Photoshop Quick Tip: Dealing with substandard monitors

Here is a nice, quick tip for those of you who (like me) are stuck with a monitor with a low contrast ratio.

First, I'll explain why this is a problem. Lets say you are adjusting a photo manipulation to have a large concentration of a solid color in certain areas - either by playing with levels, or by manually painting over the area. You obviously don't want to go overboard (especially if you are using the levels method), so you will be working cautiously. The problem with this is that you can miss smaller parts/artifacts that would go unnoticed on a low contrast ratio screen, and they will show up in high quality printing or nicer screens.

Dealing with this is a simple affair, however. Every so often, during the manipulation process, do a "copy merged" and paste that into a new layer for proofing - then just crank up the contrast. All those little artifacts will come in crystal clear, so you'll know where to focus your attention when fixing them. You can show/hide the proofing layer while you work, which will ensure you aren't painting blind.

I learned this trick when I did the piece "Personality 2", which can be seen below.