Color and Windows

[k_t4]

I am wondering if there is a way to work around the fact that Windows

is essentially color stupid. Yes, I can make a profile that WinXP

will store for use by color managed programs, but this doesn't fix the

fact that my dual monitors each have different color casts, and it

doesn't do anything for me when I'm viewing non-color-managing

programs or images on the web.

 

I am quite ignorant of the technological hurdles involved, but it

would seem to a layman that there should be some way to manage color

independent of the OS and that a given program should not be required

to manage the color output of the monitor beyond an identification or

assumption of the originating color space. Couldn't a monitor/video

card do this on its own? Perhaps some monitors do this on their own?

Those like the Artisan with their own calibration devices? Others?

 

Speaking of the Artisan, its interesting that it has been discontinued

after such a short lifespan. Any consensus as to it's functional

successor?

 

Just fishing for a better understanding.

[steven_clark]

The problem is that I'm not really sure if windows can tell a program which monitor each of it's windows are on. If this is the case the problem is essentially unsolveable.

[scott_eaton]

If you want a color profile aware OS (which I've always felt is a stupid idea anyways), buy a Mac. I'd otherwise rather let applications handle color management, which is what they should be doing. Having an OS handle color management in my eyes is no different than complaining about the fact Windows can't open spreadsheets and databases without those requires applications either. So it seems we want windows to handle color management, but not incorporate their own browser and media player. Makes absolutley no sense.

 

Next, I frequently use the my video card's color/gamma settings to tweak out display settings rather than use a software profile to do it. Adding two variables together doesn't make a constant, which is the paradox of color management, and if I have two monitors with a different balance I'll certainly try to eye ball them close first via video/monitor settings before anything else. I'll *then* use a software profile for any remaining nip -n- tuck, which I'm using less and less because I've found that it's far more accurate to use a video card profile to match my out-put device dynamics.

[k_t4]

I am not suggesting that Windows should have color management built in (though it probably will eventually). On the contrary, I'm suggesting that an independent color management program for Windows might be able to take care of this itself by interacting with a monitor, video card and any color space information provided by any program sending data to the video card. The result in theory would be complete color management through that monitor for everything viewed on it, regardless of whether the originating program had color management enabled or not.

 

Essentially, I'm suggesting an automated way of doing what Scott suggests in his second paragraph. I don't want to rely on eyeball calibration, I want the monitor and video card to work together to achieve a measurable color/gamma standard independent of the OS or program. Can someone comment on whether this exists today, or if it is not possible, why not? Thanks.

[andrew_rodney1]

This isn't an OS issue, it's an application issue. Photoshop under windows is totally ICC

aware. There just happen there are no such browsers that work this way under Windows.

Yes it be nice if Windows were as intelligent about color management as OSX (there are

some goofy things going on there as well with respect to documents that are untagged but

that's a different story).

 

The Artisan has been discontinued because after December of this year, NO ONE will be

making CRT's for display systems. Much like film, it's not a growth technology. There are

plenty of Artisans to buy that are warehoused and Sony will fully support them and their

warranties. Sony has not announced a successor.

 

Andrew Rodney

http://digitaldog.net/

[scott_eaton]

K T,

 

That makes good sense, and I see where you are coming from.

 

If you've read my rants before on the topic, the fundamental problem I encounter with people using color managed workflows and having problems is they have their monitor running at it's full intensity range, and expect a silly look up table (ICC profile) to magically translate how an image looks on that device to a reflective media and vice versa. It DOESN'T work.

 

What you are describing sounds like a dynamic and direct means for an application to control the display via the monitor guns, or most likely the video card. If anything, it would negate the need for an ICC profile at all with a one way workflow, which is what most of us use anyways. Reminds me of the classic line I use on labs that insist you use their profiles when you know they don't know what they are doing. I like to ask them "have you profiled your densitometer yet?".

 

I used similiar systems as you describe back when I did film video analysis with hybrid digital/analog scanning systems. It worked very well.

[andrew_rodney1]

> the fundamental problem I encounter with people using color managed workflows

> and having problems is they have their monitor running at it's full intensity

> range, and expect a silly look up table (ICC profile) to magically translate

> how an image looks on that device to a reflective media and vice versa. It

> DOESN'T work.

 

First off, the intensity of the display (the luminance) can be set and should be set to match

the viewing conditions of the print. This has nothing to do with ICC profiles. Out of the

box, you might be able to get a CRT to produce 120 or 130 cm/d2 but that's not going to

last very long. LCD's can do this all day long (the backlight of the Fluorescent tube will

wear down over time). The ISO 3664:2000 specifications: Viewing Conditions - for Graphic

Technology and Photography suggest a luminance of a CRT to be 95cm/d2 with viewing

conditions around a 5000K box to be in the neighborhood 16-25 LUX, which is pretty dim.

The box should have a dimmer. Calibrating a display to too high or low a luminance will

produce situations where ideal print to screen matching isn't achieved.

 

As for all this not working, if the opinion is that an emissive display and a reflective print

will never match 100%, that's indeed true. For that matter a transmissive piece of film (a

chrome) and a print (darkroom, digital or ink on paper) will never match. It's physically

impossible. That hasn't stopped people from producing both transparencies and all nature

of output that a client will sign off on as matching for decades before computer imaging,

let alone color management came about. Anyone that tells you an ICC profile or any other

technology will make a screen and print match 100% is blind, misinformed or trying to sell

you something.

 

That being the facts, what Scott ignores is that you really have two choices today. You can

say that ICC profiles and color management are not perfect, which is true and hope that

the next day you boot up your computer and display, the planets align and your display is

in a rare condition that it matches the print somewhat closely. The other thing you can do

is realize that a display is a device that alters it's behavior all the time and by calibrating

and describing it's condition, you can get far closer to a match and do so day in and day

out.

 

There are all kinds of things users do to hose the most effective tools color management

has to offer (like not understanding the role of display luminance and print luminance, the

role of the white point of the display and the white point of the paper, the role of spiky

Fluorescent lights that are supposed to be at correlated color temp of 5000K, the role of

using Paper White/Ink Black simulation to affect contrast ratio and dynamic range while

hiding ANY Photoshop palette or menu which isn't having the white affected) and so on.

IOW, it's real easy to think all you have to do is stick a colorimeter onto the screen, press a

few buttons and everything will match. When all your ducks are in order, the simulation on

screen and the print can "match" to a very high degree and be a useful tool. Far more then

simply throwing up your hands and claiming the the technology is a failure.

 

Photographers have been using Polaroid's as predicators of the final film when shooting

for years and years and never has one matched the final film. Printers have been using film

and contract proofs as predictors of the final printed press piece for years and never has

one matched the final printed piece. And yet for years we've been able to produce two (or

more) mediums that our clients have gladly paid for and accepted as matching.

 

KT writes:

 

> I don't want to rely on eyeball calibration, I want the monitor and video card

> to work together to achieve a measurable color/gamma standard independent of

> the OS or program. Can someone comment on whether this exists today, or if it

> is not possible, why not?

 

Eyeball calibration is pretty useless because eyeballs are totally inappropriate tools for

setting a device into a consistent and repeatable, absolute condition. There are tools that

are vastly superior for doing this kind of measuring.

 

Every monitor, even the same brand made the same day is different from it's brother. The

differences not only exist but each changes differently. In the old days (early 1990's) the

idea was to try and force the display into some Absolute behavior which didn't work very

well but was far better than the alternative which was having a display where identical

numbers were pretty much insured to look different on every display you loaded the file

on. The idea became to fingerprint the specific behavior of your display which is unique

and has it's own kinks and idiosyncrasies and allow Photoshop to compensate using 20 bit

precision using the ICC profile that described the display condition and the ICC profile that

described what the numbers in the file represented. Prior to that, numbers were simply

sent directly to the screen and whatever behavior it happened to be in, that affected what

you saw. That's exactly what's happening with IE on the PC while on the Mac, the

architecture that drives Photoshop using two profiles is being used. As I originally said,

this is an application not an OS issue.

 

Even if you could wrestle every display into a specific condition and keep it that way, you'd

have users on different operating systems using different gamma's and you'd have files

with numbers with no meaning so everyone would have to edit their data in monitor RGB

which is severely limited in gamut, isn't informally gray balanced and probably isn't using

an editing gamma that's uniform. Divorcing the display from how we edit our files, which

is exactly what Adobe did in PS5 doesn't have any of these limitations. All you need to do

is fingerprint the condition of the display (as long as it remains in that state) with this

supposedly "silly" ICC profile and multiple users on multiple OS's can view the same

numbers the same way in any color space they want. It's worked this way for nearly a

decade. Why Microsoft or someone else can't build a stinking web browser that does this

on Windows is the question we should be asking.

 

Andrew Rodney

http://digitaldog.net/

[k_t4]

Big thanks to each person who shared their knowledge here.

 

Here is the more perfect world that apparently does not exist, but may perhaps exist in the future:

 

-The desktop background on all of my multiple monitors appears identical (It is adjusted for color balance, luminance, contrast to match.)

 

-The image in the navigator pallet in Photoshop on one of my monitors matches the main image displayed on another monitor; and all the pallets scattered across monitors will have the same color/luminance appearance.

 

-The visual content (including backgrounds, graphics and images) I view in my web browser matches the content I view in Dreamweaver and both match the content I view in Photoshop.

[andrew_rodney1]

-->Here is the more perfect world that apparently does not exist, but may perhaps exist

in the future:

 

It's pretty close under OSX since every window in the OS is color managed. Where Apple

needs to figure out what the heck to do is with respect to untagged documents. Some

applications assume sRGB, others assume monitor RGB (from the display profile).

 

Andrew Rodney

http://digitaldog.net/

[nathanael_galler]

This is a great thread.

 

<the role of the white point of the display and the white point of the paper>

 

Yes, that's what I never understood. Can I read somewhere in the net about this...?

 

When I work with 'paper white' in the proof my pictures loose all (almost all) colour although I have a professional profile for my paper. When I print it out it's not that bad...

 

It's a shame, Windows can't produce a color-aware system (Photographers can work on Apple but what about the 90 % of watchers in the web with IE, which are looking at the picture?) - and yes, K T, this is how it SHOULD be...