Datacolor User to User Support Group.

>Hi David and others,
>How useful is a graphical gamut viewer for PFP generated profiles?

It's a useful way to check the overall "shape" of the profile once it's
been built, among other things. It's a fairly technical tool that can
provide a great deal of valuable information.

>Would it help me to check if I have made a good and correct readings of
>the patches from PFP?

Yes, it would. I don't tend to "check" profiles that way for the purpose
of "goodness" of readings, though. If what I see in PFP's display of measured
colors looks "smooth" to me, I know that the gamut shape of the profile I
build is also going to turn out "right".

Or put another way, as a user, I wouldn't be eager to spend several hundred
dollars on an advanced profile viewer just for the purpose of checking my
PFP measurements, when I can just look at them in PFP and check them that
way. (More information below). Now that we've described the process of
visually checking meausurements here on the Yahoo group, you should have
all the information you need to just do this without spending any extra money.

>David once mentioned, when he was checking my readings, that he saw
>a 'dent' in my profile. I believe he was using a graphical gamut viewer
>for that. Won't it also help me then to know whether i have made a
>mistake or not?

That's right.

>Which is a good graphical gamut viewer that's easy to understand and
>use without needing one to have a PHD in color management?

Anyone who is running Mac OSX can use the built-in gamut viewer in the free
ColorSync Utility (found in Applications:Utilities) that Apple provides.
(Note that I'm not saying "has a Mac" directly here, because all newer
Macs can run both OSX and Windows).

ColorSync Utility provides a basic gamut viewer, and you can also use it
to compare the gamut shapes of two profiles. You can grab and "spin" the gamut
shape around in 3D to look at it. This free utilitiy would also have been
sufficient to display the problem I saw in your original measurements.

For both platforms, a more advanced profile viewer/editor is Steve Upton's
ColorThink, available at Chromix. There are two versions; the "pro" version
is more expensive; both of them are more advanced than the free ColorSync
Utility; and Mac and Windows versions are available.

There are probably other 3rd party applications out there that will do these
things, but those are probably the most commonly used.


-- 
David Miller
Senior Software Developer, Digital Color Solutions
ColorVision