Who understands Vista color management?

marlinspike · February 16, 2008

I'm so confused. In IE, my laptop shows the true colors. In Windows Picture Gallery it shows the true colors. In PS and in MS Office suite programs, my colors are inaccurate. Any ideas?

arodney · February 17, 2008

marlinspike wrote:

I'm so confused. In IE, my laptop shows the true colors. In Windows Picture Gallery it shows the true colors. In PS and in MS Office suite programs, my colors are inaccurate. Any ideas?

NONE of the applications you mention above support color management OTHER than Photoshop. Photoshop IS correct (despite what you may feel is unacceptable color wise).

marlinspike · February 17, 2008

arodney wrote:

NONE of the applications you mention above support color management OTHER than Photoshop. Photoshop IS correct (despite what you may feel is unacceptable color wise).

Well, I checked photoshop a while ago by posting an image here to find out if it's blue or purple. Everybody here said it's blue, in real life it's blue, on my computer in IE and Windows Picture Gallery it's blue, but in PS it's purple.

Andy · February 17, 2008

'spike, read this thread and then holler (or scream!):

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=82126

jfriend · February 17, 2008

marlinspike wrote:

I'm so confused. In IE, my laptop shows the true colors. In Windows Picture Gallery it shows the true colors. In PS and in MS Office suite programs, my colors are inaccurate. Any ideas?

Is your screen properly calibrated with a hardware calibration device? If it is not, you could have significant errors or inaccurances in your monitor profile that would cause Photoshop to display inaccurate colors. It is built to use the monitor profile to properly modify it's color display to make accurate colors. If the monitor profile is wrong, then Photoshop will be wrong. At that point, it would be pure luck if anything else like IE and Windows Picture Gallery (which are not "color-aware" applications that properly use your monitor's profile when displaying colors), happened to be closer to right.

If Photoshop isn't right, then you must fix your monitor profile by properly calibrating your monitor.

marlinspike · February 18, 2008

jfriend wrote:

Is your screen properly calibrated with a hardware calibration device? If it is not, you could have significant errors or inaccurances in your monitor profile that would cause Photoshop to display inaccurate colors. It is built to use the monitor profile to properly modify it's color display to make accurate colors. If the monitor profile is wrong, then Photoshop will be wrong. At that point, it would be pure luck if anything else like IE and Windows Picture Gallery (which are not "color-aware" applications that properly use your monitor's profile when displaying colors), happened to be closer to right.

If Photoshop isn't right, then you must fix your monitor profile by properly calibrating your monitor.

Well, it is profiled, but quite frankly I don't know if the profiler software at the time was vista compatible. I have since lost my i1 display 2 (no doubt it's somewhere back home in DC, which means it'll be a long time before i have a chance to see it). (and it's not about it going out of calibration since it's been doing this since I switched to vista)

marlinspike · February 18, 2008

Ok, maybe I'm getting closer. So I played around with PS taking a photo that I know how it's supposed to look, and also drawing with the paintbrush on this photo thick lines of 0 0 255 (this is srgb, so that's supposed to be blue).

Ok, so if I just leave PS how it opens, 0 0 255 looks like lavender, but in the pallet and on the photo. If I go to proof setup, custom, choose my monitor profile, and then check off proof colors, it doesn't change, so what is blue still looks purple.

If I go to proof setup and choose Monitor RGB, and then select proof colors, the colors in PS are correct, but only in the photo, they are still wrong in the pallet.

Here's an even weirder part - now, coming from monitor rgb, if I say proof setup, custom, and choose my monitor profile, it doesn't change. i.e. blue still looks blue in the photo. This one I have no idea on.

So, it appears selecting proof colors and Monitor RGB is the key, BUT why is non-proof colors PS CS so wrong and the rest of my non-color-managed computer world so right? Even if I can make it look right in the photo by selecting proof colors and monitor rgb, it's still weird to have 0 0 255 look like lavender in the pallet.

jfriend · February 18, 2008

marlinspike wrote:

Ok, maybe I'm getting closer. So I played around with PS taking a photo that I know how it's supposed to look, and also drawing with the paintbrush on this photo thick lines of 0 0 255 (this is srgb, so that's supposed to be blue).

Ok, so if I just leave PS how it opens, 0 0 255 looks like lavender, but in the pallet and on the photo. If I go to proof setup, custom, choose my monitor profile, and then check off proof colors, it doesn't change, so what is blue still looks purple.

If I go to proof setup and choose Monitor RGB, and then select proof colors, the colors in PS are correct, but only in the photo, they are still wrong in the pallet.

Here's an even weirder part - now, coming from monitor rgb, if I say proof setup, custom, and choose my monitor profile, it doesn't change. i.e. blue still looks blue in the photo. This one I have no idea on.

So, it appears selecting proof colors and Monitor RGB is the key, BUT why is non-proof colors PS CS so wrong and the rest of my non-color-managed computer world so right? Even if I can make it look right in the photo by selecting proof colors and monitor rgb, it's still weird to have 0 0 255 look like lavender in the pallet.

If you don't have a properly calibrated and profiled monitor, we're just shooting in the dark here. Your screen could be significantly out of calibration. Because Photoshop (a color-managed app) is showing wrong colors, my best guess is that your monitor profile is corrupted or screwed up. If that's the case, there's no amount of counterbalancing settings that is going to make things work until the profile is fixed. You need to recalibrate and profile your monitor. After that, Photoshop should be correct.

dmmattix · February 18, 2008

marlinspike wrote:

Well, it is profiled, but quite frankly I don't know if the profiler software at the time was vista compatible. I have since lost my i1 display 2 (no doubt it's somewhere back home in DC, which means it'll be a long time before i have a chance to see it). (and it's not about it going out of calibration since it's been doing this since I switched to vista)

I guess I am confused (probably just not enlighten). You say your monitor is profiled but then you say the problem just cropped up after you switched to Vista. Did you upgrade? I am not sure what custom .icm's do when you upgrade (like from XP). I have also heard bad things about upgrading as opposed to fresh install. If it was a fresh install then I would bet the custom .icm generated by the Eye1 device is history.

When you open Color Management in the Control Panel what does the "Devices" tab show?

Sorry for all the questions...

marlinspike · February 18, 2008

dmmattix wrote:

I guess I am confused (probably just not enlighten). You say your monitor is profiled but then you say the problem just cropped up after you switched to Vista. Did you upgrade? I am not sure what custom .icm's do when you upgrade (like from XP). I have also heard bad things about upgrading as opposed to fresh install. If it was a fresh install then I would bet the custom .icm generated by the Eye1 device is history.

When you open Color Management in the Control Panel what does the "Devices" tab show?

Sorry for all the questions...

I had a properly profiled XP, did a clean install of Vista, found that blue looked purple. I then profiled the monitor. Colors were fixed everywhere but PS. PS I now see shows the right colors when proof colors are selected along with monitor RGB.

Quite frankly, I'm not so concerned with profiling, I just want my PS colors to look like the colors do in Windows Picture Gallery and in IE, because those colors are pretty darn accurate (checked by making prints on a profiled printer, plus in an earlier thread where I asked people here to tell me what color a car in a photo was showing as).

Devices shows my monitor profile being selected as the only (and default) profile.

jfriend · February 18, 2008

marlinspike wrote:

I had a properly profiled XP, did a clean install of Vista, found that blue looked purple. I then profiled the monitor. Colors were fixed everywhere but PS. PS I now see shows the right colors when proof colors are selected along with monitor RGB.

Quite frankly, I'm not so concerned with profiling, I just want my PS colors to look like the colors do in Windows Picture Gallery and in IE, because those colors are pretty darn accurate (checked by making prints on a profiled printer, plus in an earlier thread where I asked people here to tell me what color a car in a photo was showing as).

Devices shows my monitor profile being selected as the only (and default) profile.

All signs point to your monitor profile being wrong or corrupted. You need to replace it with a correct one. If you don't want to do that, then I can't help you any further.

Photoshop uses your monitor profile, the other apps you mention do not. If it's corrupted, it will mess up Photoshop and have no effect on the non-color-managed apps.

Though I would recommend you calibrate/profile your system with software that is Vista compatible, the other option you have is to install the "default" profile for your monitor, which won't be calibrated, but is probably better than a corrupted profile that you appear to have now. There are several ways to get that profile. First, it might already be selectable in Vista. If it's not, then you might be able to find it on a CD that came with your monitor. Or, you may be able to download it from the manufacturer's web site.

xris · February 22, 2008

Not sure it's been made clear in this thread, but XP and Vista are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT animals when it comes to colour management. With XP, it was an ify add-on afterthought. In Vista, it's integral to the O/S. Most modern devices provide their own profiles, which are managed by Vista, and Vista itself now uses the sRGM workspace.

For the record, I have been running XP, Vista and Ubuntu Linux using an old Dell CRT monitor for photo editing and a Dell LCD on the Linux box. My output is to a Canon MP 950 and a Pixima 2400. The LCD display is definitely 'grainier' and displays less acute detail, but the colouration is, for most purposes, exact, across all devices and on both monitors.

If you have colour control, just make sure everything uses the sRGB workspace. sRGB is the place to be. Forget Adobe standards. (They all seem to be designed to make things look best in Adobe products.)

And for the Canon printer folks. Don't discount EasyPhoto Print. (Try the new EX version.) It is a colour managed app and it uses the Canon printer profiles. Output is, in my humble opinion, spectacular!

marlinspike · March 13, 2008

jfriend wrote:

Though I would recommend you calibrate/profile your system with software that is Vista compatible, the other option you have is to install the "default" profile for your monitor, which won't be calibrated, but is probably better than a corrupted profile that you appear to have now. There are several ways to get that profile. First, it might already be selectable in Vista. If it's not, then you might be able to find it on a CD that came with your monitor. Or, you may be able to download it from the manufacturer's web site.

I got rid of my custom profile and changed it over to the default monitor profile, but the issue persists. Any ideas? Quite frankly, all I want is to not have to do ctrl+Y to use my standard monitor profile in PS because my standard profile appears pretty much dead on to my profiled printer except for being ever so slightly brighter.

Who understands Vista color management?

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