[Dave]

At this weeks local Camera Club meet, we had an excellent presentation of Monochrome shots, where the photographer had spent considerable amounts of time in the darkroom "painting with light" as he put it Basically "burning" & "dodging" the shots to move your eye to the point of the shot he wanted you to see first......& it worked.

So sitting 30ft back form the prints on display I could see the effect in full. Then at the end of the talk I took time to look at the print closer up, & very much like with paintings, it lost the impact up close. This got me thinking of how we process our didgital shots close up on a monitor screen & how we are supposed to see what a decent size print may look like from a distance The only time I have seen anything to possibly help this, is the thumbnail of your shot in PS that sits by default in the top right of the screen. For example when playing with omni light effects on shots I often refer to the thumbnail to get a better impression of how final print shot may look.

Anyone else understand my ramblings & if so, how do you deal with the difference ?

[stepheno]

I understand what you are getting at but I have never considered it with my shots. 99 times out of a 100 I look at photogarphs on screen so invariably any editing is done for the screen. Just out of interest I think I'll print a few A4's and view from a distance.

[lolyton]

I do understand what you are getting at, but you can zoom in and out on the screen, allowing you to see images close in and as if you were further away, i know that it's not the same, but when you print images by hand (old fashioned way) i would say that you are probably the same distance from the image you are working on as you are from your monitor (circa 2feet), so from that respect things haven't changed greatly.

My view is that normally if an image looks good close up it will normally look good from a distance, however if it looks good from a distance doesn't necessarily mean it will look good close up (something i notice with my digital camera is all images look good on it's little screen (far away), but when i get them on the monitor (close up) they start to show the flaws of focus and composition etc).

Try to get your image looking good from close up. It's not often you'd hear a photographer say "that looks hopeless!, but if i make them stand 30feet away i'm onto a winner."