Image Evaluation without the mind games.

Have you ever found yourself post processing an image for a long time, adjusting colour, tone, cropping, exposure, contrast until you were happy with the finished product, only to find once you upload/print it, or come back to it later, the very thing you were trying to fix was out of whack?

Now I'm not talking about total accuracy or monitor calibration or any of that. I'm speaking subjectively, to get the image to appear to me the way I want it, not some software's idea of what's 'correct'.

It happened to me all the time, I was forever having to readjust the images after I thought I was finished with them.

The mind plays tricks on us. If we look at something long enough, it 'becomes' what we wanted it to be in our mind. But on looking at it again later. when you've had a break, it doesn't look like what you wanted at all.

I found something that helps to neutrally evaluate the image without the preconception from staring at it for a long time.

The last step in my post processing now is to close my eyes for 10 seconds or so and clear my mind (which isn't hard, not much going on in there), make the image full screen on my monitor so that there are no other distractions around the periphery to interfere with my judgement and then open them to view the image.

Generally, the first impression I get when opening my eyes is the most accurate, and not influenced by any ingrained expectation I may have had of it.