Monitor "calibration" and poor color quality

D
Posted By
Dave
Nov 24, 2004
Views
750
Replies
11
Status
Closed
Every so often I try to generate a color profile for my monitor using the Adobe Gamma that comes with Photoshop (I have version 7), but inevitably wind up deleting the generated profile and restoring the factory defaults.

I am using Windows XP Pro. The default HW color temperature of my monitor is 9300K and the factory default brightness and contrast appear to generate the best overall color quality for my desktop.

The problem is, after changing the monitor temperature to 6500K and running the Adobe Gamma utility (which doesn’t seem to do anything other than make the screen brighter), the resulting colors look much more dull. Is that just a necessary sacrifice of using color management? The desktop looks similar to switching to the Windows classic theme. Am I doing something wrong? Also, if most monitors are set to 9300K by default, why is the usual process to change the color temperature to 6500K?

Thanks.

Dave

How to Improve Photoshop Performance

Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!

CC
Chris Cox
Nov 24, 2004
Adobe Gamma does 2 things: calibrate, and characterize.
You don’t seem to like the calibration – so don’t change it, use your existing settings.

But the characterization is still needed so that color managed applications know how to display color on your monitor.

Chris

In article
wrote:

Every so often I try to generate a color profile for my monitor using the Adobe Gamma that comes with Photoshop (I have version 7), but inevitably wind up deleting the generated profile and restoring the factory defaults.

I am using Windows XP Pro. The default HW color temperature of my monitor is 9300K and the factory default brightness and contrast appear to generate the best overall color quality for my desktop.
The problem is, after changing the monitor temperature to 6500K and running the Adobe Gamma utility (which doesn’t seem to do anything other than make the screen brighter), the resulting colors look much more dull. Is that just a necessary sacrifice of using color management? The desktop looks similar to switching to the Windows classic theme. Am I doing something wrong? Also, if most monitors are set to 9300K by default, why is the usual process to change the color temperature to 6500K?
Thanks.

Dave
O
Odysseus
Nov 24, 2004
In article
wrote:

<snip>

The problem is, after changing the monitor temperature to 6500K and running the Adobe Gamma utility (which doesn’t seem to do anything other than make the screen brighter), the resulting colors look much more dull. Is that just a necessary sacrifice of using color management? The desktop looks similar to switching to the Windows classic theme. Am I doing something wrong? Also, if most monitors are set to 9300K by default, why is the usual process to change the color temperature to 6500K?

Switching from 9300?K to a more suitable value for prepress can be a bit of a shock — everything looks dim and dull at first. But remember that the purpose of the adjustment is (usually) to simulate ink on paper as illuminated by normal lighting (as opposed to e.g. a carbon arc lamp). If you’re not designing for print, though, use whatever setting you’re comfortable with.


Odysseus
R
Rick
Nov 24, 2004
"Dave" wrote in message
Every so often I try to generate a color profile for my monitor using the Adobe Gamma that comes with Photoshop (I have version 7), but inevitably wind up deleting the generated profile and restoring the factory defaults.

I am using Windows XP Pro. The default HW color temperature of my monitor is 9300K and the factory default brightness and contrast appear to generate the best overall color quality for my desktop.

"Appear" is the operative word here, Dave. Fact is, any kind of serious color correction is impossible with a monitor set to 9300K. It might look nice and crisp, which is why monitor manufacturers ship their products that way, but whites are far too blue, as are near blacks. Yellows are too green and reds too purple. Etc.

The problem is, after changing the monitor temperature to 6500K and running the Adobe Gamma utility (which doesn’t seem to do anything other than make the screen brighter), the resulting colors look much more dull. Is that just a necessary sacrifice of using color management?

First give your eyes several days to adjust to 6500K. Trust me, eventually they will adjust. And after they do, try going back to 9300K and you’ll see just how horribly blue that white point is. If colors still look too dull after several days, hopefully your monitor has individual gain settings for red, green and blue, and these can be bumped up slightly to increase saturation.

The desktop looks similar to switching to the Windows classic theme. Am I doing something wrong? Also, if most monitors are set to 9300K by default, why is the usual process to change the color temperature to 6500K?

6500K is the color of white paper when seen under sunlight on a bright sunny day, and is the most widely used temperature for color correction. 9300K produces a crisp, punchy image that looks great for email and other text work, where color fidelity isn’t an issue — which is why most monitors are shipped at that setting.
D
Dave
Nov 24, 2004
Chris Cox wrote:

Adobe Gamma does 2 things: calibrate, and characterize.
You don’t seem to like the calibration – so don’t change it, use your existing settings.

But the characterization is still needed so that color managed applications know how to display color on your monitor.

Thanks. Unfortunately, I have just realized that with color management enabled in PS, it destroys the quality of all my existing images that aren’t color managed. I’ve tried all of the options available for opening images that either don’t support or don’t have color profiles associated; but the only way to maintain the original colors is to completely disable CM. It seems awfully cumbersome to have to change the CM options in PS every time I change image source files. This is driving me nuts!

As a very casual user of PS, I am wondering: is color management something that, while very useful when properly implemented, potentially deleterious when not correctly configured? IOW, is it "safer" to disable it altogether if you don’t have the time to spend working out all the quirks?

Dave
CC
Chris Cox
Nov 25, 2004
In article
wrote:

Chris Cox wrote:

Adobe Gamma does 2 things: calibrate, and characterize.
You don’t seem to like the calibration – so don’t change it, use your existing settings.

But the characterization is still needed so that color managed applications know how to display color on your monitor.

Thanks. Unfortunately, I have just realized that with color management enabled in PS, it destroys the quality of all my existing images that aren’t color managed.

That can’t be the case.

I’ve tried all of the options available for
opening images that either don’t support or don’t have color profiles associated; but the only way to maintain the original colors is to completely disable CM.

No, that’s not right.
If the old images were referenced to your display, you just assign the display profile….

It seems awfully cumbersome to have to change
the CM options in PS every time I change image source files. This is driving me nuts!

You don’t have to do that.

As a very casual user of PS, I am wondering: is color management something that, while very useful when properly implemented, potentially deleterious when not correctly configured? IOW, is it "safer" to disable it altogether if you don’t have the time to spend working out all the quirks?

It’s safer to leave it on…

Chris
J
jjs
Nov 25, 2004
Dave

Thanks. Unfortunately, I have just realized that with color management enabled in PS, it destroys the quality of all my existing images that aren’t color managed.

There’s a bit of confusion here. Display and color profile are two different things. You can have a proper display with a correct profile.
TA
Timo Autiokari
Nov 25, 2004
Dave wrote:

Unfortunately, I have just realized that with color management enabled in PS, it destroys the quality of all my existing images that aren’t color managed.

You just are not using the color-management correctly.

For your existing images that aren’t color managed (that is: that do not have an embedded ICC profile) you need to do
Image/Mode/AssignProfile and select there the appropriate one. This choice depends on how your existing images were created, the profile could possibly be the nativeMAC or the nativePC, you can find both from: http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/download/aim_profiles.zip

I’ve tried all of the options available for opening images that either don’t support or don’t have color profiles associated; but the only way to maintain the original colors is to completely disable CM.

Of course there are ways to maintain original colors, that is what the color-management is all about.

Do AdobeGamma by setting the desired gamma to 2.5. use this gamma calibration chart as the background image of your desktop, it helps a lot while you adjust the gamma sliders.
http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/download/monitor_gamma/250.png Then be sure that the profile that AdobeGamma creates is set as the active profile in DisplayProperties … Color-Management. Then open one of your non color-managed images and Assign the nativePC profile.

It seems awfully cumbersome to have to change the CM options in PS every time I change image source files.

You should not change the CM options once they are set OK. Just create a couple of Actions for the most common profiles that you need to Assign often.

is color management something that, while very useful when properly implemented, potentially deleterious when not correctly configured?

Yes it is … like it is the case with most if not all the other things that you configure and use.

IOW, is it "safer" to disable it altogether if you don’t have the time to spend working out all the quirks?

I’d say that depends mostly on what do you want to accomplish.

But you can learn to use color-management in say 5 to 15 minutes.

And when you have gone so far as to buy the extremely expensive software you really should take the color-management into use, it is one of the most important features of it.

Timo Autiokari
A
adobe
Nov 29, 2004
Dave wrote:

Chris Cox wrote:
Thanks. Unfortunately, I have just realized that with color management enabled in PS, it destroys the quality of all my existing images that aren’t color managed.

Actually it doesn’t destroy anything, The original RGB color values of your files are not touched in any way as long as you don’t ask photoshop to CONVERT the files.

(To be able to choose what Photoshop does to images that don’t have profiles embedded you might have to choose a Pre-press Color setting.)

Your questions should be what IS the profile of my images. (Any image should have a profile because RGB values are NOT a standard) Once you find out which profile works with your old images, you can simply assign that profile to the images you open. And they will display correctly.

try the internet adress indicated by TIm Autiokari.
I would also try sRGB

Hope it helps!


First take the hat off. Then we can talk!
G
Gadgets
Dec 2, 2004
On 26-Nov-2004, Timo Autiokari wrote:
Do AdobeGamma by setting the desired gamma to 2.5. use this gamma

Why 2.5? I would have thought 1.8 for print (Mac or PC) and 2.2 for screen (PC only)?

Cheers, Jason (remove … to reply)
Video & Gaming: http://gadgetaus.com
TA
Timo Autiokari
Dec 2, 2004
"Gadgets" wrote:

Why 2.5? I would have thought 1.8 for print (Mac or PC) and 2.2 for screen (PC only)?

Because the CRT monitors natively are in gamma 2.5 space.

When you calibrate your PC to gamma 2.2 then publish the images to the Web using sadRGB then in the browser in your system the images are about OK, but in general on the Web the surfers do not calibrate their PCs so they view the Web in gamma 2.5 space so they see those images a bit too dark.

Also, the calibration of the monitor from the native gamma 2.5 space to the gamma 2.2 space adds un-necessary quantization on the display path.

Timo Autiokari
CC
Chris Cox
Dec 5, 2004
In article <1gnsu3b.tdozg18jf9qiN%>, bennok
wrote:

Dave wrote:

Chris Cox wrote:

No, that wasn’t me.

Thanks. Unfortunately, I have just realized that with color management enabled in PS, it destroys the quality of all my existing images that aren’t color managed.

Actually it doesn’t destroy anything, The original RGB color values of your files are not touched in any way as long as you don’t ask photoshop to CONVERT the files.

(To be able to choose what Photoshop does to images that don’t have profiles embedded you might have to choose a Pre-press Color setting.)
Your questions should be what IS the profile of my images. (Any image should have a profile because RGB values are NOT a standard) Once you find out which profile works with your old images, you can simply assign that profile to the images you open. And they will display correctly.

try the internet adress indicated by TIm Autiokari.

Why?
Timo is a well known troll on a mission of color misinformation. Going to his website would be an even worse mistake!

Chris

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections