Double Gamma Correction and Monitor Calibration

[Greyfish]

Hello all, hope you can help me.

 

I'm trying to get my head around gamma correction here and my questions are:

 

1. I've set my gamma & lut settings to enable, affect color selectors and mat editor

and input output to 2.2. Do I also set my graphic card settings to 2.2 as well? It's blowing out all my colors here.

 

2. When bringing in a bitmap file into max, does it need to be de-gammad first then have it take on the settings of max?

[Francisco Penaloza]

There is a lot already written on the net regarding Gamma correction and linear work flow no need to explain here; but as basic set up, there is not need to adjust your monitor (actually you need to but unless you want to pay for a expensive monitor and a monitor calibration not worth the try) you assume that your monitor is showing you around 2.2 gamma, they usually are 1.6 or 2.3

 

Just set up your Max to 2.2 keep the out put to 1.0 if you will save on float point format.

 

other than that you should be fine, if you use VRay, use the VRay buffer and set the color mapping to linear, and gamma 2.2.

 

I would recommend to use EXR or HDR image format for output in your render then fix image in photoshop or After Effect or whatever you use.

[Greyfish]

There is a lot already written on the net regarding Gamma correction and linear work flow no need to explain here; but as basic set up, there is not need to adjust your monitor (actually you need to but unless you want to pay for a expensive monitor and a monitor calibration not worth the try) you assume that your monitor is showing you around 2.2 gamma, they usually are 1.6 or 2.3

 

Just set up your Max to 2.2 keep the out put to 1.0 if you will save on float point format.

 

other than that you should be fine, if you use VRay, use the VRay buffer and set the color mapping to linear, and gamma 2.2.

 

I would recommend to use EXR or HDR image format for output in your render then fix image in photoshop or After Effect or whatever you use.

Thanks for the reply, I have looke around, mostly here and on youtube and have a good idea about it.

 

But keeping my graphics card set to 1.0 should be ok if I have max set correctly? Sorry if the question

sounds dense, just want to be sure.

 

Thanks again.

[Francisco Penaloza]

yes you should be fine, the "ideal set up" would be calibrate your monitor, but that is complex and expensive, but again most of the new monitor are around 1.8 and 2.4 gamma so you are amost there. I have an LG that can be set up to gama 2.2 but if I put it at 1.8 and fix contrast and bright, it look pretty similar to gamma 2.2.

The most important thing for you is keep a linear workflow within MAX and your post processing software, inside max it is easy because if something is wrong your image will look very dark or washed out.

are you using mental ray?? or VRay?

[Greyfish]

yes you should be fine, the "ideal set up" would be calibrate your monitor, but that is complex and expensive, but again most of the new monitor are around 1.8 and 2.4 gamma so you are amost there. I have an LG that can be set up to gama 2.2 but if I put it at 1.8 and fix contrast and bright, it look pretty similar to gamma 2.2.

The most important thing for you is keep a linear workflow within MAX and your post processing software, inside max it is easy because if something is wrong your image will look very dark or washed out.

are you using mental ray?? or VRay?

Mental Ray. And thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.