color management really is still not fully conquered realm. in fact it really reminds me of whole “linear workflow” fiasco when it first became a hot topic. everybody had bits and pieces, with more false assumptions then accurate information.

specially gets challenging as everybody has just bits and pieces, when it comes to applying to your own workflow, things just gets hazy.

your tutorial is great as it deals with the actual workflow, specially with tools lot of us use (well my case except the 3d software).

i have been actively reading up on the issue for last few months. i think i understand what to do, but still not concrete on why we need to do what we need to do. i was hoping if you can guide me on understanding this rabbit hole, which really seems to get curious and curiouser (apologies on quotes, just saw alice few days ago).

1. biggest confusion i am having is that some sources quote that our monitors have non linear response to input/output ratio (in fact its said that it has a negative, as in lower then 1, gamma, making shadows darker). is this true?

2. if above is true, is that why calibrators use gamma 2.2? as in when calibrating our monitor, the profile brings the monitor into accurate linear response by applying gamma 2.2 correction?.

3. if above is true, when we are adding another gamma correction on our 3d software, that is to bring the linear light response of our “linear virtual camera” to closer to human perception?

i guess what is confusing me is depending where you start, it seems we could be doubling gamma correction. so just wanted to clarify above questions.

few more question on calibrating, profiling.

4. i have read from your tutorial that calibrating is not really calibrating towards specific color. which actually clarified lot of things for me. so just to double check, the spyder 3 is not profiling my wide gamut monitor (dell U2410) into a specific color output, such as sRGB right? i am assuming what it is doing is adjusting color balance (so there is no color cast) and tonal response (gamma 2.2), as in input voltage and output brightness ratio? and i am also assuming when i calibrate my monitor and profile it, photoshop can understand, from profile, my monitor is a wide gamut monitor and display things accordingly.

5. this is kind of a followup question from above, if i own a sRGB (standard gamut) monitor. and i set my working RGB space to adobe RGB. what is the point of doing so? some people claim it is so they can keep “wide color spectrum” but from what i am understanding, specially with regards to 8 bit imaging, its all relative. its not like adobe RGB has numbers bigger then 255 to show more saturated colors, its that the same RGB number, for example R:0 G:255 B:0, sits on different “difinite” color space. to clarify, viewing adobeRGB profiled R:0 G:255 B:0, on standard gamut (sRBG) monitor will just look same as sRGB profiled R:0 G:255 B:0 won’t it? if so, what is the point on working on adobeRGB when one owns only standard gamut monitor, infact won’t it give false color rendering when you open adobeRGB profiled file that has been worked on standardGamut monitor, on wideGamut monitor?

i realise i actually have written quite a lot, hope its not overwhelming.
however, i have had above questions for a long time, and been reading up on so many articles, blogs, tutorials and books to find clear answers.. and so far nothing or no one was able to tell me with confidence answers to above questions.

again, i really appreciate your contribution to the whole matter, and i have recommended your tutorial to many of my colleagues, as its the best one i have read so far : )

really looking forward to your help on the subject : )

thank you in advance

Another confusing thing is Adobe Gamma. Does that affect on picture exactly like nVidia settings?

Thanks for chipping in.
Yes, 3D LUTs are interesting. Also LightWave 3D, 3dsmax, maya, Fusion, Nuke and so on supports using 3D LUTs as well.
The problem with a 3D LUT, (afaik) is that there is not really any solution out there to generate a 3D LUT file for your display in a simple, affordable way that fits within a budget for a small operation or a single freelancer (like me).
I’d love to be able to use my Spyder (or similar device within the same price range) to generate a 3D LUT file that I could use with most 3D and compositing apps.
But I have yet to find such a solution, I’d be thrilled if it existed though.

The feature is simply called “Gamma Correction” for simplicity. Originally, the developers had called it “Color Correction’ but this was confusing with the use of the phrase “color correction” in other parts of the software.

To merge back FBX files from MotionBuilder with the new built in FBX support in LightWave, you use “Load Items From Scene” in LightWave and select the fbx file you want to merge back.
When you do that you get a window where you can select which item you want to load into the scene, and at the bottom of that window you’ll find a checkbox saying “Merge only motion envelopes”. By checking that option it should only load in the motion and merge it back to the scene.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Johan