P2E and Calibrated Monitors

[smb804]

I recently downloaded the trial version of P2E and some slideshows produced with the program, and I am interested in purchasing it. I currently use a different program (Proshow Gold) and find that P2E does indeed give sharper images on the screen.

One concern, though: The shows made with P2E seem to mess with the monitor settings. I have my monitor calibrated with a colorimeter to give the most accurate colors. However, when a P2E show is run, it changes the color profile of the monitor, essentially running with the monitor uncalibrated. This causes distinctly warmer tones in the images. After the show runs, the monitor "resets" to the calibrated profile. Has anyone else noticed this? Is there a way around it?

Thanks,

Steve

[Conflow]

Hi Steve,

There are a few issues here which break down into 3 essential catagories,viz:-

1)

Your personal preference as to the "Visual Renditions" most pleasing to you.

These are personal choices depending on the goodness of your Eyesight.

2)

Monitor Rendition which should be set to an 'ISO Calibration Standard' which

is alltogether different from your personal preferences. This set-up is designed

so that the Pte Exe Show will perform to a common ISO Standard which means

it will give the same Brightness, Contrast, and Colour on other user Monitors

provided they are set to the same Standard or nearest to it.

3)

Projection Renditions, which fall into a league of their own but you won't go

far wrong if you stick to a proper 11 Bar or 13 Bar Grey Scale Test and then

afterwards adjust the Projector for Colour etc.

Summary

So you have your own preferences, which will not be the same as other users

because we all have different eyesight. But if others are viewing your Pte Show

they are not concerned with your preferences, more likely they want to see a

bright Shown which they can adjust to their preferences !!

To get it right You must execute a 'Grey Scale Test' and perform adjustments to

same before you execute any form of Colour Adjustments, Tests or otherwise.

To perform any Colour Adjustments without the prior Grey Scale Test is putting

the cart before the horse.

Hope this helps....

Brian.Conflow.

[Guest Techman1]

Steve,

Welcome to the forum. I think you will be very pleased with PTE's abilities and quality of the shows it can produce.

Regarding the problem you are seeing, I would venture a guess that you are using an ATI Video Card in your system. Maybe running Windows XP also? If so, please see the thread below that addresses a problem with the ATI cards. Igor has addressed this with ATI and many here have also used the link to voice our concern. No updates from ATI yet, but we are hoping.

ATI Calibration Problem Thread and Link

If your system isn't running an ATI card, please let us know a little bit about your PC's configuration.

Best regards,

Fred

[smb804]

Hi Steve,

There are a few issues here which break down into 3 essential catagories,viz:-

1)

Your personal preference as to the "Visual Renditions" most pleasing to you.

These are personal choices depending on the goodness of your Eyesight.

2)

Monitor Rendition which should be set to an 'ISO Calibration Standard' which

is alltogether different from your personal preferences. This set-up is designed

so that the Pte Exe Show will perform to a common ISO Standard which means

it will give the same Brightness, Contrast, and Colour on other user Monitors

provided they are set to the same Standard or nearest to it.

3)

Projection Renditions, which fall into a league of their own but you won't go

far wrong if you stick to a proper 11 Bar or 13 Bar Grey Scale Test and then

afterwards adjust the Projector for Colour etc.

Summary

So you have your own preferences, which will not be the same as other users

because we all have different eyesight. But if others are viewing your Pte Show

they are not concerned with your preferences, more likely they want to see a

bright Shown which they can adjust to their preferences !!

To get it right You must execute a 'Grey Scale Test' and perform adjustments to

same before you execute any form of Colour Adjustments, Tests or otherwise.

To perform any Colour Adjustments without the prior Grey Scale Test is putting

the cart before the horse.

Hope this helps....

Brian.Conflow.

Thanks Brian,

The issue isn't that I have the monitor adjusted to any personal preference, but it is accurately calibrated to an ICC profile created by a colorimeter and software that adjusts the monitor to a standard. It isn't a matter of me making visual ajustments with the monitor settings. For some reason PTE "undoes" this calibration when it runs a show, while no other program I've used does this.

Steve

[smb804]

Steve,

Welcome to the forum. I think you will be very pleased with PTE's abilities and quality of the shows it can produce.

Regarding the problem you are seeing, I would venture a guess that you are using an ATI Video Card in your system. Maybe running Windows XP also? If so, please see the thread below that addresses a problem with the ATI cards. Igor has addressed this with ATI and many here have also used the link to voice our concern. No updates from ATI yet, but we are hoping.

ATI Calibration Problem Thread and Link

If your system isn't running an ATI card, please let us know a little bit about your PC's configuration.

Best regards,

Fred

Thanks Fred, I appreciate the heads up and link to the other thread. That's exactly the problem I'm having. And yes, I do have an ATI card and XP.

My next question is, why does PTE do this with ATI cards while other slideshow programs like Proshow Gold do not?

Steve

[smb804]

Thanks Fred, I appreciate the heads up and link to the other thread. That's exactly the problem I'm having. And yes, I do have an ATI card and XP.

My next question is, why does PTE do this with ATI cards while other slideshow programs like Proshow Gold do not?

Steve

To follow up on my own post here, I researched the forums some more and found one user who reported that this problem occurs on nvidia as well as ATI cards. From Urmas, dated 12/16/06:

"Initially I thought, that it might be related to ATI gamma problem (ATI drivers problem) referred earlier in forum. But lightness does not change. Just colors change. My laptop has ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/9700 series video card.

Then I made test: Removed all profiles from laptop display color managment and run PTE v.5 slideshow - no change in image display during slideshow. Recalibrated display and problem is there - the created profile is not used by PTE. After careful observation, the problem exists also on my desktop with NVidia video card. Color profile is discarded both, on my laptop (ATI) and on desktop (NVidia) while executing PTE 5 slideshow.

Because my desktop monitor without profile is much closer to profiled color, initially I did not notice change. But the change is there in both cases - on laptop and desktop. "

Then there's still the nagging question about why my ATI card doesn't show this issue with software other than PTE. So I guess I'm wondering, is this strictly a problem with ATI or is there something in PTE that needs to be tweaked in the next release? I'm not trying to shoot holes in PTE, as I think it is otherwise capable of some excellent output. I'd love to make it my slideshow software of choice.

One of the workarounds that was offered by Admin1 to the above was,

"1) Use GDI graphical engine or not exclusive 3D mode for slide shows (both options will be available in the next beta 9 of v5.00)"

Is this an option in the full v5 release, and if so, how do I do this?

Regards and thanks again,

Steve

[nobeefstu]

Then there's still the nagging question about why my ATI card doesn't show this issue with software other than PTE.

The other softwares most likely dont use the full 3d graphical mode/hardware capabilities of the video card for display ... whereas PTE v5 does for creating extremely smooth complex animations.

One of the workarounds that was offered by Admin1 to the above was,

"1) Use GDI graphical engine or not exclusive 3D mode for slide shows (both options will be available in the next beta 9 of v5.00)"

Is this an option in the full v5 release, and if so, how do I do this?

Yes. You will find a checkbox Hardware Acceleration (D3D) in the Proect Options/Screen - Screen Options ... which enables/disables the function.

[Ed Overstreet]

The other softwares most likely dont use the full 3d graphical mode/hardware capabilities of the video card for display ... whereas PTE v5 does for creating extremely smooth complex animations.

Yes. You will find a checkbox Hardware Acceleration (D3D) in the Proect Options/Screen - Screen Options ... which enables/disables the function.

Unfortunately, though, if you disable the 3D box, you will probably find that any animations (like pan and zoom) are strikingly less smooth than they are with the 3D box clicked on. So, until ATI fixes the problem at their end, users with ATI cards (such as me) are going to have to choose between doing without proper colour calibration or doing without decent-looking animations in their shows, in PTE 5. I've tested this on my system, and my preference is to give up the colour calibration (especially since most of my shows are destined for my photo club which has a computer that doesn't, as far as I know, have an ATI card). IMO the animations with 3D turned off, at least on my system (ATI Radeon 9700 128 MB RAM on a Dell Inspiron 9200 desktop with 1GB RAM) look absolutely awful (they're stunning when 3D is turned on). The colour calibration isn't as I'd like it, but I can live with it for now (especially as I don't have any practical choice unless I want to get a new computer with a non-ATI card, maybe that's something we should start mentioning to ATI in our complaints -- they're going to lose business from some of us if they don't fix this. Next laptop I get will NOT have an ATI video card in it, otherwise).

Please see other posts on this Forum about where to go to complain to ATI about this. The more of us who complain, the better (I hope).

[jevans]

Unfortunately, though, if you disable the 3D box, you will probably find that any animations (like pan and zoom) are strikingly less smooth than they are with the 3D box clicked on. So, until ATI fixes the problem at their end, users with ATI cards (such as me) are going to have to choose between doing without proper colour calibration or doing without decent-looking animations in their shows, in PTE 5. I've tested this on my system, and my preference is to give up the colour calibration (especially since most of my shows are destined for my photo club which has a computer that doesn't, as far as I know, have an ATI card). IMO the animations with 3D turned off, at least on my system (ATI Radeon 9700 128 MB RAM on a Dell Inspiron 9200 desktop with 1GB RAM) look absolutely awful (they're stunning when 3D is turned on). The colour calibration isn't as I'd like it, but I can live with it for now (especially as I don't have any practical choice unless I want to get a new computer with a non-ATI card, maybe that's something we should start mentioning to ATI in our complaints -- they're going to lose business from some of us if they don't fix this. Next laptop I get will NOT have an ATI video card in it, otherwise).

Please see other posts on this Forum about where to go to complain to ATI about this. The more of us who complain, the better (I hope).

Ed,

Interested in your post because of your reference to calibrating your monitor and using the photo club projector. I am thinking of buying a monitor calibration kit (maybe Spyder2). However I have no control over the projector settings at my photo club and hence, even if I have a calibrated monitor, showing the PTE shows at the club (or any digital images) is dependent on the projector settings. So why bother to calibrate except for the satisfaction of having consistent colour settings at home.

Jeff

[Ed Overstreet]

Ed,

Interested in your post because of your reference to calibrating your monitor and using the photo club projector. I am thinking of buying a monitor calibration kit (maybe Spyder2). However I have no control over the projector settings at my photo club and hence, even if I have a calibrated monitor, showing the PTE shows at the club (or any digital images) is dependent on the projector settings. So why bother to calibrate except for the satisfaction of having consistent colour settings at home.

Jeff

Hi Jeff. Don't give up too easily on the issue of calibrating a projector. My photo club, partially at my urging and instigation, purchased a newer verion of Color Vision Spyder than I have at home. The newer version can be used to calibrate a digital projector (reading directly off the projected screen display) as well as CRT and LCD monitors; I believe other brands of calibration device now also can do this. Our club runs monthly slide competitions, mostly digital slides, and before getting the calibration spyder there had been a lot of complaints from members whose slides didn't look on projection to the judges as they'd looked on the monitor at home. The calibration has largely eliminated those complaints, as long as the equipment operators remember to re-check the calibration profile chosen on the system plus the projector brightness and contrast settings before the evening starts, bearing in mind that the calibration profile is unique to a specific projector, screen, ambient room light if any, projection distance, and video card (so the same projector run off different laptops likely will need to be recalibrated on each laptop). Depending on your club's budget and the proportion of members who are shooting digitally rather than with film (the majority of our members have now "gone digital"), there should be good support for getting that projector calibrated correctly. This would benefit not only AV producers (whether they use PTE, Pro Show Gold, or whatever) but also anyone wishing to show any digital slides that they've spent a lot of time tweaking to get a specific appearance (which is most of us, most of the time).

Yes, this requires more attention to detail by the volunteers who run the projector, but that's just an extension of past requirements for projectionists to keep the lens clean, the bulb replaced, and monitor the focusing from one slide to the next (at least that shouldn't be an issue with a digital projector!). With digital technology comes the need for more attention to fine detail and complex controls, alas. But it's not "rocket science" and the result is well worth it, especially if as I suspect from your comments you've been sadly disappointed at the way some of your images have appeared on projection (been there, had that experience too!).

[Conflow]

Hi Ed,

I completely agree with you concerning 'Projector Set-Ups' and personal visual preferences ~ but like

all things in life, you can lead the 'Horse to Water' but you can't make him drink !

It always amazes me when intelligent and gifted AV Enthusiast's create an excellent AV Show and then

blightly expect it to run perfectly on a AV Projector. After the resultant disaster they blame everything

except their 'own mistake' in that a Projector must be set-up like any PC for it to work properly.

Then when the Show is set-up properly on a PC for Projector usage, they don't like it because it offends

their own 'personal preferences' but they fail to realise whats on the PC is that suitable for the Projector

not what suits them.

You just can't win.....

Brian.Conflow.

[jevans]

Hi Ed,

Hope you do not mind some more questions. The whole subject of colour management seems to be fraught with difficulty. I have read several books on the topic but do not seem to be much wiser.

I have a 19 inch Iilyama LCD monitor with brightness, contrast, phase, colour temp and gamma settings (plus some positional adjustments etc. of course). I assume that when you buy a Spyder, the colourimiter sits on the screen and the associated software calibrates the display against a known standard which is provided by the software. In this process, the software adjusts the monitor settings and perhaps also the video driver and video card. The software also produces a "profile" for that display unit under the conditions existing during the measurement.

So assume I have done that and have a calibrated monitor with its profile. Now I take the colourimeter plus software to our club and go through the same exercise with our projector. The club computer is different (conventional CRT monitor and different video parameters). Also the lighting conditions are different. Will this exercise produce a reasonably consistent colour rendering between the home LCD display and the club projected display?

Regards

Jeff

[Ed Overstreet]

Hi Ed,

Hope you do not mind some more questions. The whole subject of colour management seems to be fraught with difficulty. I have read several books on the topic but do not seem to be much wiser.

I have a 19 inch Iilyama LCD monitor with brightness, contrast, phase, colour temp and gamma settings (plus some positional adjustments etc. of course). I assume that when you buy a Spyder, the colourimiter sits on the screen and the associated software calibrates the display against a known standard which is provided by the software. In this process, the software adjusts the monitor settings and perhaps also the video driver and video card. The software also produces a "profile" for that display unit under the conditions existing during the measurement.

So assume I have done that and have a calibrated monitor with its profile. Now I take the colourimeter plus software to our club and go through the same exercise with our projector. The club computer is different (conventional CRT monitor and different video parameters). Also the lighting conditions are different. Will this exercise produce a reasonably consistent colour rendering between the home LCD display and the club projected display?

Regards

Jeff

Hi Jeff. I'm not a technician and my understanding of these things is a bit limited; there are others on this forum who can probably answer the question in better detail than I can. For what it's worth, here's my "experienced layman's" answer, others may want to correct me. (I hope we aren't getting too far off-thread on this, but I think there may be others browsing this forum who might have the same or a similar question.)

Once you've calibrated your monitor at home using standard calibration equipment like a spyder and have also separately calibrated the projector and computer at the club (not necessarily with the same brand or product, they're all supposed to calibrate to the same standards, at least in theory), then yes you should get reasonably consistent colour rendering between the two displays. It won't be perfect; monitors and projectors don't use the same technology for producing an image, and the colour gamuts aren't going to be exactly the same. This is also an issue for trying to calibrate a monitor with a printer on the same system; you'll never get an exact colour match between a monitor and a print. However you should be reasonably close. You may find that some hues and saturations that you see on your monitor display will look less saturated on the projector (or on a print), but the hues should be very close. You might notice the difference, since you're familiar with the way the image looked on your monitor, but your audience shouldn't notice anything strange in the colours. Most importantly, IMO, with proper calibration, highlight and shadow detail (i.e., the appearance of a grey scale) should be the same in both displays. So you shouldn't have highlights clipping or shadows blocking up on the projector when that wasn't the case on the monitor. This, generally more than colour shifts, was the big issue at our club with the competition slides. In one memorable competition, the judges kept commenting on how no one in our club seemed to understand how to capture or adjust digital images to avoid blowing the highlights. No one thought to ask, "gee, maybe the problem isn't this a club of dummies, maybe the projector isn't set correctly." At the judging the projector was not, in fact, calibrated correctly; at the public display of the results several days later, two judges spent much of the evening eating crow about their comments on our slides ("gosh, it looks a lot better tonight than last Thursday") because someone bothered to recalibrate the projector in the meantime.

Just be very careful to ensure that the correct calibration profile and projector settings for the specific room, screen, and projection distance are used. Our projector gets used in several different rooms, sometimes with low ambient room light (which affects the appearance on the screen), often with different screens (projection screens differ in reflectance and hence brightness, also they don't all have the same colour of white, an issue with digital papers too), always with different projection distances. And if a "visiting fireman" insists on running his/her show from a Mac laptop and your projector settings were based on a calibration done with a Windows computer (or a Mac laptop with a different video card), the vistor needs to recalibrate to your projector in that room and screen before starting, if they want to be sure of getting a consistent colour, brightness and contrast display. How much this matters will partly be a function of how different the systems, rooms, and screens are, and partly a function of how visually sensitive you and your audience are. In my experience, photographers are pretty darned finicky about the way their images get displayed, I know I am, but I also know that some of our members seem oblivious to these concerns.

I hope this is helpful. Don't spend too much time worrying about all those complicated books (I find them overwhelming also); a good calibration system, such as those by Monaco, Greytag and Pantone/ColourVision, is user-friendly and doesn't require a degree in physics or engineering to figure out and to use with good results.

[iceberg]

I have followed this thread with great interest since I raised this problem in rather a different form some months ago but with little response.

If we use a display calibrator, then I believe the following occurs. 1) the software puts a null or default profile into the driver 2) outputs a series of colours, and measures the display response 3) works out the necessary corrections and puts these as a new profile into the display driver. This means that any picture we have worked on (say in Photoshop) should look the same on any other calibrated system. If we use these in P2E then the same should apply, however it is clear that if we have an ATI card, then the profile is ignored. We need to know definitely if this applies to any other make of display cards. If not then can the author of P2E provide a work-around whenever an ATI card is detected. (For example, read the profile and apply those corrections within P2E)

[jevans]

Hi Ed,

Thanks for your very comprehensive reply which is of great help. Our photo club is gradually moving into the digital world and we are having more competitions with digital images instead of slides. For these competitions and for the occasional PTE show/competition, the issue of a correctly calibrated projector is very important. so far we have had a number of comments from judges about the difference in picture quality between their viewing at home and at the club. So I have got a good idea now how to tackle the problem.

Regards

Jeff

[JEB]

Enening all,

I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all the participants on this thread for their contributions.

Having recently agreed to take on responsibility for digital slide presentation in my camera club I had started to panic as I gradually realised what I had taken on. Three lap tops and a projector.

This thread has given me a degree of confidence that I am not alone, that there are others out there who have done it all before and more importantly are prepared to give their advice and experience to others.

Thank you.

John

[Conflow]

Please View in Full Screen

Colour Monitors -v- Colour Projectors

Lets keep this simple and try and resolve a few issues, firstly lets look at "Light"

1)

Light can be viewed from a direct source 'A Monitor' or from an reflected source 'A Projector Screen' ~

so we have direct and incident sources of light ~ of vastly different Lux magnitudes.

2)

Both of these 'visual circumstances' are entirely different as light obeys different Laws for each circumstance.

3)

Because of this its impossible to "transfer" a Monitor Calibration over on to a Projector ~ it simply wont work.

4)

The best you can achieve is to 'set-up' your Monitor so that all subsequent 'Photo-Graphic Editing' is executed to

Standards of:- Brightness - Colour - Contrast - Purity and consequently your PTE Show will be of a quality suitable

for Projector applications.

5)

The secret in doing this is the "Grey Scale Test" whereby the Monitor is forced to resolve the Black-to-White

Scale from 5%Black to 95%White in an 11 Bar Test. The 13 Bar Test resolves from 1%Black to 99% White.

6)

Why Black to White ? ~ because it encompasses the entire Colour Spectrum ~ where if all Colours were added

together you would have White Light. The Monitor CAN NOT resolve Colours correctly if the Grey Scale is defective.

7)

One the "Grey Scale Test" is set-up correctly only then can you start into Colour Correction, Hue etc,etc.

8)

Thereafter the Projector must be set-up for Luminance & Focus and Washout Correction if that's supported.

These of course depend on Screen Quality and throwing distance.

9)

The PC 'set-up' will be very bright with lots of colour contrast and it will be uncomfortable to view this for

any lenght of time

10)

At this "work in progress" stage one must resist personal preferences temptation's and do whats necessary.

11)

Thereafter when you have made your PTE Show Exe of course you can turn down the Brightness & Contrast

in the certain knowledge that what you have done will be up to Colourmetric Standards.

12)

Tip: In our Workshops we use 'stik-on' de-polarizer Screens to reduce the Brightness to comfortable levels.

Tip: We also use the 'Nokia Test Card Program' because it has a superb Grey Scale Test utility from 1% to 99%.

I hope this help's in explaining what you must do, compared to what you want....your personal preferences !

Brian.Conflow.

[JohnB]

Several members (including me) have written at length on the importance of proper colour management in this forum; this latest group of comments largely repeats what has been said before several times.

I'm not good at handling forum entries, something always seems to go wrong when I try to join replies together. So here is my request —

Could someone collect all the comments/replies/opinions on colour management together and put them under one heading in this forum? I'd be happy to go through them then and delete those that merely repeat something already said, and those which (I'm sorry to say) are wrong.

There is a lot of rubbish about colour management on the web and I'm always sad to see that someone new to the subject has found one of those erroneous articles and writes to this forum (and others) for help when nothing goes right.

Once again let me strongly recommend that excellent book "Real World Colour Management" by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting; it's not an easy read but you can acquire the necessary essential understanding without going to the expense of taking a Master's Degree in Colour Management.

Many thanks in advance to the forum expert who has a go at collecting everything together.

[Boogie]

Please View in Full Screen

Colour Monitors -v- Colour Projectors

Tip: We also use the 'Nokia Test Card Program' because it has a superb Grey Scale Test utility from 1% to 99%.

Brian

Thanks for your excellent notes.

I downloaded the Nokia test card program (free from www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/Nokia-Monitor-Test.shtml via Google).

It is excellent and so simply to use.

I can set up my main computer and laptop.

I have put the program on the desktop of my laptop that I take to do shows on a variety of projectors. At each venue I will be able to easily and quickly check the projector setup, screen, ambient light, etc. and make any necessary adjustments.

It would also be useful on a memory stick for those folks responsible for a club's projector and have a variety of visiting laptop/notebook computers.

Thanks again for your tip.

Boogie

[jevans]

Just when I thought I had this subject sorted, more posts arrive to (apparently) confuse the issue.

First to say to JohnB that I purchased the book he recommends ("Real World Colour Management" by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting) a while ago and have read it from cover to cover. It is an excellent book, very strong on the theory but perhaps a little short on detailed practical advice.

Now to Brian Conflow's latest contribution. You know Brian that I have the utmost respect for your forum contributions and the help you have given me in the past. However I am confused by your latest comments. Following communications with Ed Overstreet, I had come to the conclusion that I could purchase a colourimeter kit such as SpyderPro and use this to calibrate and provide a profile for my LCD monitor and also use the same process to calibrate/profile the club's projector. The blurb for SpyderPro mentions specifically that it can be used for projectors. Your post emphasises that it is essential to do a grey scale test first and, by mentioning the Nokia Test Card program, implies that this is all that is required, i.e. no colourimeter required.

So are you saying - "Don't buy SpyderPro but get the Nokia Test Card program instead? If so, does this depend on adjusting your monitor visually? Because, if so, I have tried that and it is a very subjective adjustment which I was not satisfied with. Also it will not deal with the projector problem.

What guys like me are looking for is a straightforward set of instructions (with the associated kit recommendation) to calibrate/profile our home monitor to a repeatable standard, and do the same with the club projector in such a way that what you see on your monitor at home is (reasonably) the same as what you see when you project. The replies I have had from Ed seem to give me these answers but, knowing your expertise Brian, I am now not so sure!!

Jeff

[JEB]

Hi.

Thanks for that Jeff.

I was hoping somebody would put into words doubts that were going through my mind.

No doubt everybody is right to some degree or another.

Please keep it simple folks. We do appreciate your advice but don't always understand it!

Kindest regards.

John

[Ed Overstreet]

Just to clarify/reinforce my experience with the Pantone ColorVision Spyder:

I'm not pushing this particular product it just happens to be what I use and what my club uses. With that product, I can calibrate my computer and monitor at home, and the club can separately calibrate their computer and projector. The result is that my slides look the same to me on both displays, with maybe some very minor loss of saturation in some narrow colour ranges on the projection. My monitor, when calibrated, views quite comfortably, looks "normal" to me, and doesn't require me to wear sunglasses to avoid hurting my eyes. Can't speak for other products, but that's been my experience with this product -- shared by about 100 other club members, more or less.

FTR the ColorVision calibration software ALWAYS forces you to adjust the brightness and contrast of your display device so that you see a proper greyscale, before proceeding through the color calibration. That's standard procedure also with Monaco, if I recall correctly (used it a few years ago briefly). Brian is quite right, you absolutely must get a proper greyscale display on your screen before worrying about color adjustments, but in my experience a good calibration device and software does that for you as part of the drill its "wizard" walks you through.

The greyscale adjustment is, however, the one area that requires a visual judgment by the user (the colour adjustments are all done by the spyder automatically). That adjustment is partially dependent on the ambient room light (a grey scale may look quite different in a dark room than in a bright room), so I have separate calibration profiles and associated brightness/contrast settings for my monitor when there is daylight coming through my window, when I'm running the monitor at night with my room lights on (which I prefer), and when I'm running it at night in a dark room (which I do sometimes but don't prefer because of the higher contrast and difficulty of reading any notes I might be writing on paper as I work). Whichever profile (and ambient lighting condition) I used in creating the digital slide, however, the slide looks just fine on projection at the club, as long as that projector is set correctly and the computer is using the profile for that projector.

I have had the experience of calibrating our projector with a couple of other people in the room, and we had a bit of a disagreement as to whether the grey scale "looked right" or not. Probably one of us has low-level cataracts (maybe me?) or some other issue; we had an animated discussion as to whether or not the 5% black square was or was not quite differentiated from the 0% square. So not everyone will perceive the same display exactly the same way, but then one of my friends is red-green colour blind, so we never let him judge colour slides even though he's otherwise an excellent photographer.

In spite of the subjective issues around the greyscale in the Pantone calibration process, it seems to work. I prepare a monthly slide showcase for the club, in PTE, using 6-slide submissions from usually 10-15 members, for projection at the club. I prepare the show on my monitor at home, so I get pretty familiar with how these slides from all these different members look on my monitor. Once in a while I'll get an overly-dark or flat slide from someone and will adjust the shadow/highlight points in Photoshop Levels to fix it on my calibrated monitor (but I never mess with anyone else's colour judgments though). I've been running these showcases for three years now, have had no complaints from any of the members who made submissions that there was anything wrong with the appearance of their slides on projection, nor have I noticed any differences myself in my own or in others' slides from my own monitor, except on one or two occasions when I suspected (correctly, on post-hoc examination) the projector hadn't been set correctly by the projectionist before the show ran.

For what it's worth, that's been my experience. I don't trust theory much, I trust what I experience (after correcting the mistakes of course

[iceberg]

All this talk of colour matching makes my head spin too! But can we get back to the original question at the start of the topic plus my recent contribution.

Is P2E ignoring the colour calibration when we have ATI graphics cards is the question?

If so then all talk of calibration/colour matching is a partial waste of time for the moment.

Useful test: run the Nokia test program as normal - ie with calibrated monitor settings. At the main picture hit PrtScrn. Go to Photoshop and import that picture from the clipboard. Save as BMP. Create a new P2E sequence using that picture. Now run it. Is the displayed picture within now the same as from the Nokia program? In my case it is not, the top white is brighter with P2E.

It looks therefore that P2E is ignoring the calibration data.

[Ed Overstreet]

All this talk of colour matching makes my head spin too! But can we get back to the original question at the start of the topic plus my recent contribution.

Is P2E ignoring the colour calibration when we have ATI graphics cards is the question?

If so then all talk of calibration/colour matching is a partial waste of time for the moment.

Useful test: run the Nokia test program as normal - ie with calibrated monitor settings. At the main picture hit PrtScrn. Go to Photoshop and import that picture from the clipboard. Save as BMP. Create a new P2E sequence using that picture. Now run it. Is the displayed picture within now the same as from the Nokia program? In my case it is not, the top white is brighter with P2E.

It looks therefore that P2E is ignoring the calibration data.

Returning to the original topic, ATI cards and PTE (thanks for pulling me up short on the diversion I was beginning to wonder whether I hadn't taken the thread a bit off-topic), I'm afraid I'm going to muddy the waters a bit.

Great suggestion from Iceberg, so I got the Nokia test program, ran it from my (Pantone-calibrated) desktop, did a screen capture, pasted into Photoshop, saved as BMP, inserted BMP into a manual-advance PTE show, did a screen capture from within the PTE show of same, pasted THAT into another new file in Photoshop, and tiled the two screen captures side-by-side in Photoshop CS3. All this on CRT monitor run off my laptop's ATI Radeon 9700 128MB video card. Here's what I see.

a) On my desktop, when I examine the Nokia top screen (grey scale plus colour swatches and bands), the grey scale looks "normal", I can see all the grey patches distinctly from white down to 3% (the darkest one on that particular screen, on a later screen I can just make out the 1% so yes my Pantone calibration does work correctly). The colours look normal to my eyes, and most importantly, the grey patches seem to be neutral grey all the way through the scale.

When I view the BMP screen capture of the Nokia desktop display in the main PTE window, either in the preview window in the upper-right corner of the main PTE screen or when clicking the words "click here to preview the slide:, the colours, greyscale and overall hue (in the various grey patches, i.e. neutral) appear to be identical to what I see on my desktop. BUT -- when I click Preview to run the show, immediately the entire PTE window display turns somewhat yellowish just before the show launches. When I examine the same BMP full-screen within the PTE show preview, while brightness and contrast remain the same as before in the Nokia screen-shot, there is now a distinctly yellow-brown hue to the grey scale, noticeable largely in the 20% and 30% swatches. This is with the hardware acceleration button clicked On in Project Options-Screen (though in this case I needn't have done that, since I'm not doing any animations in this show).

c) Now for the fun part. When I do a screen capture of the brownish-yellow Nokia pattern from the PTE show display and paste THAT into a new file in Photoshop and tile it next to the original, I can't see any difference at all between the two files in Photoshop. So Photoshop can colour-manage the files correctly, even though the monitor display in PTE show and preview can't.

I'd gladly email these files to anyone so they can see for themselves, only if you view them side-by-side in Photoshop you won't see any difference, you'll only see the differences with PTE Preview or show displays on an ATI-card-driven monitor (maybe projector too? haven't tested that one yet, don't have access to the projector until September). If you have an ATI card, get the Nokia test program (there's a link somewhere up this thread) and replicate what I just described, you probably will see what I'm seeing.

Arggggghhh

Yes there is a indeed problem with ATI cards and PTE 5. So, to reprise -- given that Igor says this is an ATI problem that he can't fix (if I understand the threads correctly), our only recourse is a) live with it, keep pestering ATI to fix the problem, or c) get new video cards or new computers. Or maybe there's a fourth option someone can think of?

afterthought -- I just re-ran my little test show with and without the 3D hardware acceleration button clicked on. If it's on, the PTE screen "pauses" and changes colour briefly before running the preview. With that box clicked Off, the preview launches instantly and in fact the Nokia test screen looks precisely as it did on my desktop, without the yellow-brown hue in the greys. So this is definitely related to the hardware acceleration button (as has already been said earlier, several times, by others). Just confirming what everyone else is reporting. ...

[Ken Cox]

Why do you people insist on buying something when

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

gives a free colour monitor set up scale

years ago when i was into darkroom in the 70's,i purchased the macbeth colorchecker chart and it is still available

http://www.wordsandpeople.com/colourtools/cc.htm

http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/gmb/ey...lorchecker.html

when i got into computurs i scannned it in and adjusted the graphics card and my monitor until the white was white, then saved the scan

when i get a new monitor or graphics card i first check my reference scan then i go to

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

to double check the gray scale.

when i was learning basic colour i read that the meter in your camera or colour analyzer in your darkroom, converts all colour to a standard 18% gray

- and all camera shops sold the Kodak 18% grey card for photographers to put in their bag. Photographers would put the 18% gray card in the scene and take a picture of it .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_card

now what has changed in today's world

i have suppplied my reference macbeth colorchecker to people and they have used it to check their monitor/graphics card setup - attached same to post

ken