color managment

[markrunza]

shouive calibrated my monitor, should i be changing the photoshop color settings to my new calibrated profile or keeping it srgb. ive uploaded a picture. ive noticed if i change it to adobe rgb its a massive different yet if i just convert the picture to adobe rgb its not so bad. the point im trying to make is. ... what should i have my photoshop settings set to if i want to get as close to my vray frame buffer as possible as i assume 3ds max is using the color profile my spyder created?[ATTACH=CONFIG]47313[/ATTACH]

[Jeff Mottle]

hey guys, i'm new here but am having such problems. I purchased a spyder 3 pro monitor calibrator, the first of my problems is that my laptop screen and my desk top screen look slightly different but i'm assuming my desktop screen is better quality therefore must be more accurate.

 

Without knowing your exact systems I can't say for sure, but generally most laptop displays are not as good or as large a gamut as a desktop display.

 

My second problem is everything! my vray frame buffer looks slightly different to my 3ds frame buffer (loss of contrast and colour) and then photoshop looks completely different as well. To top it all off when i upload to my website it can look different again! its a bit of a nightmare if im honest.

 

If you have the sRGB button enabled in the V-Ray framebuffer it will not look the same as the 3ds Max viewport. The 3ds Max viewport is not color managed and uses the display's color space. To my knowledge the V-Ray viewport is not fully color managed either as it does not read the display profile so its sRGB button is limited in what it can do.

 

I know it may be way to much to ask but all i want is for me to view my renders as they are on the vray frame buffer in photoshop, firefox and on my laptop considering i have calibrated both. In photoshop should i be setting my color profile to the profile that my calibrator created. I just read that you should keep it as srgb. Sorry to proberly rehash a lot of answered questions but there is nothing more frustrating than seeing your work as you like it in the vray frame buffer but no where else!

 

You're never going to get a perfect match between the V-Ray frame buffer and Photoshop because V-Ray's frame buffer is not fully color managed like Photoshop. There is a trick I've come up with that helps get around this, but it required that your display has been recently calibrated.

 

1) Calibrate your display every 2-3 weeks

2) When you open your image in Photoshop ASSIGN the display profile

3) CONVERT to your working space (sRGB or AdobeRGB) depending upon the color space of your display and your final destination for most files

 

Normally you would NEVER assign a display profile to anything and certainly never save a file with a display profile assigned, however in this rare case it works as long as your display profile is up to date AND you immediately convert to your working space. The above works as it assumes that the image was created in the same color space as the display because only Lightwave to my knowledge is color managed. No other 3d apps are.

 

Firefox is also by default not color managed and will use the monitor's color space, however there are color management plugins for Firefox that will allow you to select your display profile.

 

As far as which working space to use, as I mentioned it really depends on the gamut of your display and how you intend to use your image, but sRGB works ok for simple workflows, but limits what you can do with an image on Inkjet printers and wide gamut displays, offset printing etc.

 

 

 

if anyone could help i would be forever in your debt. P.s i use a dell lcd screen.

[markrunza]

Jeff you have to be the most helpful man alive! so on my understanding.

 

-render my image as usual using vray

-open with photoshop

-when it asks if i should assign a profile to it as it doesnt have one, i choose my monitors profile

i then straight away go to edit - color - convert to profile and most probably convert it to srgb as i wont be printing the work, (will be for web)

-i then edit the work as normal (colors , curves and such)

-save as a tiff or jpeg and finished?

 

when i do open it with photoshop and apply the display profile, is that then the correct true colors of the image. is photoshop the only application i can trust out of firefox, windows picture viewer and 3ds max?

 

After i did everything listed, the picture still has a very different tone on the internet than the photoshop image.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47316[/ATTACH]

 

my goal is to open in photoshop, correct the image in what ever way i need to, then save the file as srgb and for it to look like that image across platforms. At the moment i cant really make changes in photoshop as the image looks completely different once i have uploaded it to the web. im not sure if im just not getting it but its driving me crazy

Edited March 20, 2012 by markrunza

[Jeff Mottle]

Jeff you have to be the most helpful man alive! so on my understanding.

 

-render my image as usual using vray

-open with photoshop

-when it asks if i should assign a profile to it as it doesnt have one, i choose my monitors profile

i then straight away go to edit - color - convert to profile and most probably convert it to srgb as i wont be printing the work, (will be for web)

-i then edit the work as normal (colors , curves and such)

-save as a tiff or jpeg and finished?

 

Correct, and when you save, make sure to check the box including your working space profile so that if you pass the image onto anyone else who is using a color managed environment, they see the same colors.

 

when i do open it with photoshop and apply the display profile, is that then the correct true colors of the image. is photoshop the only application i can trust out of firefox, windows picture viewer and 3ds max?

 

This will get you as close as match as possible to what you saw in the V-Ray framebuffer, but depending upon the colors in the scene might not be 100%, but it's as close as you can get. Also you must make sure that your display profile is up to date otherwise the colors could be altered to be inaccurate. Assining a display profile likes this assumes the profile is representative of the characteristics of the display at the time you assign the profile. This technique is not used in any color managed workflow you will find and is a "hack" for CG people.

 

After i did everything listed, the picture still has a very different tone on the internet than the photoshop image.

 

Yes, it's not perfect because once you CONVERT to the sRGB working space the color space of display and that of the image are no longer exactly the same. If you do not have a wide gamut display (which is what I am assuming), then your display should be "close" in gamut to the sRGB colorspace, but it's very unlikely it's identical. It's likely slightly larger. Some better displays also have an sRGB mode on them, so if you set the display to that mode, and then recalibrate and profile it should be a much closer match. This is becuase the display clips then internally clips the gamut to match sRGB. Right now I am assuming that your display has a gamut slightly larger than sRGB which is why your image in FF looks slightly more saturated.

 

If you send me your display ICC profile, I'll open it in one of my gamut visualization apps and show you how it compares to the sRGB color space. If you send me the image as is from that project I can map it into the spaces as well.

 

 

my goal is to open in photoshop, correct the image in what ever way i need to, then save the file as srgb and for it to look like that image across platforms. At the moment i cant really make changes in photoshop as the image looks completely different once i have uploaded it to the web. im not sure if im just not getting it but its driving me crazy

[markrunza]

hi Jeff, that would be amazing. How can i send you the profile and picture. i tried using the attatchment option on the reply but it wouldnt work.

Shall I send it in an email?

[markrunza]

right, ive been reading all morning on color management (i lead an exciting life)

 

the problem i was having most of the time is that i didnt realise the windows desktop isnt color managed however windows photo viewer is so if anyone ever opens a file with windows photo viewer then makes it full screen it then switches to your unmanaged desktop profile and looks slightly less saturated

 

photoshop, firefox (with color plugin) and windows photoviewer is color managed

 

3ds, vray frame buffer, desktop background, paint and internet explorer are not.

 

ive read that people have a problem with wide gamut displays where the image looks really saturated outside of the color managed apps but i have it the opposite way around. not sure why, can only assume it has something to do with me not having a wide gamut display (dell st2410b). one last thing that i find so strange is that if i save my image from the internet to the desktop background is appears the same as photoshop yet if i save it from the desktop it changes into that super colorful version. freaky

 

Am i completley wrong or starting to understand?

 

oh and by the way i found a wonderful article on it for dummies like me

 

http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009/07/color-management-wide-gamut-dell-2408/

Edited March 21, 2012 by markrunza

[Jeff Mottle]

hi Jeff, that would be amazing. How can i send you the profile and picture. i tried using the attatchment option on the reply but it wouldnt work.

Shall I send it in an email?

 

You can email me at jmottle@cgarchitect.com and I'll post back here with the results.

[Jeff Mottle]

right, ive been reading all morning on color management (i lead an exciting life)

 

LOL, come on Color Management is awesome.

 

the problem i was having most of the time is that i didnt realise the windows desktop isnt color managed however windows photo viewer is so if anyone ever opens a file with windows photo viewer then makes it full screen it then switches to your unmanaged desktop profile and looks slightly less saturated

 

photoshop, firefox (with color plugin) and windows photoviewer is color managed

 

3ds, vray frame buffer, desktop background, paint and internet explorer are not.

 

You are correct with this summary.

 

ive read that people have a problem with wide gamut displays where the image looks really saturated outside of the color managed apps but i have it the opposite way around. not sure why, can only assume it has something to do with me not having a wide gamut display (dell st2410b). one last thing that i find so strange is that if i save my image from the internet to the desktop background is appears the same as photoshop yet if i save it from the desktop it changes into that super colorful version. freaky

 

I'll have to look at your display profile to see what might be going on before I comment fully, but from what I can see your display model it's not a wide gamut display. One thing I am concerned about is the fact your using a Spyder calibration device. In my opinion they are crap and I've seen a lot of people have issues with them creating accurate profiles and calibrations. Not sure what is going on with your Internet to Photoshop workflow. I'd have to see it myself to see what is going on.

 

Am i completley wrong or starting to understand?

 

Sounds like you're getting there.

 

oh and by the way i found a wonderful article on it for dummies like me

 

http://www.artstorm.net/journal/2009/07/color-management-wide-gamut-dell-2408/

 

That's a pretty good summary. There are a few small things that are incorrect, but mostly semantics and details that are not going to affect most people. If you want some more detailed information you can check out the chapter I wrote on color management in the Advanced to Expert book here: http://www.thecgschool.com/cgbooks/ It's about 50 pages summary of 2000 pages of reading I've done on color management and 10 years of experience dealing with it. Others here can vouch for its quality, but feedback I've read from others has been positive.

[markrunza]

i've sent the email jeff, thanks once again. you are a shining star in the color management world. yes spyder 3 seems to utter crap! my laptop has the most yellow tint possible. everything looks like im viewing it from inside ski goggles. I would say it was just the way its supposed to look but my desktop screen is no where near those colors. I definitley will invest in a color munki

[Jeff Mottle]

i've sent the email jeff, thanks once again. you are a shining star in the color management world. yes spyder 3 seems to utter crap! my laptop has the most yellow tint possible. everything looks like im viewing it from inside ski goggles. I would say it was just the way its supposed to look but my desktop screen is no where near those colors. I definitley will invest in a color munki

 

Sometimes you have to specify you are calibrating/profiling a laptop display to ensure you get a proper profile, but certainly does not surprise me that Spyder's stuff does not produce consistent profiles. You will never get a laptop display and a desktop display (at least not yet) to look identical as laptop displays usually have a significantly smaller gamut.

 

Ok, now onto the fun stuff. I got your profile and your image and have plotted them in an application I have to visualization colorspaces.

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47339[/ATTACH]

 

In the image above you can see the sRGB colorspace (colored outline) and your Dell st2410b Display (white outline). I've also plotted your image (sRGB profile embeded). All of those dots represent every pixel in the image plotted into the sRGB colorspace. The square grid represents the extents of every color that we can see with the human eye. The most saturated colors would be at the very edges of the grid.

 

As you can see your display has a slightly larger colorspace than sRGB in the reds and greens. In your particular image you have a lot of red and green so that means you will see a color shift. If your image had been mostly blue for example, I doubt you would have seen as much. As this image was a partial render that DNA model also has colors that are almost pure red (255,0,0). I'll use those pure red pixels to demonstrate what is happening.

 

The upper right of the sRGB colorspace represents the most saturated red you can get in that color space. So when you map the raw RGB values, specifically the 255,0,0 red on that DNA model, you can see it's mapped right into the corner. When you import your image from the V-Ray framebuffer into Photoshop you assign the display profile then convert it into the sRGB working space.

So your image would look just like it was plotted above. However, if you look at this image saved from Photoshop in a non-color managed application (say your browser or windows desktop) it can not read the embedded profile. It dumbly maps the raw RGB values to the colorspace of the display. So that 255,0,0 red color instead would be mapped to the upper right of the white outline (the Display's colorspace).

As I mentioned above the further towards the edge of the square grid you get the more saturated colors get. So that exact same 255,0,0 red appears more saturated on the display in a non-color managed environment than it does inside an application that can read the sRGB profile that was embeded in the image.

 

 

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47338[/ATTACH]

 

Above you can see the exact same color spaces and image as the first image, but in 3D. 2D gamut plots (like the first image) do not always tell the full story as they only show you the cross section of the color space at the 50% mark in the luminance axis (vertical).

 

So as you can see you can never get a non-color managed application and a color managed application to show the same colors on a display if the colorspace of the display and a standard device independant colorspace (sRGB, AdobeRGB etc) are not identical. IN years past older CRTs were very close to sRGB so this color shifting between Photoshop and the framebuffer were never an issue. As technology has progresses display gamuts are getting larger and larger and we run into these problems.

 

The only way to ensure an exact match between framebuffer and Photoshop is to get a display with a built in sRGB or AdobeRGB mode which will limit the colors output by the display internally. If you crop the colors output by the display to sRGB, calibrate and profile, you should get a near identical match and very little if any color shifting.

 

Hopefully that explains what is going on and does not confuse you further. Once you get a better calibration device I suspect the other issues you described should go away.

[markrunza]

wow, first of all i actually understood every single word of it! 4 days ago i might have given up mid way through and shot myself but i got the jist of it. so the best i can really do with the dell monitor i have at the moment is just trust what photoshop says as its color managed and anyone else who is using a color managed application will see roughly the same image. Thats all i really need to know at the moment, that what i see in photoshop will be represented the same when a client opens the same file. So in theory im not doing anything wrong per se but i could buy a monitor with a srgb option and also a better calibrating device. the spyder 3 does have a laptop option but is still useless! thanks for all your help Jeff, not sure if i would have ever got this same information and help from anyone else. At least now i can get on with the project and accept that photoshop knows best and that firefox with my color managed plugin will show the same!

[Jeff Mottle]

wow, first of all i actually understood every single word of it! 4 days ago i might have given up mid way through and shot myself but i got the jist of it. so the best i can really do with the dell monitor i have at the moment is just trust what photoshop says as its color managed and anyone else who is using a color managed application will see roughly the same image. Thats all i really need to know at the moment, that what i see in photoshop will be represented the same when a client opens the same file. So in theory im not doing anything wrong per se but i could buy a monitor with a srgb option and also a better calibrating device. the spyder 3 does have a laptop option but is still useless! thanks for all your help Jeff, not sure if i would have ever got this same information and help from anyone else. At least now i can get on with the project and accept that photoshop knows best and that firefox with my color managed plugin will show the same!

 

Excellent. Happy to help. Color management is a passion of mine. Now that I'm no longer in day to day production this and photography are what keeps me in the mix to a degree.

 

Another tip if you'll be sharing images with others. Put them into a PDF using Acrobat. Acrobat is a color managed application so it will respect the embedded profile and use the display profile if it exists. While clients generally will not have a calibrated system, putting it in acrobat will at least remove one of the variables affecting the viewing pipeline.

 

Good luck and post back when you get that Spyder. I think you'll be a lot happier.

[alkyon]

 

 

If you want some more detailed information you can check out the chapter I wrote on color management in the Advanced to Expert book here: http://www.thecgschool.com/cgbooks/ It's about 50 pages summary of 2000 pages of reading I've done on color management and 10 years of experience dealing with it. Others here can vouch for its quality, but feedback I've read from others has been positive.

 

Jeff thank you so much for pages 3-52!

This article is one of the best I've read and helped me a lot to understand the procedure.Unfortunately I had to go baby steps and read it again and again until one day I got myself a nice spyder pro.Complaints about color differences have reduced to a minimum!Of course there are some clients out there with very bad monitor settings but you can't beat them all at once

[Jeff Mottle]

Jeff thank you so much for pages 3-52!

This article is one of the best I've read and helped me a lot to understand the procedure.Unfortunately I had to go baby steps and read it again and again until one day I got myself a nice spyder pro.Complaints about color differences have reduced to a minimum!Of course there are some clients out there with very bad monitor settings but you can't beat them all at once

 

Thanks! Glad you liked it and it's helped you out. Color management can be pretty difficult to figure out in the beginning, but eventually it just clicks and you're like "why did I not understand this before, it's so simple!"

 

Jeff - Converting the arch viz world to color management one post at a time LOL.

[testaccount]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm new in this forum because I was looking for the app by Gretag Macbeth called DisplayProfile. It could be found here: http://forums.cgarchitect.com/63873-icc-loader.html#post321428 but the download won't start for me.

 

Does anyone have this utility still and could you reupload it plase?

 

Many thanks,

Marco

[Jeff Mottle]

Hi Marco,

 

First, please update your profile with you real name and not "Test Account" otherwise, it's eventually going to end up being deleted.

 

Regarding the download, we suffered some data loss on the forum last year with post attachments so unfortunately that download is no longer available.