Image darker on screen than in other software

[19andrew47]

I have been having issues with images displayed in PSPX7 appearing darker in PSP than in other software, for instance Microsoft Viewer, Lightroom ver 4, as displayed after uploading to a web site. I do a lot of background substitution where the the new background is black. This is achieved in PSPX7 (as I also did in 5 and 6) by use of cloning, air brush, hand selecting an area and flood fill. When viewed in PSP everything looks wonderful. Open the saved image in LR or MSV or upload to the web and the blacks become slightly less black and there are inconsistencies in the the blackness of the areas filled by different methods. So if I flood fill an area with black then use the black in that area to clone in close to objects at beyond 1:1 (100% opacity) the black areas do not match in darkness even though the one is a clone of the other. This is not visible in PSP but is in other software after saving. If I go back to PSP, open the saved image it looks fine. If I then boost the brightness of the image, say 30%, the differences in darkness become readily apparent. I can then fix the areas in question, lower the brightness by 30% and all is well. I should not have to do this though!

I am assuming there is either a short coming in the software or a user error on my part. Help in determining which would be appreciated.

Thanks
Andrew

[Jean-Luc]

When you clone, is the Opacity set to 100 % ?
With the Picker tool, you may verify if the RGB values are 0, 0, 0 (pure black).

Jean-Luc

[19andrew47]

Yes, the clone opacity is set to 100%. If I use the picker to check levels the areas that have been cloned from the black area to a different area seem to vary from 1,1,1 to as much as 4,4,4. However, it is not consistent and may come out right, or not! The areas that have been flood filled to black generally come out 0,0,0. The painted areas seem to has some variance. This may be related to the settings in the airbrush menu. The opacity is still 100% for this but the other settings may need to be changed. I generally don't use this for work close to edges though and that seems to be the biggest area of error, when using the clone tool.

Thanks,
Andrew

[Forriner]

You may need to set the hardness of the tool (clone stamp, airbrush etc.) to 100. Otherwise the edge is feathered, the opacity less than 100. Don't feather selections either or maybe just feather on the outside of the fill area (menu Selections/modify/inside outside feather). I don't know exactly how that works, tbh.

[MarkZ]

With paintbrush make sure it is not set to Wet Look Paint - I've caught myself with that a number of times. What is your Mode setting?

[roberts-end]

I have a Panasonic camera and there is a systematic 1/2 stop difference between jpg and raw pictures. The logic is that the JPG is exposed to make a happy print. The RAW is slightly unexposed to give a bit more headroom before the highlights get clipped. The assumption is that people shooting raw will want to tweak the exposure rather than rely on the camera's exposure. I use Lightroom for imports and configure it to add 1/2 stop to the exposure. This gives a good starting point for further processing. Its not PSP that is causing the effect, but the way different manufacturers give their JPG pictures a specific 'look'. See 'The Digital Negative' by Jeff Schewe pp 66 for the full gorey detail.

[19andrew47]

Mark, this is with the air brush tool so there is no mode selection for it, only the paint brush.

Thanks,
Andrew

[19andrew47]

Forriner, I will give setting the hardness a higher value and see what difference that makes. That could explain some of the issues. However, the images still seem generally darker in PSP than the same image opened afterward in Lightroom or Microsoft Viewer.

Thanks,
Andrew

[19andrew47]

Roberts - end, I usually import the raw images directly into PSP. However, that said, I have worked images slightly in LR or Olympus Viewer 3 prior to importing them to PSP on occasion. I will need to check the work flow of these to see if that is an issue. Files from OV3 are exported as tiff and LR as jpg so there could be an issue there. However I know that the images imported from raw into PSP exhibit these issues for sure. I don't know about the others yet.

Thanks,
Andrew

[Forriner]

...the images still seem generally darker in PSP than the same image opened afterward in Lightroom or Microsoft Viewer.

I'm no expert, but have you done anything with color management, either on the Windows side or the PSP side (File/color management/[color management | color working space]? Or perhaps using Adobe RGB in one program, sRGB in another? Hopefully someone with more knowledge can help you with that.