I have taken a portrait picture which has to look good. It does look good on the Dell 2410 I use for editing. On the garden variety Fujitsu I use as a secondary monitor, it is terrible. In the face, the highlights are yellowly-blown with a reddish halo and the shadows are greenish. Half of the auburn hair looks flat black, and the remainder is tinted orange.
I know that the Fujitsu isn't meant for picture work, but usually, when I look at a random portrait from the web, or at other portraits taken with the same camera and lens, I don't see such an extreme difference. There is usually loss of detail, but not this overcontrasted oversaturated monstrosity. I am not happy that it looks good on the Dell, because I expect most people who look at the picture to do so on an average monitor. Any ideas how to make it look good?
I have no idea what causes the problem. It isn't overzealous editing, as the problem is already present in the NEF original. It has much more colour noise than my lens usually produces at ISO 400 (I don't know why it had such a bad day, maybe the green background), but reducing it with noise filters/scripts didn't help any, so this probably isn't the cause. Any hints are welcome.
If you want to see it for itself, I uploaded it on http://www.flickr.com/photos/28989244@N05/5160991505/sizes/l/in/photostream/. It was shot in AdobeRGB and converted in sRGB with ufraw. I use GIMP for editing, don't have access to expensive software like Photoshop and Lightroom. But if you know how to repair it in Photoshop, describe it and I will try to replicate the workflow in GIMP if possible.
Edit: Matt's answer wasn't full, but got me thinking in the right direction. I started from scratch. Just colour balance didn't do it, but sharply reducing the contrast got rid of the glowing patches on cheeks and brow, then changing the tone and saturation for each primary, once for a skin area selection and once for the rest, did produce something which looks presentable on both monitors.
Answer
My first instinct was a colour profile issue but then you said you converted to sRGB. To me the image has too much green in general, looks great on the foliage in the background but not in the skintones. The shadows will always have a green tint with this sort of image as any areas not directly lit will be receiving green light reflected from the nearby leaves. BTW I'm viewing your image on an average monitor right now!
I would suggest you have another go at the white balance on you NEC, cool it a fraction and err on the magenta side. Apart from that there is no magic solution, as you have no control over the monitor - or ambient light conditions of an arbitrary web user! There is no "average monitor" profile, all non calibrated displays will be off by a random amount!
The only thing you can do is reduce the saturation - this will at least limit how far off the colours can appear!
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