Soft Proofing the Render Display
At the moment LightWave 3D is the only application that I am aware of that can do true soft proofing in the render display to any color space and use the monitor profile for display compensation. This is something I hope will become standard in every application as wide gamut displays are becoming more common and without this functionality there is now way you can see the correct colors when rendering.
Other than LightWave, it seems like Blender has planned to implement full color management in a coming version. Blender is getting more and more impressive for a free application, and if they implement this I will for sure take another look at Blender, especially considering the compositing part that will be extremely useful if it does soft proofing as well. Here is a quote from the page I linked to what they have planned in the terms of color management, exciting:
Color Management. Implement and document a system to do color management in Blender. This involves adding support for doing various color space conversions, and integrating them in areas such as the renderer, sequencer and image window display. Specifically, importing and exporting images in various color spaces, color proofing etc should be possible.
When working in a 3D application that doesn’t do full color management for soft proofing between color spaces, on a wide gamut monitor, the resulting renders will have dull and undersaturated colors when brought into Photoshop for instance, not fun at all. Of course, there is a way to deal with that as I lined out in the Color Manage 3D Renders in Photoshop section earlier in this article. But still, it’s a tremendous amount more convenient to be able to proof it directly in your renderer.
LightWave 3D with SG_CCFilter
To make LightWave 3D color aware, you first need to get the excellent free Color Correction plugins from Sebastian Goetsch available in 32 and 64 bit versions, which brings much power to LightWave regarding color management. A color aware color picker, color correction nodes that can use ICC profiles and so on. These tools are also sweet when having a linear workflow.
What we’ll be looking at now is Sebastian’s SG_CCFilter, which allows you to use ICC profiles for the rendering display, so you can see the correct colors directly in LightWave when rendering scenes, ie you get complete display compensated soft proofing. Wohoo! This is actually a life saver when working on a wide gamut display. LightWave is currently the only 3D application where I can actually see the exact correct colors while setting up and test rendering.
Color Awareness in LightWave 3D
In the screenshot above you can see my setup in LigthWave 3D using SG_CCFilter to get a correct color managed workflow. I am using a linear workflow, rendering to OpenEXR and then I am working in ProPhotoRGB space in Photoshop to take the most advantage of the range of colors offered by a floating point image format like OpenEXR.
Input profiles typically describe the color characteristics of scanners and digital cameras, whereas Output profiles describe devices such as monitors, printers and film recorders. Input profiles are often referred to as one-way since they represent the source device. In this case it’s LightWave that is the input, working in Linear and the output is my monitor.
In the setup in the screenshot above I am telling LightWave to use the linear ProPhoto color profile for the render and then take into account the Spyder calibrated profile for my monitor. This makes the render window in LightWave display a color identical image to what I’ll see when I open the floating point image in Photoshop.
Setup for sRGB proofing in LightWave
To the right is another example when working in a classic nonlinear workflow. Here I use the filter to make the render window proof the render in the sRGB color space. I don’t use a linear color profile here but the standard sRGB profile and then my monitor profile. This makes the render display exactly in LightWave as it will when I open it in Photoshop and assign the sRGB profile to it. Of course using the standard AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB profiles works just as fine for proofing in a nonlinear workflow.
I can’t express in words how helpful this is when working on a wide gamut screen, it really saves the day. So just assign your intended color working space, and LightWave will give you the correct colors in it’s render view. No more oversaturated colors!
Remember to disable the filter when doing the final renders, as you don’t want the modified colors to be saved in your rendered file, this is only for display proofing purposes.
Great article! helped me alot! Big Thanks!
Still some questions…
Are there any color managed Media Player out there? I didn’t find any and as I know QuickTime and MS Media Player are not color managed!!!
Also Adobe Premiere is not yet color managed!
Do you know anything about color management improvments in Windows 7?
I would realy like to know if Windows 7 could display color aware applications correctly. I think it should not be that hard to implement it because every untagged / color awre application could be tagged as sRGB and then should be displayed correctly. As I know Windows 7 has improvement in the rendering by supporting 16 – 48 bit per channel but I could not find informations about wide gamut support and correct displaying of color aware applications?
Any information about that would be very helpful.
Hey there,
I am happy you found it useful.
As far as I know, no Media Player is yet color managed. I’ve seen some tricks to get Media Player Classic to be kind of color aware, but it seemed like to much hassle for me to endeavor. I’ll sit tight and I’m sure it will arrive a color managed player sooner or later. The biggest dilemma is that no video formats embed ICC profiles – but I guess the player could assume HDTV (rec 709) or SDTV profiles based on the video format and then use the display profile to give correct colors. I hope some solution like that will surface anyway.
About Adobe Premiere, it has bothered me as well, that not even the slightest basic color management implementation is available. I find it kind of strange considering that Adobe has done a fine job in most of their other applications. I guess they might think one uses an accurate second external production monitor when color is important. But personally I haven’t used that in years and would find it natural that they color manage the viewer based on the sequence’s selected format.
At the moment I do all my color gradings together with all other processing of my scenes in After Effects and bring them to the final visual state and just use Premiere for editing together the scenes afterward – and adding audio. I don’t touch the color controls in Premiere, until Adobe implement at least basic color management.
I remember seeing that the latest version of Sony Vegas Pro, v9, had implemented color management, at least in the sense that you could assign your monitor profile for the preview window, so we’re definitely heading in the right direction for editors as well. Perhaps we will get there in Adobe Premiere CS5 as well?
About color management in Windows 7, it’s getting better but still no cigar. Non color managed applications will still be over saturated in Windows 7. See my comment below for some more information I found regarding the color development in Windows 7 and coming versions.
Cheers!
Nice work throughout……… your work is really inspirational…specially the late night Zbrush doodle….
i really liked the detail of the neck area
Reenu Kamal
Owner – http://www.cgtextures.com
Very informative article. Hope it helps. I’m experiencing same oversaturation and image mismatch problems with my HP LP2475 W monitor.
As for Windows 7 colour management, it’s not managed. I’m using W7 x64 version and its icons look terrible. So far I managed to get right colours in FireFox. Hopefully, I’ll be able to set things right with my photos.
Once again, thanks for some tips.
Hi,
Thanks for your comment.
About Windows 7 and Wide Gamut Displays. I found some interesting information on the subject in Microsoft’s Answers forum.
In Windows 7 they have implemented something called High Color Technology, which is supposed to deal with Wide Gamut displays and make sure colors does look as they should on them.
The Desktop Window Manager didn’t get High Color technology implemented in time for the release of Windows 7, but they aim to get it added to the Windows Desktop for the version coming after Windows 7 as far as I understand from Microsoft’s reply.
You can find the answer in question from the Program Manager at Windows Experience Color & Imaging Team as the last entry in this thread:
How do I get sRGB images to display correct in unmanaged applications on Vista with a Wide Gamut Display?
And in case that link should cease to exist, here is a quote of the reply in the above thread about color management of the desktop in Windows 7:
Hi J_______,
I wish I could give you good news, but the fact of the matter is that the Windows desktop, and most windows components are still not color managed. The Window Photo Gallery, and Windows Live Photo Gallery are the only Windows components that color manage to the display profile. Most Office apps will honor embedded source profiles in images, but then they convert to sRGB and throw that at the display. And IE doesn’t even honor embedded profiles in images…
As you have determined, the settings in the Color Management control panel only affect color managed applications. The settings on the CM Cpl Advanced tab are used to supply defaults for missing profiles required during WCS color transform creation in color managed apps. Again no help for you there.
As far as color managing non-color-managed applications “behind their backs” goes, that is very difficult to do in general. There is no easy way for the OS to tell whether the color data an application is rendering has already been color managed, or not.
We have a technology called High Color that will be in Windows 7 that aims to solve this problem. In High Color, color data is all first converted into an extended range color space that uses the sRGB primaries, but which allows values less than 0.0 and greater than 1.0 (let’s call it sRGB-XR). High Color is closely related to xvYCC and Sony’s xvColor. Wide gamut color data can be converted into this space without any loss. Displays (and display cards) that support High Color are required to be able to convert internally from this sRGB-XR space to their native color space. With High Color, un-color-managed RGB is treated as sRGB, which is unchanged when converted into the sRGB-XR space (it’s all in the [0..1] part of the encoding). But then High Color compliant devices will correctly map this into their native space, so the sRGB data doesn’t get over-saturated by being treated as though it were already in the display’s native wide gamut space (as happens now). And, any actual wide gamut image content gets properly mapped to take advantage of the display’s wide gamut. The plumbing for High Color is in Windows 7. However, the Desktop Window Manager was unable to implement High Color support in time (this requires the use of a fixed or floating point rendering surface), so the desktop won’t be using High Color, yet, in Win7. Maybe next time.
I wish I were able to give you more than excuses, explanations, and futures.
Best Regards,
Michael Bourgoin
Program Manager | Windows Experience Color & Imaging Team
Microsoft Corporation
Thank you!
What about LUT profile ? ICC v2.1 and ICC V4 ?
Be careful windows 7 displays with good color management in standard preview mode but not in full screen mode.
(sorry for my english BTW)
What do you wonder about regarding LUTs and ICC versions?
>So remember to always tag your images going to the web with the
>correct color profile to ensure that it looks the best.
Just my two cents: about 75-80% of web surfers use IE7/8, which ignores embedded profiles. The only way to ensure that your web pictures look good is to follow web standards by uplading them converted to sRGB, tagged if you like.
–Axel (author of a color-managed image viewer)
You’re completely correct. IE7/8 does indeed cause color problems if used on a wide gamut display. Also Opera 9.x (don’t know about the coming Opera 10) lacks color management.
One can just hope that the intended target audience when publishing images online uses a color managed browser like Firefox or Safari if they are also using a wide gamut display.
I want to believe that they do.
Btw, your image viewer looked interesting, especially as it’s available for 64-bit, I’ll for sure take a closer look at it.
Thank you so much Johan!
I, too, use Photoshop CS4, a Spyder3 Elite, and the Dell 2408WFP, and was running into the exact problems you described in the beginning of your article. I’m working with photographs, instead of 3D renders, but the concepts are identical. After working for hours on retouching some photos in Photoshop, I would export/upload them, only to be appalled by the oversaturated results!
Thanks to you, I finally understand WHY this is happening, and can now export and upload images with confidence, and am able to verify the results with a color-managed browser such as Firefox 3.5
Thanks again for your excellent write-up
-Tom
Hi Tom,
I’m happy you found it helpful. Those color differences can drive you insane until you get what’s going on, at least me was ready to check in to an asylum there for a while.
Nice photos by the way!
Cheers!
Johan
Wonderful and comprehensive summary. One question: when printing, which printer would deliver a gamut in line with a wide gamut display ? I use a LaCie 724 in AdobeRGB for Photoshop and realize (in soft prooofing and real prints) how much some colors fade away using a Canon Pixma iP4500.
Thanks for the input again.
Hi,
Glad you liked the article.
Anyway, I’m not that much into print, but I happen to have the same printer as you, the Canon Pixma iP4500, and it’s pretty decent in printing colors within the AdobeRGB Gamut. Here’s my printing methods from Photoshop, which I think works out quite okay.
Method1:
When printing from Adobe Photoshop CS4, in the print dialogue, make sure Color Management is set to Document (and it should also indicate it’s in AdobeRGB), and that color handling set to Printer Manages Colors.
And here comes the “trick”, when clicking print and you come to the OS system printing dialogue, go into the Canon driver properties and set the paper type and quality (Use custom for Print Quality so you can push it to the highest, quality 1). And then the most important setting, in the Color Adjustment section, change from Auto to Manual and go into the settings dialogue. There you can change the color management to ICM, and now your image hopefully should get properly printed.
Method2:
Another option if you want Photoshop to handle the color conversions, you can change Printer Manages Colors to Photoshop Manages Colors in the Photoshop Printer dialogue.
Then for printer profile, you can select one of Canons included ICC profiles for the iP4500. The provided ICC profiles has somewhat of cryptic names though, but here’s a breakdown of what each default ICC profile is made for:
* Canon iP4500 Series GL2 – Glossy Photo Paper Quality 2
* Canon iP4500 Series GL3 – Glossy Photo Paper Quality 3
* Canon iP4500 Series MP2 – Matte Photo Paper Quality 2
* Canon iP4500 Series PR1 – Photo Paper Pro Quality 1
* Canon iP4500 Series PR2 – Photo Paper Pro Quality 2
* Canon iP4500 Series PR3 – Photo Paper Pro Quality 3
* Canon iP4500 Series SP2 – Photo Paper Plus Glossy Quality 2
* Canon iP4500 Series SP3 – Photo Paper Plus Glossy Quality 2
So go with the appropriate ICC profile from the selection above in Printer Profile dropdown, and then select Rendering Intent (usually Relative Colorimetric) and disable Black Point Compensation and you are ready to press print.
When you come to the system OS printer dialogue this time, change the printer properties to use the same paper type as the ICC profile you selected. The same for the quality, set it to custom and then the same as the selected profile. And in the Color Adjustment’s Manual Settings, disable ICM and set it to None.
These methods should hopefully at least get your prints pretty close to the AdobeRGB gamut with the Pixma iP4500.
Oh, and you can also use the Canon provided ICC profiles for soft proofing in Photoshop. Just go to Proof Setup -> Custom and select the Canon profile for the paper type you’ll use and deselect “Preserve RGB Numbers” so you can select a rendering intent instead.
Hope this helps somewhat.
Cheers!
That is more than I expected as a feedback!
Actually I used exactly both methods so far and the blue tones in softproofing and in prints do not make it to a match with the screen picture. That´s why I asked.
Maybe you can help on another one: I was curious to see whether Itunes is color managed. So I took an untagged picture opened it in firefox and in IE and copied it into the cover section of Itunes. To my big surprise they were copied as they were shown in the browsers: i.e. the color managed photo from Firefox was appearing color managed in Itunes and the non corrected photo from IE was appearing oversaturated in Itunes. If Itunes would be color managed I would have expected both pictures to be like in Firefox and consequently if it is not color managed both pictures to be oversaturated.
So I have 2 questions:
1. Would you know whether Itunes is color managed ?
2. Why would a copy from IE to Itunes leave the photo uncorrected and from Firefox leave the photo corrected ?
Thnaks for helping
Markus
Hi again Markus,
I’ve never used Itunes, so I don’t know if it’s color managed. Easiest way to try it would be to make an image in Photoshop with bright reds, assign an sRGB profile to it, which reduces the reds on screen. And then save it and open it up in Itunes and see if the reds are still in sRGB or if they are overly bright again.
My guess is when you copy and paste an image to Itunes, it copies it as it sees it on the screen, the copy from Firefox already has pixels compensated to your monitor, which then would tag along to Itunes, whereas IE hasn’t. But this is just my assumption as I haven’t actually tried Itunes so don’t quote me on it.
Johan
Thank you for this very helpful and well organized information. I just bought an HP LP2475w monitor that calibrates very nicely, but while experimenting with it I discovered that if I set the colour temperature to 6400K in the OSD, the oversaturated look of applications that are not colour aware goes away and in fact the colours are so accurate that there is almost no difference when I view an image within Photoshop CS4 or use a viewer that is not colour managed. As 6400K is a reasonable colour temperature for viewing images, I wondered if there were any reasons I haven’t thought of for not chaning the monitor’s colout temperature to 6400K. Your comments on this would be very appreciated.
Thanks again,
Peter
Interesting article, Johan. I’ve learned to deal with many of the same CM issues for editing/viewing/printing photographs since I got my HP2275 wide gamut monitor about six months ago. Color management is not always an “all or none” thing. For example, on your last page, I was glad to see you mentioned Irfanview, which only recently became fully color managed. That is, it can now utilize not only a color profile embedded in the image, but also the current default monitor profile. So, as wide gamut monitors become more prevalent, some software that might have previously been thought to be “color managed” is revealed to be only partially color managed if they cannot make use of the monitor profile. This distinction is not always obvious without a wide gamut monitor. Fortunately, Irfan recognized the importance of this and added the ability to use the monitor profile to his file viewer, so that it is now a fully color managed application.
Also, you may want to qualify your comment about the Firefox browser version 3.5, since it is no longer always fully color managed. Apparently, as you can read in the Mozilla release notes and bug reports for the recent versions of 3.5.x, by switching from LCMS to QCMS for color management, they lost the ability to support the latest version 4 of ICC profiles, so only the older version 2 is supported. This was not a problem for Firefox version 3.0.x, which I still use. In this regard, I have noticed that the Gretagmacbeth Eye One Match 3 software used with the Eye One Display 2 colorimeter for calibration/profiling monitors offers a choice between ICC profile version 2 or 4 formats, so Firefox 3.5 users who use this calibrator may want to take note.
Finally, which is how I got to your article in the first place – while searching for info on Spyder 3 – I cannot understand why Spyder products make it so difficult, if not impossible, to adjust your monitor luminance to a user-selected value, such as 120 candelas per meter squared (cd/m^2). I have never used the product, but from what I can see posted on various websites, it appears to be impossible with the Pro version, and even with the Elite version the default appears to be “visual”, not “measured”. Is that correct? It seems to me that for accurate luminance, the brightness should be measured and adjusted to a specified value using monitor hardware controls and not left to the software. The Eye One system does this routinely using the advanced calibration mode. I also wonder if the Spyder products allow you to adjust the individual RGB channels using monitor controls to achieve the desired white point balance.
Congratulations on a great article and your excellent artwork!
-Brian
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your useful comment and your information.
About your question concerning the Spyder calibration. The Spyder 3 Elite software let’s you select if you select between visual or measured for the luminance mode. If you use the default presets I believe all of them are set to visual, but if you make your own calibration profile and set up your own settings you can use measured instead and define your own value.
And it does also let you use and adjust the individual RGB channels if you wish to to that. I’ve only played around and experimented some with those settings myself, just to get a feel for what’s possible with the software and the device, but ended up using the kind of straightforward 6.5K/Gamma 2.2 preset, as it gave me a good result that I felt happy with. Quick and easy for me.
Thanks for the information about the Firefox 3.5. I have went with the ICC v2 profile when calibrating, there is an option for v4 in Spyder as well, but I haven’t tried it. Does v4 provide any advantages over v2?
/Johan
>> assume that the display is within the sRGB range
Actually that’s not it. They assume no such thing they just send out signal 1 to 1 waht the value says. So imagine having 3 slider system. And then the instruction says All 3 sliders to max that’s what you do.
But a color management system sees a more complex instruction where there is information of what the size and offset of thos e sliders are going to be.
So having a 1 meter long slider to the max is presumably a bit different than having a 10m long slider to the max.
Most systems outside your color management system that have some rudimentary calibration behind them assume SRGB. this applies to scanners and cameras. But not applications that are not color managed.
Thank you so much for your article, this all made a TON of sense, trying to figure out why my images were oversaturated outside of Photoshop. I use an Acer AL2616W which is a wide-gamut monitor.
However, my images as seen over Firefox 3.5 are oversaturated. I have done some tests that prove my Firefox is respecting ICC profiles on images. What it does not appear to be doing is using my monitor profile.
From your article, it sounds like you are saying an image should look the same in Photoshop or Firefox. Is that right? Are we sure that Firefox respects the monitor profile? And do you have any advice for me getting my copy to respect it?
Thanks,
Drennen
Oh jeez. I just tested using my own webserver and can plainly see that Firefox 3.5 is using the monitor profile on my machine. The real problem is how oversaturated it looks on Flickr. So nevermind on the Firefox question and thanks for the great post.
If flickr, a photographers website, strips the ICC profile, Im having a hard time understanding why they would do that.
Thanks for the great post.
I’m using a Dell C22W (Crystal) Wide Gamut. I can’t find any profile for this monitor, but I calibrated it using Huey Pro, and the resulting profile seems to be v4. I had no success with either FF 3.0.15 or 3.5.2 or 3.6beta (3.5.2 only supports v2 though).
I opened a RAW (DNG) photo in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 on Win64, then created two JPEG, one with a sRGB embedded profile, another in Adobe RGB. All 3 of them look pretty much identical when displayed in Lightroom / Photoshop, i.e. color managed correctly. Good. Both sRGB and Adobe RGB JPEG files look oversaturated in FireFox or Safari. Ouch. If I disable color management, only the sRGB is oversaturated, the Adobe RGB looks fine, which is expected since it is sent unmanaged to my wide-gamut monitor.
My feeling is that even though FF claims to support v4 profiles, they might not be supported correctly (bugs happen, it’s fine, and that’s why we report them). If Lightroom or Photoshop can do it, then there is a way to do it, right? I think maybe it has to do with LUT based profiles, but I don’t think Huey Pro has the flexibility to create different kind of profiles…
Yes, Firefox supported v4 profiles before version 3.5, but in version 3.5 they changed the color management engine, so they now only support v2 profiles. I haven’t seen anything mentioned if/when they plan to support v4 profiles again.
In the Spyder software (which I use), there’s a setting in the advanced options to switch between v2 or v4 profiles. Perhaps the Huey Pro has a similar setting somewhere that allows you to create v2 profiles instead?
holy cow,
thanks much johan. i’m doing work for the first time that’s going film-out (wheeee!) and trying to wrap my head around color management was confusing as heck until i found your article! you really deserve a tremendous amount of credit for cracking open this black art for the rest of us. stu maschwitz has some good stuff as well but he didn’t talk about renders from 3d and that’s the stuff i’ve been dealing with.
a few questions:
- i cannot “convert to profile” in after effects on a 32bpc open-exr file. the option is grayed out. is this normal? is this a limitation because it doesn’t seem like it should be and it is not documented. i can convert 16bpc and 8bpc fine though.
- if i do NOT use “proof colors” and “proof setup” with monitor rgb, the colors that i see in photoshop look nothing like what the colors should be or at least what was rendered from lw. so in that case, how would i “soft proof” inside of photoshop?
- in after effects, how do you “soft proof” if your project setting’s work space is something like film? for every profile that i select there, the colors look different on my monitor though i though AE was going to do somekind of magical autoconvert to my monitor’s color space so i can work.
if it does NOT do that, then wouldn’t it make sense to work in your monitor’s colorspace and then convert to destination color space only on output settings?
————————————
anyway, thanks again. this is a tremendous resource!
jin
Hey Jin,
Happy you found it useful.
So, let’s see if I can answer you on the top of my head.
1. Convert to profile – That doesn’t sound normal. It should work just fine with 32bpc. I’m currently working on a film shot myself, and did just that earlier today with 32bpc exr files coming from LightWave. Are you using AE CS4 or an older version?
I’m not sure how well AE deals with exr files in earlier versions.
3. (switching order here) In AE when working for film, you should keep your working space to 32bpc and use a universal profile with a large gamut. ProPhoto RGB used to be a good choice (and still is), and in CS4 you have the new Universal Camera Film Printing Density profile to work with (which I currently use myself).
Then use the Simulate Output function in the View menu to compensate the view in AE to see how the colors will end up in the final destination.
Adobe has a preset Universal Camera Film to Kodak 2383 which is most common in the Output Simulation, but you can easily set up your own output with the custom setting. Where you can setup both the negative film stock (output profile) which in the case of 3D the universal profile is useful, and the distribution film stock (simulation profile) if you know on what stock your footage is going to end up on. And you will get a good representation of how the final look will be when projected on screen.
2. And you second question about Photoshop, same thing there, assign the profile of you footage when importing (also usually Universal Camera Film Printing Density). Which will make the image pretty dark, so in Proof Setup, use a custom setup with ProPhoto RGB as the device to simulate, uncheck preserve RGB numbers and use Absolute Colorimetric as the rendering intent. Highlights might be clipped (visually only) with this setup, but it should give you the best representation of the film footage inside Photoshop.
To match the look from LightWave, you can either first convert the render from the monitor profile into your film density profile, or use the SG_CCFilter in LightWave to soft proof against the film stock profile and then do the final render without SG_CCFilter applied, and it should come in correctly when assigning the film stock profile in AE/PS.
Hope this helps.
And congrats on the film-out job, adds some spice to the craft when going to film.
Cheers,
Johan
hiya johan,
thanks! that’s just what i needed to know!
oh, but in question 1, it’s in photoshop, not in AE. and i’m using photoshop cs4 (ae cs3).
in photoshop, if i open an open exr 32bpc file, the “convert to profile” is greyed out.
if i convert the file to 16bpc or 8bpc, the button comes ungreyed and i can do it but it won’t work on 32bpc.
is that normal?
thanks again and yah, can’t wait to see some of my stuff on the big screen. : )
jin
AHHHHH!
VIEW>SIMULATE OUTPUT!!!
that’s the missing piece of the puzzle for me! do you talk about this in your article? cuz other articles too, they generally stop at the -identify profile of asset -determine working space.
and then my brain is going nuts asking the same question… but but… won’t that look all messed up to me on my monitor if my work space is not the same as my monitor?!?!
as for the photoshop solution… ok cool – so you DO use ‘proof view’ ‘proof setup’. but just NOT monitor RGB. i got the impression that you were not supposed to use the proof view at all!
aha!
thank you so much johan, that totally clears things up for me!
jin
No, now when you mention it, I don’t think I’ve written anything about the output simulation. Must have slipped my mind when writing – the article did get a bit longer than I had intended anyway.
Ah, okay, you meant in Photoshop, then that’s the correct. Convert to Profile is grayed out in 32bpc. There’s a few tools that don’t work in 32bpc in Photoshop, but much less in CS4 than in CS3 where almost no tools worked with 32bpc. I wouldn’t be surprised if Convert to Profile will work with 32bpc in CS5 though.
Yes, Monitor RGB is useless as a proof view as it doesn’t proof for anything outside your own system. But other than that proof view is a handy tool to check the output. Both for print and for film work.
Hey There!
I do not want to be repetative, but this is a fantastic (!!!) article! I’m very thankfull that you have gone through all of this confusing stuff and giving us a perfect sumary to work and learn from! Thx!!
But one Question is still not solved for me, maybe you could help me out of my mess here:
I have got a HP LP2475w and i’m not sure how i should calibrate him in the Color Settings within the OSD. I read an article on http://www.prad.de (http://www.prad.de/new/monitore/test/2008/test-hp-lp2475w-teil11.html unfortunately german only) which says that you can either have a good output of the monitor for sRGB or for Adobe RGB to get the smallest possible deltaE for each space. They tell you to set up different R, G, B and brightness values to achive this. The settings differ not much, but they do.
sRGB: Brightness 13, Contrast 80, Red 255, Green 236 und Blue 255.
Adobe RGB: Brightness 7, Contrast 80, Red 255, Green 236 und Blue 255.
They use reduced green values becaus the monitor drifts a bit to “green” (not sure if you can say it like this in english…sorry for that). The low brigthness is because the monitor has his best contrast ratio on that setting.
So now i’m not sure which settings to use. I also own a DataColor Spyder2 Express Colorimeter .
The question now is: Should i set up the monitor like prad suggested? And if yes…for which color space? sRGB? Adobe RGB? Or should i just use my spyder2express for calibration and not touching the settings of the monitor at all?
Once the monitor is calibrated and ready for use, the following workflow is (thanks to you!) cristal clear!
I would be very glad if you could give me any hints what to do
Best regards, Philipp
Hi Philipp,
I’m happy you found it useful.
About changing the OSD color settings, I’ve read several articles as well concerning my display of different recommended settings, but I haven’t really cared about them as no two screens are exactly the same anyway.
I have left my monitor at it’s factory default settings and then let the Spyder do the job. The Spyder calibration sets the White Point (Balance) and the Gamma correct, but doesn’t mess with the colors. But when the gamma and calibration is correct the monitor can be correctly measured to create a correct profile so all color aware applications will display images correctly.
If the monitor is too far off so it can’t be calibrated in software you might need to mess with the OSD settings though. (I’ve written a bit about that on page 2).
One advantage though by tuning the OSD settings is that you can maybe get somewhat more accurate representation of the colors in non color managed applications – but as the applications I personally depend on are color managed I haven’t really bothered with that. I can live with the saturated colors on the desktop and a few non color managed applications as that really doesn’t impact my work.
So if you’re only concerned with making sure you get the correct representation of colors when working in Photoshop and similar programs, you can probably just skip messing with spending lot’s of time trying to tune in your monitor and just let the Spyder do it’s work.
Cheers!
Wow! What a quick reply! Thx Johan, now im perfectly set! You saved the day again!
Cheers from Austria!
This is the single greatest article series on Wide Gamut monitors and colors on the internet. They should have bundled this with my NEC 2690 instead of the manual. I experienced this exact same problem after installing and calibrating my monitor. Reading up on the potential problems, I found myself having an existential-like nightmare (I didn’t know what was ‘real’ color and what was distorted)…I had no idea if it was the monitor, the calibrator, the OS, Photoshop, or what. After much frustration, I found hundreds of forum threads on dozens of web sites all describing the same problem, and although I got it sorted before I read your article, you do leaps and bounds better than anyone on explaining it. Terrific job, my friend.
I have a problem, i dont know if you can help me, anyway.
My problem is that after i finish converting a 32 picture to an 8, i click ok, and then, everything i’ve done just go out, and a overgammed picture comes out that i have to correct through gamma settings to obtain a “similar” picture to the one that was shown to me in preview; this is using hdr conversion through “local adaptation”. Do anyone knows how can i fix this?. Thanks…
Extraordinary great article! – I wont post anymore praise although you deserve it.
Here is my question for the APPLE world: (using a wide gamut HP LP2475w monitor)
Final Cut Pro and Apple Color are of course “color managed” – but they are managed automatically and dont have options like AE to select the right color space. (After Effects works great on MacOS 10.6 with above described by the way)
Resulting in red faces in FCP and Apple Color. Which is a pity since the monitor would be good enough to approx. do some real color grading (possible in After Effects).
Is there ANY way to force FCP / Color to use the profile After Effects uses? / any other workaround?
Thanks ind advance – and I am sure there are lots of Apple’s out there who would love to get the answer for that.
Okay… I thought I had it all sorted, until I took a screenshot and pasted it into a new Photoshop document. Urgh, desaturated. What’s gone wrong?
I have two monitors: Wide Gamut Dell 2407WFP-HC and an old Dell E173FP which I assume is not wide gamut.
I’m running Windows 7 (64bit) and before that Windows XP (in XP colour management did not seem to be a problem!).
This is the first time I’ve experienced troubles, and I’m going quite mad trying to figure it out. There are too many places to make configuration changes!
Most of my work is for the Web, via Photoshop CS3.
I don’t really care about my monitor(s) displaying precisely calibrated colour. I have two, they don’t match, and between them I get a good idea about what general web users are likely to experience. They don’t match, but it is easy to see that they are displaying the same information. IE, If I drag a browser of Photoshop document from one into the other, the colour grade does not change (only minor differences in moniter brightness and contrast).
So my issues.
- Browsers all display websites consistantly. Same colour tones as people all around my in the office. Both monitors are the same.
- Take screenshot of website, open new Photoshop Document, Paste… and all the colours are desaturated. Why? I’ve got my default document colour profile set to sRGB… isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?
- If I set my View > Proof Colours to Monitor RGB then everything looks fine… but I’m not sure you condone that….
- Now, Save for Web and Devices. I need to set “Convert to sRGB” = on, right? And embed the ICC profile? I think that’s what you say in your article. This only looks okay if I have “Uncompensated Colour” set.
- Exported image looks fine when opened in a browser.
- Sound all wrong? It does to me. And when I open a random image (ie, Not a screenshot) and make the same settings, Oversaturation occurs when working in Photoshop and when exporting.
*cry* I still don’t know which way is up.
Are there System Profiles I should be changing to ensure my screenshots are taken correctly (I think the system is set to sRGB)? Then what should my settings be?
ps. If I set my Photoshop Working RGB to “Dell 2407WFP-HC” profile and turn everything else off (Proof Colours, Save for Web > Convert to sRGB) everything displays and exports and renders in a browser, perfectly.
Colour management for opening RGB documentes is set to Off… tat sounds wrong too
Help. Please.
Okay, let’s see if I can give you some answers here.
> Take screenshot of website, open new Photoshop Document, Paste. and all the colours are desaturated. Why? I’ve got my default document colour profile set to sRGB. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?
This is the correct behavior. Remember that Windows in itself isn’t color managed, and that you have a wide gamut display. What happens in reality is that when windows and your graphic card sends an image to your monitor, the monitor uses it’s entire color span to display it. So when a signal says maximum of a certain color for a certain pixel, it is displayed as saturated as the monitor can. With no regards to color spaces. As your monitor can display colors much more saturated than sRGB, the image you see in front of you is oversaturated. This goes for all non color managed applications including the windows desktop and most web browsers.
When you take a screenshot, windows takes it from the graphic card’s memory with no idea that you have a wide gamut screen, and then you paste it in Photoshop in the sRGB range. This is where you experience undersaturated colors, but what you see in reality is how your screenshot looks in sRGB – as Photoshop is color managed and know what sRGB is supposed to look like and with a profile for your monitor it compensates the colors to give you a universal experience that should match between any correctly setup display. If you had a monitor that was within the sRGB range, this is what you actually would see when working in the windows desktop as well.
So one can say that you have by doing that converted your wide gamut desktop and screen into the sRGB color space to see it how it would look on any sRGB compliant display. This is good.
> If I set my View > Proof Colours to Monitor RGB then everything looks fine. but I’m not sure you condone that.
No, by doing that you are essentially skipping color management all together. What you get in Photoshop is exactly the same image as you see on your screen. But then this is not what other people will see that are looking at your image on a sRGB calibrated / profiled system.
So you should keep pasting your images into a sRGB document and have in mind that your desktop is oversaturated outside of Photoshop and other color managed applications because of your wide gamut display, and the “undersaturated” look you get in Photoshop is how your desktop would have looked on a non wide gamut screen.
And by doing that you can be pretty sure that your image will look more or less the same on most monitors out there, and for sure on those that have calibrated and profiled theirs.
> Now, Save for Web and Devices. I need to set “Convert to sRGB” = on, right? And embed the ICC profile?
Yes, convert to sRGB is when you have worked with your image in another color space, like Adobe RGB. In the past you had to convert it in Photoshop before saving for web to make sure it looked correct. Now you don’t have to do that, but the save for web dialogue can do it for you by checking that box. Very handy. Embedding a sRGB profile adds a few extra kb to the image, but by doing that color managed web browsers (Firefox and Safari at this time) will display the image correctly, if the visitor has a calibrated and profiled display.
Starting with Flash Player 10 also flash player can display images color managed, in all browsers. That’s the main reason I implemented a flash viewer for my portfolio pages on my site recently, to make sure my images are as correctly displayed as possible for my viewers, no matter if they use a color managed browser or not. Color management in flash was my favorite addition to flash player 10, and hopefully a push for IE and Opera to implement it as well to rid all the problems with the web and the more and more common wide gamut displays once and for all.
>Sound all wrong? It does to me. And when I open a random image (ie, Not a screenshot) and make the same settings, Oversaturation occurs when working in Photoshop and when exporting.
If you open a random image in Photoshop, make sure it has a profile assigned to it. Most images of the rack are supposed to be in the sRGB color space. You can assign the profile manually or set Photoshop to ask you to assign a profile whenever you open a document that are missing one. Check out page 3 in this article for some information of how to set that up.
Hope this helps you to understand what’s going on.
Cheers!
Okay… I thought I understood, but some simple tests tell me I do not.
My two tests are:
1. To take a screenshot of this website: http://www.nissan-zeroemission.com/EN/ and to paste it into Photoshop (in an sRGB working space document) and retain the colours I see in my standard gamut (or wide gamut for that matter) screen. I need to work with the file in the colour spectrum it will be displayed in, on the non-wide gamut screen, but as it is, the blues turn purple. Fail.
2. Download this photo of a tiger http://www.dailydigitalphoto.com/potd-images/potd/FocusedSiberian.jpg and open it in Photoshop. Assign an sRGB profile to it so it is Managed (ie, convert it to the sRGC working space) then save it for web and successfully display it as it was beforehand. This also fails. I am prompted to assign the working sRGB profile when I open the file, which displayed it as it is seen in the browser on the standard monitor. Good. Then I Save for web with “Convert to sRGB” ticked and view it on the same screen and browser as the original. The new image is desaturated further than the original.
Maybe mine is a unique situation?
What am I doing wrong?
Great Stuff.
I have a Apple 23″ Cinema Display (5 years old now), that’s starting to show its age, becoming quite “warm” (whitepoint ~5200K). So I borrowed a friends i1 display 2 to calibrate it back to 6500K.
In the calibration options I can choose to have a v2 or v4 ICC profile, and either a “Small (matrix)” or “Large (LUT)” profile.
Based on your comments, I believe v2 / large would be the way to go, correct? (as there is more support for v2 profiles currently).
Unfortunately, the resulting “calibration” makes the screen much darker (~90cd/m2), presumably to get enough blue to get the whitepoint back to 6500K. (and indeed, looking at the LUT curves, this is exactly what has happened). So perhaps I’ll live with a 5500K whitepoint or something until I get a new monitor!
Having read your article, there is still one thing I find confusing: the calibration software modifies the graphics card’s LUT table to show “accurate” colours. Why then the need for a profile? If the screen is showing accurate colours, Photoshop shouldn’t need to make any adjustments at all….
… aaaaaand now I think I see the answer to my question… the LUT adjustment curves just create an accurate gamma response for the target gamma and white point *based on the monitor’s measured gamut*. We still need to map the monitor’s gamut to the document gamut (sRGB, Adobe RGB etc), and this is what is in the ICC profile.
Is this right?
(And if so, why have a LUT in the profile, instead of just the monitor’s RGB primaries?)
Hope you can help clear the confusion!
Mike
Yes, you got it completely correct there at the end. It’s just the gamma and white point that get’s modified through the graphic card’s LUT. This brings the monitor into a known state, so the profiling software knows that it’s set at these specific values correctly when measuring the colors to create the ICC profile for the monitor to be used in Photoshop etc for proper mapping into color spaces.
So it’s basically two stages: Calibration (gamma and white point) and then Profiling (measuring the colors after the calibration has been made).
Cheers!
Johan
I’m so sick of Picasa displaying colors wrong on my new wide gamut dell 3008 monitor. It’s really frustrating!
Why did microsoft get away with designing a system that relies on the application to consult the monitor profile? Why can’t there be a windows-wide software solution to make non color managed (indeed ALL) apps behave properly? I guess that would mean telling photoshop not to colour manage.
Why can’t this be done at a software level? Why is color management so messed up? And why won’t picasa implement it? The program is all but useless to me now I’ve bought a decent screen…
I just added a comment to this page of After Effects Help to point people to this great article:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS14AC4DDE-84D7-4fc9-B79C-897F2C78EA29a.html
I encourage you to do likewise whenever you publish something relevant to After Effects.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks a lot for this great article.
I’m currently using an Eizo Cg241W(ide Gamut) on Mac OS X and had those exact same problems. I’m loving the wide gamut display for my photoshop work, especially if it goes to print, but using cinema 4D always gave me headaches. Never even thought of using the monitorprofile for renders, instead I often use my old Apple Cinema Display for working in Final Cut and other non color managed applications.
One question though: Did you ever use a breakout card and a video monitor for grading and editing? I really wonder how well a job a device like the Matrox Mini in combinatioin with a low cost hdmi monitor does.
Thanks again Johan and all the best.
martin
Martin,
I used to work with an external reference monitor in the past, but I haven’t done so for years as the kind of work I do now rarely sees the need for it. Using the proofing in After Effects works fine most of the time and saves me some money and equipment.
So I don’t really have any clue how far the Matrox Mini with a low cost hdmi monitor will take you with color accuracy, sorry.
Cheers,
Johan
Thanks Johan for the quick reply,
if I get one of those matrox boxes, I’ll let you know about it’s ups and downs.
This guide has been incredibly useful. There is one thing though that I’ve run into that hasn’t been covered here. Perhaps it is an error on my part, or perhaps a problem with my hardware… but:
After calibrating with the Spyder3Elite on my Dell U2410 wide gamut monitor (which I’ve configured to sRGB.. I know, I know, but I do mostly webwork), I *must* go into Windows Vista Color Management and manually set ‘sRGB IEC61966-2.1′ if I want to get proper colors in sRGB files. If I don’t, and use the profile generated by the Spyder3, then every sRGB image in color-managed applications has a sickly yellow cast. I’m guessing that there is a problem with ‘double profiling’ in my system. This only happened once I installed the Dell U2410 monitors.
Keep in mind, I use ‘Profile Chooser’ to first set the profile created by the Spyder3 software, which seems to update the video card LUT. Then I go into windows color management and manually set to sRGB, so that color-managed applications don’t look horrible.
Have you ever heard of a situation where in order to get images to display properly with imbedded sRGB profiles, one must manually set sRGB in Vista’s Color Management settings? This is *after* calibrating with a Spyder3Elite…
My Spyder3Elite generates *atrocious* profiles that cause sRGB-tagged images to show with a yellow cast on my new wide gamut Dell U2410 monitors. I have to use profile chooser to set the LUT with the Spider3′s profile, then manually set ‘sRGB IEC61966-2.1′ within Window’s Color Management in order to get sRGB images to show normally.
I think there may be some sort of double profiling issue going on, but I can’t seem to figure out how. Adobe Gamma is definitely *not* running.
Thanks!
Hi Adam,
I haven’t seen this particular problem before, sorry. But I do remember seeing in the changelog history of the Spyder 3 Elite software that earlier versions of the software had problems with Vista, that the profiles loaded in the wrong order. And that this problem was noted as fixed in a later update.
That’s the only thing I can think of at the top of my head.
Have you downloaded and installed the latest version of the Spyder 3 Elite software from Datacolor’s website? If not, doing that might do the trick for you.
Cheers,
Johan
Hi,
Great article. I’ve done pretty much the same setup with my HP LP2480zx and my LP2475w.
Why did we switch our recommendation from AdobeRGB to the Film Profile for linear work? Probably because most people doing linear work when we wrote that paper were outputting to DCI, or DPX for film printing. Keeping the primaries the same between the output color space and the working space is one fewer places where the ICC color engine needs to interpret colors on your behalf.
Also, gamut is somewhat misleading in a floating point color space. Traditionally gamut is limited by the color components maxing out at 1. With a floating point color, you never max out, and colors can even go negative, which is very confusing from a human vision perspective
. Keeping all colors positive can help downstream, so it generally makes sense to have your working space match your output space if at all possible. You can even linearize sRGB if all your work is just ending up on the web.
–chris prosser
after effects engineering manager
thanks for the post. It was indeed very useful.
could you please clarify what kind of settings I need for RED camera files.
Michael,
I haven’t used the RED camera myself, so I don’t have any experience with those particular files. But take a look at this blog post over at Adobe, http://blogs.adobe.com/davtechtable/2008/12/native_red_camera_files_cs4.html
It walks through working with RED camera files in Premiere and After Effects CS4 and what settings to use.
Cheers!
Johan
great article. looks like you have invested alot of time into this subject. thank you…
could you recommend any printer for professional photographers.how can anyone deal with nozzle problems from epson printers?
fyi, in response to the first page, Softimage doesn’t support just gamma correction as a luminance correction, it supports true 3D lookup tables. (3D lookup tables use all three channels to produce a new color, and therefore adjust more than the luminance)
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.
Hi luceric,
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.
This is a stupid question but…. If you have a wide gamut monitor why can’t you use (for example) nVidia’s picture control dialog and tweak settings so that Windows icons and untagged sRGB web images look ok on a wide gamut monitor? Then you make a profile that color managed applications can show Adobe RGB tagged images as they should be?
Another confusing thing is Adobe Gamma. Does that affect on picture exactly like nVidia settings?
Hi Johan
thank you so much regarding your tutorial. i read so much praise already, but i will just add few lines.
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
Hey Christian,
Wow, lot’s of questions.
I’m not sure if I’m qualified to answer all of your thoughts on the subject. But I always enjoy a challenge and I’ll try to answer them the best I can with what I know.
1. Yes, monitors have non linear response. It goes back to the introduction of CRT’s, where the electrons fired doesn’t increase its brightness in a linear way in proportion to the input voltage. So the darker parts becomes really dark. If you send 50% voltage to a CRT you only get around 20% brightness. So if you had linear source material where 50% bright were sent as 50% it would be way to dark. So to fix this a gamma compensation to all source material where introduced so it looked correct on CRTs.
2. Yes, correcting to a gamma of 2.2 is the most convenient choice as most color spaces we work with (like sRGB) uses a gamma around that value.
3. Correct, as the 3D renderer is working in linear space, it’s not gamma corrected, so by adding a gamma correction to the final render it looks correct on a standard sRGB monitor. This is also what the whole linear workflow fuss is all about. As the renderer works in linear space, and many textures and colors already are gamma encoded, you get double gamma correction in the renderer. So that’s why the linear workflow boils down to removing gamma correction from textures and colors before letting the renderer work on them, to avoid double gamma correction.
4. Yes, you have got all of that correct.
5. Ah, I see what you find confusing with the color spaces, especially when talking 8-bit numbers. To understand this you have to think outside the screen.
It’s easy to think that Adobe RGB R:0 G:255 B:0 and sRGB R:0 G:255 B:0 is the same as you mentioned in your example.
It isn’t though.
On a sRGB display device they might look the same, but Adobe RGB’s maximum green is in reality much greener than sRGB’s maximum green (because of Adobe RGB’s wider gamut). If you for instance would print the image you’d see a difference between the identical RGB values depending on colorspace.
To easier illustrate the difference, I borrowed an image from Wikipedia’s colorspace article and made a rough paintover on it. If you look at my paintover you see that AdobeRGB’s 0,255,0 is very different from sRGB’s 0,255,0.
So Adobe RGB’s wider gamut is not about getting more colors than the 256 values on each channel 8-bit is providing, but spreading the colors wider apart to get a bigger color spectrum for the same range of values. When working in 8-bit for screen output, Adobe RGB might not be that interesting, but as soon as your output media is something other than the screen (print or film) Adobe RGB starts making sense, or ProPhoto RGB which gives an even wider spectrum of colors. With these larger colorspaces it’s also a good idea to leave the 8-bit world and work with 16 or 32 bits. It helps to have a display device that can show the wider colors. Print people have for instance for years used Adobe RGB and aids like Pantone guides on paper to see how the colors actually will look when printed, as the screen’s sRGB gamut haven’t been able to reproduce the colors.
Hope this answers some of your thoughts anyway.
Cheers,
Johan
thank you so very much on such detailed response!!
i really appreciate it.
as you could see from the amount of questions, i was getting bit confused. Probably taking in too much information from many different sources, which some was either misleading, or just plain wrong.
apologies on late thank you note, i was assuming that i would be notified with email when you posted reply. recently learned not all blogs send you email when article is updated, so thought i come back and make sure. and sure enough! there was a great response, i have just been missing out >..<
and this time, i shall come back and check your blog more often to see if you were so kind to indulge me with my questions again : )
Hi,
What a useful article! Many thanks for that. Still one thought: isn’t it a ‘solution’ to switch the wide gamut monitor to sRGB emulation (I think the Dell U2410 has this option, not sure about your Dell monitor) if you are working in not color managed environments? (I think it should be even possible to have a seperate ICC profile for this sRGB mode so you could even import creations to a color managed program) Your monitor would operate more or less as a standard sRGB monitor and colors should look decent when browsing the web. When working in photoshop just switch to the normal wide gamut mode. Best of both worlds or do I miss something?
Hi,
I’m happy you found the article useful, and thanks for your input.
You’re correct, some monitors have an option to simulate sRGB, which would/will solve the problem. The Dell 2408 has a ‘sRGB’ preset, which unfortunately doesn’t simulate sRGB very well or correct so it is of little to no use. I do wish it would have simulated sRGB properly and I’d have been a happy camper. I know some other more expensive wider gamut monitors do a proper job on this though, and I’ll probably be looking on a more decent one myself the next time I’m monitor shopping.
Cheers,
Johan
I’m going to revise some of what I wrote above, your comment got me thinking.
About two weeks ago the version 4 update of the calibration software for my Spyder was released, with a new feature that allows you to compare the gamut of your display to standard color spaces like sRGB and AdobeRGB. In the image to the right you can see how my Dell 2408 (red triangle) compares to sRGB (green triangle) gamut wise.
I don’t know if other calibration systems have this feature, but this addition could prove extremely useful. I did some quick testing with this today, started tweaking my RGB settings in the monitor and pretty quickly got close to a sRGB gamut. (I can also mention that the default factory “sRGB preset” in the Dell monitor was smaller than a correct sRGB gamut).
By using this new gamut measurement panel in the Spyder Calibration you could dial in a very close match to an accurate sRGB gamut on a wide gamut monitor. I’ll definitely spend some time experimenting with this the coming weekend. It seems this will open up the door to have a reliable sRGB setting which you can trust, even with a Dell 2408 monitor, to use with non color managed applications (like Adobe Premiere Pro).
Cheers,
Johan
Hello, thank you for the great article! Really helpful
But one thing is unclear to me. You said that when making textures in PS you use sRGB as default profile, but when I use that texture in 3ds Max (which is not color managed) it looks different and so does the render when watching in PS. Only way I can get same result both in PS and 3ds Max is if I set color profile in PS to be my monitor profile. After rendering I open image in PS and after I’m finished working with it I convert it to sRGB and embed it when saving. Is that a wrong way?
Thank you so much. This is a great article clarifying a lot of questions I had concerning wide gamut screens. Very very good work.
Additionally, readers might be interested in how to see untagged sRGB images correctly in Firefox 3.5 while surfing the web. Basically the following setting allows to render tagged images correctly while automatically rendering untagged images as sRGB, which is right most of them time and doesn’t show you the ugly red oversaturation on wide gamut screens:
- In the adress bar, enter ‘about:config’
- Leave all the options at their default values, except gfx.color_management.mode, where you change the value from ’2′ to ’1′
BR, Daniel
Sorry if I’m late to the party here. Great article, and I have to say I understand color management so much more than I did before…. but, (you knew that was coming), I’m still a bit confused.
For instance, when I follow the steps you have outlined for Save for Web & Devices, in the Optimized preview area, with the settings you have outlined, the image shows that converting to sRGB will make it look dull/undersaturated. Why is this? When I preview the image in Chrome or IE, it looks oversaturated; NOTHING like the preview was showing me.
I’m using a Dell U2711. I do not have the dough for a hardware calibration tool. What would you recommend as the “best poor-man’s display calibration tool”? Windows 7 display calibration, or a utility that came with your video card (nvidia’s control panel)?
Also, what should your monitor settings be, along with the color management settings in Windows 7? Right now my monitor is set to Adobe RGB preset, and Windows has two profiles listed, a Dell U2711 profile, and sRGB. How do these relate to Windows Color System Defaults and ICC Rendering Intent to WCS Gamut Mapping, and what should these settings be?
Thanks again for your efforts.
Awesome article, Johan, thank you so much.
Bruce, to answer your first question, if I understood the article correctly, this is probably because your monitor is wide gamut, and IE nor Chrome are color managed, would be my guess. The preview is correct because photoshop feeds your monitor the correct values, takes into account the wide gamut icc profile and prevents you from seeing the RGB image as oversaturated.
I’m curious, Johan; If you use the “and then convert document to working RGB” when opening and assigning your display profile, what render Intent does the conversion use in that auto-step? And is it OK to do so, as opposed to converting the file yourself (as I see you don’t use it)?
Thanks,
deg