Design colors too dark outside of OSX??

[bar|code]

hello,

I have a question about a couple of designs that I am working on. I work in OS X, and used Photoshop 7 and Dreamweaver MX. Recently I designed a sample site for a friend of mine. It looks amazing on my Mac, with bright gradients and colors but when I checked it out from another computer, the colors were way to dark and it looked horrible.

Why is this happening? Is it because of the quartz rendering in OSX is making everything look brighter and pretty, but on other computers (PCs) you see how it really is?

How do I change this? Does anyone else have this problem?

I am using a regular CRT monitor with my Mac system. btw.

any help is greatly appreciated. thank you.

[geiger]

Macs do have different coloring, but try checking the PC color mode. If it's on 256 colors, there's your answer.

[Chuckie]

I always thought that Mac's monitors where brighter to begin with. Everytime that I checked out a design on a Mac it was always brighter..


Chuck

[mattjacob]

By default, a Mac's gamma setting is 1.8, whereas a PC's is about 2.2. If you don't do any work for print on your Mac (i.e. pre-press work), you could probably safely change your gamma to 2.2 and leave it alone.

[bar|code]

thanks for all the speedy comments.

thanks alot matt, that obviously did the trick. Now OSX isn't as bright and shiny, but if this is how it has to be, for "correct" color, I'll stick with it.

[blitchre]

In Photoshop 7, you can also go to View -> Proof Setup -> Windows RGB for a decent idea of what it'll look like on a Windows machine.

[Dan Morgan]

You should be aware of gamma issues between the two platforms. Macs are brighter than PCs which cause problems on the Mac end of a image created in windows has 2 very similar shades of colour together.

On a mac, go into Levels, and reduce the central (middle box) to 0.8 from 1.0 which will also give you an idea of how it'll look on a windows box. If the look is too dark, raise it to 1.2 to compensate and save.

Glen