I need your help about Picture Quality on two different renderers

[Remicade]

What screenshot is more pleasant to your eyes 1 or 2 ?
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/108373
Post edited, the best word deleted :).

[CWR03]

Screenshot 9 here (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm) looks good to me, 12 a close second.

[Remicade]

Well the rules are about general thing here we have a particular thing a comparation between 2 pictures. Am I wrong ?
Picture 1 seem oversaturate or picture 2 too grey ?

[Nick]

The rules are the rules - they are there to be adhered to.
Please edit your thread title to something which reflects the content as per rule 9

For what it's worth, to my eyes it looks more like image 2 just has slightly reduced contrast as opposed to saturation. As for whether more or less contrast is "best", it is a meaningless question - hence rule 12.

[Remicade]

Ok I edited the title and the post. Picture 1 is EVR with ATI enh off/no shaders/bicubic 0.75, screenshot 2 is madVR default. The TV is calibrated with madVr as renderer. Seems to me not only the contrast is different also the colours in EVR is more vivid ?

[Asmodian]

Don't tell us which is which! Blind tests are more accurate.

Given that, I think madVR looks more accurate as I know this to be true. ;)

EVR looks better at first glance but if you look at the low wall in the forground or the shadows of the tree you notice a lot of detail is lost with EVR. The contrast seems too high with EVR to me too, the highlights are getting crushed into the whites and the shadow detail is getting crushed into the blacks. Also colors are off with EVR, the greens of the plants, people's skin tones, etc. This would be affected by your monitor's calibration or lack there of. If you want a brighter image with MadVR mess with the settings of the display (i.e. try to calibrate your display or buy a new one if you cannot improve it further :p).

Do you have MadVR set to output full range or limited range?

This is exactly why TVs come badly calibrated, with a quick look an over-contrast / over saturated image looks better. Sort of like how people like over-sharpened images at first glance.

[Remicade]

Thank you for the explanation, madVR is set to PC levels.
This is original frame extracted http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/3258/originalps.png

[Asmodian]

The skin tones look much more similar in the second one (madvr) to me.

[hello_hello]

Are you sure EVR is also outputting PC levels?

[Didée]

In the screenshot comparison, the mouseover-shot (2) is overdriven. Look at the stone highlight right of the guy with the brown jacket - the highlight is pushed to almost-white. The (1) shot shows the highlight reddish/pinkish, which is correct, since the sky bits are indeed white, not grey-white.

(1) seems correct, whereas (2) is overdriven and even shows white clipping (some tree bits disappearing against the sky). Also, the spontaneous impression is "over-saturated".

[hello_hello]

I agree with Didée. I tried putting both images up on the TV, then switching the TV's level input setting while switching between the screenshots.... getting the TV to expand the levels when displaying the first image, but not when displaying the second. It's not exactly a great way to do A/B comparisons, but I expected they would look the same that way. However they don't.

My impression.... The first image using TV levels looks a little washed out, although it's hard to know how it's supposed to look. The first image expanded to PC levels looks best to me. Expanded it looks similar to the second image without expansion, but the second image looks, as Didée said, a little over-driven by comparison.

[Remicade]

Settings:
ATI CC 4:4:4 PC Levels
EVR: Output range: 0-255
madvr: PC levels 0-255

[Asmodian]

(1) seems correct, whereas (2) is overdriven and even shows white clipping (some tree bits disappearing against the sky). Also, the spontaneous impression is "over-saturated".

I notice the exact opposite, the bits of trees against the sky are visible in the moused over screen shot but not in the non-moused over screen shot. A better example of the issue then the ones I pointed out.. but backwards? This is true on both my monitors and my TV.

Are you sure you have the order right or is there something wrong with my displays' calibration or browser's cache?

[Didée]

Hmm. Revisiting ...

... yes, it seems you are right, I got it backwards. One is two, and two is one.:D - Sorry if I caused confusion.

[Remicade]

So madVR (2) it's the good one ?

[Didée]

From those screenshots, yes.

However, your result of EVR is not what it should be. When I select EVR as renderer, I do not get this sort of contrast expansion and dark/bright clipping. Maybe ... EVR has its own color controls, brightness/contrast/hue/saturation. Perhaps your EVR renderer is misconfigured by accident.