Monitor colour balance

[Severn Bore]

A few weeks ago there was a post about the colour profile used by PtoE. I have run a couple of searches, but cannot find it so, with apologies, I will ask the question again.

My monitor is profiled and all of my photo editing is, of course, determined by this colour balance. However, when I run

P to E the program seems to "discard" the profile and reverts to the default monitor colour space.

My question is whether this can be avoided, because the shows detract from my careful colour profiling and editing.

[jevans]

A few weeks ago there was a post about the colour profile used by PtoE. I have run a couple of searches, but cannot find it so, with apologies, I will ask the question again.

My monitor is profiled and all of my photo editing is, of course, determined by this colour balance. However, when I run

P to E the program seems to "discard" the profile and reverts to the default monitor colour space.

My question is whether this can be avoided, because the shows detract from my careful colour profiling and editing.

This is not an answer to your query but I am interested in your profiling of your monitor. I have an LCD Iilyama on which I can adjust brightness, contrast, colour temperature and gamma. Is it possible to calibrate this type of monitor and what do you need to do it. I do a lot of photography with printing of A3 prints for competitions and also produce av shows for our photographic club and have had problems in matching the image on the monitor to the projected image. Although some members in our club have tried calibration, none have been successful so far.

Regards

Jeff

[Igor]

Unfortunately it's a bug in ATI drivers for Windows XP. And my headache. ATI ignores color gamma settings in fullscreen mode which you adjusted for desktop.

We can't get an answer from ATI when they will fix this problem. On January they promissed fix it in the future but didn't write when exactly.

Maybe we can all together prepare petition to ATI?

[stonemason]

Igor is this a problem with all graphics cards or just ATI ?

Geoff

[Peter S]

This is not an answer to your query but I am interested in your profiling of your monitor. I have an LCD Iilyama on which I can adjust brightness, contrast, colour temperature and gamma. Is it possible to calibrate this type of monitor and what do you need to do it. I do a lot of photography with printing of A3 prints for competitions and also produce av shows for our photographic club and have had problems in matching the image on the monitor to the projected image. Although some members in our club have tried calibration, none have been successful so far.

Regards

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I am by no means an expert on this but I can at least pass on my experience as I had similar problems. I bought a ColorVision Spyder 2 calibration system that enables me to set my LCD monitor up correctly. It is very easy to use and I have had no problems with it. (I understand that Adobe Gamma is no good with LCD monitors and it certainly did not work for me).

Having set up the monitor you then need to get a profile for your printer/paper combination. If you want to get really into this you have to ensure that the lighting conditions etc are truly consistent evry time yo recalibrate the monitor. People have written large books on this subject!!! Have a look at www.TheDotFoundry.co.uk for some useful information and a reasonably priced colour profiling service in the UK. I found that I got some very good results using a calibrated monitor and proper profile with Canon PR101 paper. This was really the first time my prints got close to matching my monitor. If I used the same profile with Epson paper I got very different colours. This convinced me that these profiles really work.

Good luck if you follow this up.

Kind Regards

Peter

[Ken Cox]

I scanned my MacBeth colour card in -- i calibrated the scanner profile so its output matched the card and saved the jpeg. i ave suppplied the jpeg to others and they are satisfied with what is on their screen

when i purchased the present 19" samsung - i checked it against the grey tones

at

http://www.eye4u.com/home/

have not ad to reset it

from my faq list

also see

http://www.e-cobo.com/stockphotos/quality/calibration.php

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Monitor_Calibrat...zard_d3912.html

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/viewing.html

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorcalibr...cal_monitor.htm

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Monitor-calibration

and

http://www.scantips.com/

ken

[Severn Bore]

Firstly. Hi J Evans

Peter S has answered your question about calibration. I, too, succesfuly use a Spyder 2 on my 7 years old Iiyama pro 450 19" CRT monitor. I also use a benQ 19" LCD monitor in a dual monitor configuration, but the calibration software does not provide for this sort of setup, so I only have the CRT calibrated via the Spyder. In adition, I have an IBM laptop which is calibrated using the Spyder.

However, most of the cheaper LCD monitors have only limited colour adjustment controls so these calibration devices are only of real value if you invest in the mid to higher end flat screens.

Secondly. Admin 1

Thanks for the explanation. Is there any particular contact point at ATI that I should approach, and how do I describe the problem as am not entirely sure of the technical isue?

[jevans]

Hi Jeff,

I am by no means an expert on this but I can at least pass on my experience as I had similar problems. I bought a ColorVision Spyder 2 calibration system that enables me to set my LCD monitor up correctly. It is very easy to use and I have had no problems with it. (I understand that Adobe Gamma is no good with LCD monitors and it certainly did not work for me).

Having set up the monitor you then need to get a profile for your printer/paper combination. If you want to get really into this you have to ensure that the lighting conditions etc are truly consistent evry time yo recalibrate the monitor. People have written large books on this subject!!! Have a look at www.TheDotFoundry.co.uk for some useful information and a reasonably priced colour profiling service in the UK. I found that I got some very good results using a calibrated monitor and proper profile with Canon PR101 paper. This was really the first time my prints got close to matching my monitor. If I used the same profile with Epson paper I got very different colours. This convinced me that these profiles really work.

Good luck if you follow this up.

Kind Regards

Peter

Thanks Peter,

There has been a great deal of discussion in our photo club about calibration and also quite a bit of experimentation. so far the results seem to be poor and colour management has been abandoned for the moment. Ken has given some useful links, but reading these just confuses me even more.

The main problem I have had is preparing images in Photoshop for use in av sequences. I shoot in RAW and the converter sometimes produces images, which although look ok on my monitor, are too dark when projected. Of course this might be the projector settings, but I have experimented with these also and also different projectors. What I think I will try is your suggestion of using Spyder.

When printing, there is obviously the same problem but I can get a good result by using test prints and adjusting the printer settings.

Anyway thanks for your suggestions and comments.

Regards

Jeff

[Guest Techman1]

Unfortunately it's a bug in ATI drivers for Windows XP. And my headache. ATI ignores color gamma settings in fullscreen mode which you adjusted for desktop. We can't get an answer from ATI when they will fix this problem. On January they promissed fix it in the future but didn't write when exactly.

Maybe we can all together prepare petition to ATI?

Igor,

I just changed systems (I've been off the forum for a while now) and have a ATI card in this PC. I'm seeing the same thing and it really makes my photos look terrible. I use the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One Display to calibrate my monitors.

Please let me know who your contacts are at ATI as I would like to send in my dissatisfaction with their current drivers associated with this problem. Hopefully, they'll put this change up higher on their "bug" list.

Thanks for advising on this.

Best regards,

Fred

[Ken Cox]

Fred

why can you not write to ATI and explain your problem to the tech dept. It is like asking for someones personal phone # in the newspaper.

This forum is monitored all the time by google and other BOT's for information.

ken

[Guest Techman1]

Maybe we can all together prepare petition to ATI?

Ken,

I was just replying to Igor's request regarding the above. I can contact ATI on my own, but was willing to help make a combined plea via WnSoft and members of the forum here to hopefully get ATI to respond to this issue.

Not sure why you are commenting in a negative manner. Did I do something to make you mad? If so, I'm sorry!

Fred

[Ken Cox]

Igor has been after ATI and other board builders for quite some time to get up to speed with their graphics drivers - - he is getting promises only

board mfg's are only interested in gamers

ATI promised to update for vista as Igor has mentioned may times

you do not specify the details of the new system -- as i recall you had several in the past

ken

[Guest Techman1]

Per Igor's message above, this was regarding "ATI drivers for Windows XP".

I'm running Windows XP Pro with an ATI Radeon 9600 series video card (128mb). This isn't a new PC, but a new system to me. I'm fairly cheap and only buy used PC's and upgrade them as required. Finally made it up to a P4 based system (woo-who!).

My slide shows look fine on DVD, but I'm hoping none of my clients have PC's running Windows XP with ATI graphics cards or else, they'll see the same results potentially in the EXE files.

Take care,

Fred

[Ken Cox]

FRED

SEE some of the things Igor is up against

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=35278

AND

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=35306

ken

[JohnB]

Thanks Peter,

There has been a great deal of discussion in our photo club about calibration and also quite a bit of experimentation. so far the results seem to be poor and colour management has been abandoned for the moment. Ken has given some useful links, but reading these just confuses me even more.

The main problem I have had is preparing images in Photoshop for use in av sequences. I shoot in RAW and the converter sometimes produces images, which although look ok on my monitor, are too dark when projected. Of course this might be the projector settings, but I have experimented with these also and also different projectors. What I think I will try is your suggestion of using Spyder.

When printing, there is obviously the same problem but I can get a good result by using test prints and adjusting the printer settings.

Anyway thanks for your suggestions and comments.

Regards

Jeff

[JohnB]

Jeff,

Colour Management is not something to be dipped into, you have to make a decision about whether you're going to do it properly or not bother. Doing it properly means being rigorous about the way you calibrate and profile every item in the image chain. It's no good profiling your monitor unless you profile the projector as well (if you're going to show AVs). Similarly, you have to profile your printer as well as your monitor if you expect to get prints which looks like the image on your monitor screen.

You have to be strict with yourself about the settings on your devices -- for example, if you profile your projector with the lamp set to economy and use it in a small room, it will not be right if you then set it to normal and use it in a large hall. If you use your printer with different paper from that you used when profiling it, the results will be terrible.

I've being doing colour management on my system for about three years using Gretag Macbeth (now Xrite) equipment and have no problems apart from the one you can't get over: a printed image viewed by reflected light gives a different psychological impression from one viewed on a monitor by emitted light. However, the effect of even that fundamental problem can be reduced by being very careful.

Have a look at that excellent book "Real World Color Management' by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting -- expensive but worth every penny. Also don't trust 90% of the articles you read in photographic journals and on the web.

Don't give up -- a show to an audience when every colour is projected correctly is very rewarding. Of course, it doesn't help when equipment manufacturers don't do things properly, let's hope ATI will realise that it doesn't do them any good in the marketplace to make equipment which doesn't work correctly.

John

[Igor]

Please send your response on this problem to ATI here:

http://support.ati.com/ics/survey/survey.a...86&type=web

In several words: slide shows created in PicturesToExe 5 use fullscreen Direct 3D mode and ATI drivers for Windows XP in this mode ignore color calibration which adjusted for desktop. This problem don't occur on NVIDIA or INTEL video cards.

[Guest Techman1]

Igor & All Members of PTE,

Thank you for the link and info. I've just sent in this info and would encourage any others that have ATI video cards installed to do so. Also, if you share your slideshows with any friends, family or clients, I would encourage you to send a message to ATI. This is the only way we will be able to get them to resolve this issue.

Thanks again for the feedback on this and I hope ATI (AMD) will have this on their active bug list to get resolved soon.

Best regards,

Fred

[alrobin]

Done!

[Igor]

Thanks, I think it will be useful to remind ATI every month about this problem.

On this page ATI asked to report about problems in drivers and we can follow by their request

[davidlshepp]

Thanks, I think it will be useful to remind ATI every month about this problem.

On this page ATI asked to report about problems in drivers and we can follow by their request

I found out about this problem through you in one of the earlier PTE beta versions. I have not had much time to work on shows for a while and have only been monitoring the forum without inputting any further beta test info..

I just finished building a new computer system & did the best possible protest to ATI. I rembered your statement that NVIDIA cards/drivers do not have this problem so I put an NVIDIA evga 7950 GT KO video card into the new system.

If enough people switched to other video systems then ATI would have to correct this problem.

[pwear]

I'm another PTE user with the ATI problem. There is a workaround I am playing with that others similarly afflicted might like to try. My card is an ATI Raedon x1050. It works very well with my Benq 22 wide 16:10 monitor. Except for the colour switch when it runs a PTE project.

If you use ATI's Catalyst Control Centre (I downloaded the latest one) you can get into its own colour correction window in advanced mode. This allows you to correct the cards colours for "Desktop" and "3D' mode. I chose the latter, assuming this is what the card defaults to when I run a PTE project and it throws away my lovely monitor profile.

I played around with the gamma and contrast settings, while running a 10 second one-slide PTE show. I had already opened the original image in Photoshop to give me a standard to refer to. This slide was a rural late afternoon scene - but it always came out looking like midday when run in a PTE project. By warming the gamma setting, and increasing the contrast, I managed to get a replay that looked very close to my original image in Photoshop. (This obeys the monitor profile.)

One thing that helps is that if you run your PTE show from the desktop there's a moment just before the desktop disappears when you can see the card switch off the monitor profile. If you keep adjusting the gamma, contrast, brightness until this transition makes very little difference to the last glimpse you get of your monitor, then you're getting close.

I know this is a lot of nonsense to overcome a bad ATI blindness - but it's made my shows look much closer to the original images.

Peter

[Igor]

Peter,

Please report to ATI about this problem. See the URL below.

Thanks in advance.