Saga Releases Final Destroyer Shots (May 24, 2010)

[LeHah]

So wait, all this time I thought that all the ships in Saga were cloaked, it was just that they couldn't be bothered to up the lighting?

 

[NinjaLA]

that's not entirely true.. any serious photographer or artist starts out with dark pictures just so that when they increase the brightness, all the existing luminousity is preserved. If you start too bright, a bunch of the colors are washed out if you go dark from that point on.

It doesn't work that way with computer rendering and gamma though,only photos and other static images, so there is no reason these screenshots couldn't be bright by default as they come directly from game engine.

 

[hurleybird]

that's not entirely true.. any serious photographer or artist starts out with dark pictures just so that when they increase the brightness, all the existing luminousity is preserved. If you start too bright, a bunch of the colors are washed out if you go dark from that point on.

I don't think that's right. If you change your brightness in mid-project you're going to need to recalibrate your display. I've never heard of this method before, and only very rarely hear anybody recommending a luminance outside of 80-150cd/m2, with 120cd/m2 being most commonly used. There's a reason why monitor reviews aimed at professionals (like tftcentral) only look at color accuracy calibrated as close to 120cd/m2 as possible. They don't look at color accuracy at a range of luminance values.

As to why professionals stick with a lower luminance, it's pretty simple. If your work is going to appear in print you want the image on your monitor to be as close as possible to the printed image. A blank, white piece of paper does not 'glow' like a modern LCD does at default settings. If your brightness is cranked up too high on your monitor, everything you print will come out darker than it looks on your screen. Here is a discussion on the matter. A Google search will yield show the same advice being given in articles and photography/graphics forums throughout the web.

It doesn't work that way with computer rendering and gamma though,only photos and other static images, so there is no reason these screenshots couldn't be bright by default as they come directly from game engine.

Of course it works the same way for rendering, the only difference is that you can get away with more mistakes in a moving image (eg. highly compressed movies look fine for the most part in motion, but when you pause them the compression is obvious). I don't know why you're bringing gamma into it as this is a discussion about brightness (luminance). However, now most people use a gamma of 1.8 or 2.2 and do not deviate from that.

 

[Dragon1]

Not that my two cents counts for much, but I really don't care for this rendition of the Southampton. Beyond any issue of whether it's too dark, it just doesn't feel right. I can't quite explain it beyond that.