ago, and re-do it based on what I’ve learned.)
Had you asked if I’m going to use my “tools” or Joanna’s", the correct answer is I’m going to use PL4’s tools, that I’ve learned about here. As I see it, “things” are what I do, and “tools” are how I do them.
Just as with almost anything, it’s often relatively easy to do something “well enough”. It takes far more effort and practice an either experimenting or learning, to do things beautifully. It’s like watching Photo Joseph in his Webinars here. He is light-years ahead of me, and while I may never catch up, I always learn from them, and sometimes I have to play them over and over until I think I really understand.
Even with all the advice I have given, there still remains the fact that I can’t truly see what you are seeing on your monitor(s) and I can’t appreciate what it is like to work in the lighting conditions you have in your room.
Now that your monitor is something like it should have been before your attempt at calibration, my only advice remains to use as low a luminance as you you can get away with comfortably. Ideally, that should be 80cd/m2 for printing purposes but, looking at your recent images, I don’t have a problem with leaving things as they are, at whatever luminance you feel happiest with.
When I went to university at the tender age of 37, I found out that the tutors were not there to teach me, they were there to help me learn things for myself. I hope I do them the honour of trying to do the same.
Wow! This must be some sort of a record here. Almost 400 posts in two of @mikemyers topics and no end in sight
Mark
2 Likes
Yes, but even I have learnt stuff. Sometimes it takes a bit of a sidetrack or two to get to the best answers.
Sorting out the calibration seemed to need to involve finding out why editing certain images in certain ways wasn’t working and determining if that was a result of a badly calibrated monitor or a lack of editing skills.
What’s more, it’s hopefully added to an archive of, not only how to do it right but, also, how not to do things
Now that that seems sorted, I fully expect a whole slew of new discussions on a load of new subjects more to do with getting the best out of PhotoLab 
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It’s the end of 2020 (good riddance!!) and I thought I would go back to the same place I’ve been going to for the past several days, and see if I can do a better job of creating images of the boats. I ended up with five photos I liked, and hopefully I used the correct tools to enhance them, and stayed away from the tools I’ve been warned about. It was still technically morning, so the light was from the front. The pola filter worked just as it was supposed to. The histograms looked reasonable to me, more or less centered.
After the first four images I was ready to go home, when Mr. Seagull interrupted my plans. I took several shots of the bird and a boat, then had my camera and focus locked in on him when he took off. Unfortunately I had turned off “burst mode”, but the shot I got was what I hoped I caught.
I suspect the first four will be considered acceptable as to how I used PL4. I was enjoying taking them, and like I wrote, the pola filter made a very noticeable difference.
As to the last photo, despite cropping, and playing with various settings, I’m not sure how well Mr. Seagull shows up. The bird blends into the background too much, and I don’t know how to correct that, without the photo starting to look fake.
I’ll post the five jpg images here, and the NEF and DOP of Mr. Seagull. Maybe someone knows a way to improve it?
_MJM2395 | 2020-12-31-Boats in Sunlight.nef.dop (16.9 KB) _MJM2395 | 2020-12-31-Boats in Sunlight.nef (19.9 MB)
What I think I’d like to do is to make the bird lighter with more color, and make everything else darker, with the color turned down - but what I have now is pretty close to reality. When I held up the camera to review the image, I couldn’t find the bird. Perhaps I write this shot off as not fixable, and try again next time.
…added later. All five images look good on my ASUS. They all look too “dark” on my iMac. I’m ignoring the iMac. I can add the files for the other images if anyone wants me to do so.