Datacolor User to User Support Group.

Hi everyone, I am new to calibration so bear with me. I have the Spyder 3 Pro on a laptop with an LED backlight (Dell M1530). During calibration I selected gamma 2.2, native white point. This seemed to give the best results. So far we are good, everything appears to look great. The problem begins when I load up an image in a color managed application such as photoshop (cs4) or windows photo gallery. Any images I view in these applications appear over saturated with color. Loading the same image in a non colormanaged app such as mspaint or faststone viewer shows the image without the saturation. I am not making any modifications to the image.

This really concerns me as the whole point of calibrating was to have a consistent view of color. Either I did something wrong, the Spyder did something wrong or I just don't understand how this is working. From what I understand the Spyder creates a monitor profile that does two things, holds data for the LUT modifications of the video card and second, provides "information" for color managed applications.

This is really frustrating any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much.

-Martin

--- In colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com, "Martin Danko" <mpdanko@...> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone, I am new to calibration so bear with me. I have the Spyder 3 Pro on a laptop with an LED backlight (Dell M1530). During calibration I selected gamma 2.2, native white point. This seemed to give the best results. So far we are good, everything appears to look great. The problem begins when I load up an image in a color managed application such as photoshop (cs4) or windows photo gallery. Any images I view in these applications appear over saturated with color. Loading the same image in a non colormanaged app such as mspaint or faststone viewer shows the image without the saturation. I am not making any modifications to the image.
....

Could it be that the image being viewed has no profile, so you are viewing the image through Photoshop's default working space? Have you tried Assigning a profile to the image to fix the color problem?

> 
> Could it be that the image being viewed has no profile, so you are viewing the image through Photoshop's default working space? Have you tried Assigning a profile to the image to fix the color problem?
>


No the images are all from my Nikon D300 with sRGB color space. Interesting thing is if I set assign the profile using the spyder util, then go into color settings in vista's control panel and change from the spyder generated profile to sRGB, everything looks the same in color managed and non colormanaged applications. I guess I am struggling why there is such a difference in my color managed applications. Seems this would be impossible to work with! I just want my monitor to show accurate color.

>>"Martin Danko" <mpdanko@...>: Interesting thing is if I set assign the profile using the spyder util, then go into color settings in vista's control panel and change from the spyder generated profile to sRGB, everything looks the same in color managed and non colormanaged applications. I guess I am struggling why there is such a difference in my color managed applications. Seems this would be impossible to work with! I just want my monitor to show accurate color.

I wonder if, by any chance, that Adobe Gamma is loading? Check the Doc/Settings for both All Users and your own user (can't remember which user it would be in) in Start Menu > Programs > StartUp to see if the Adobe Gamma loader shortcut is shown. 

If it is, delete it from StartUp--you can copy/paste it someplace if you want to save the shortcut. Then reboot...

Terrie
http://tlbtlb.com/
tlbtlb@...

--- In colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com, "tlbepson" <tlbtlb@...> wrote:

> I wonder if, by any chance, that Adobe Gamma is loading? Check the Doc/Settings for both All Users and your own user (can't remember which user it would be in) in Start Menu > Programs > StartUp to see if the Adobe Gamma loader shortcut is shown. 
> 
> If it is, delete it from StartUp--you can copy/paste it someplace if you want to save the shortcut. Then reboot...

No Adobe gamma. I am going to calibrate another system (desktop) that has XP on it and see if I get the same results. I did get a reply from Datacolor support, here is what they said:

"Images will look different in color-managed and non-color-managed applications. The colors shown in the color managed application are correct, whereas the color shown in the non color managed applications can be anything."

Again, I don't think I complete understand how this all works. Why can't I calibrate my monitor via the LUT values and forget about the custom profile and just stick with sRGB? I asked this to support, we will see what they say.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

-md

Interesting thing is if I set assign the profile using the spyder util, then go into color settings in vista's control panel and change from the spyder generated profile to sRGB, everything looks the same in color managed and non colormanaged applications. 

Believe you hit the core of your problem right there.  I don't run Vista but XP, and I had the same thing happen to me - when I opened an image in Photoshop, all colors looked super-saturated.  The problem was self-generated though, since I had assigned the Spyder-created profile in the Display Properties -> Advanced -> Color Management as well - it needs to be sRGB there since the Spyder-generated profile is loaded separately.  What you seeing in PS is the Spyder-generated profile applied twice - so to speak.

--- In colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com, "Dieter Schaefer" 
> Believe you hit the core of your problem right there.  I don't run Vista but XP, and I had the same thing happen to me - when I opened an image in Photoshop, all colors looked super-saturated.  The problem was self-generated though, since I had assigned the Spyder-created profile in the Display Properties -> Advanced -> Color Management as well - it needs to be sRGB there since the Spyder-generated profile is loaded separately.  What you seeing in PS is the Spyder-generated profile applied twice - so to speak.
>


Interesting. The problem with changing the vista profile is the LUT will not be loaded since the LUT data is stored in the profile file. I'll play with it more today. 

Are we the only ones experiencing this problem?!

> Interesting. The problem with changing the vista profile is the LUT will not be loaded since the LUT data is stored in the profile file. 

I use the older Spyder version, not sure the new one has made changes in that aspect though.  The Colorvision Profile Chooser is the only place that the Spyder-generated profile needs to be selected - at least on my XP machines.  On a side note - reading about all the problems people reported with color management in Vista, I am happy that I never upgraded.

It just might be because the file coming from your camera is tagged with an
embedded sRGB color profile for starters; and when you go to the Vista Color
Management module in the Control Panel  and essentially turn off the Spyder
generated color profile for your monitor and switch on the sRGB color
monitor profile in Vista, the operating system will be using the sRGB
monitor profile as its default monitor color space for all applications -
those that support color management and those that do not.  Moreover, those
applications that do support color management will read the tagged sRGB
profile that comes with the file and send it to the color management engine
provided by the operating system which will then convert the color values in
the files embedded sRGB color space into values in the monitor's  profiled
color space, which is also sRGB so that there will be no difference.
Moreover, most applications that do not support color management tend to
default to sRGB color spaces anyway.

 

In short, what you have done is effectively removed Spyder and its generated
monitor profile from the equation as if you never had or used the Spyder
application in the first place.  What you are left with is a sRGB file that
is being display  on a monitor that is  characterized by a sRGB profile;
hence it should appear the same on the monitor display regardless of whether
or not the image editing program is a color management supported one or is
not a color management supported one.  The real fun begins if you send a
sRGB tagged file to be displayed on a monitor whose color space is not sRGB.

From: colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Martin Danko
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 12:44 PM
To: colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [colorvision_group] Re: Color manged apps appear "saturated"

 

> 
> Could it be that the image being viewed has no profile, so you are viewing
the image through Photoshop's default working space? Have you tried
Assigning a profile to the image to fix the color problem?
>

No the images are all from my Nikon D300 with sRGB color space. Interesting
thing is if I set assign the profile using the spyder util, then go into
color settings in vista's control panel and change from the spyder generated
profile to sRGB, everything looks the same in color managed and non
colormanaged applications. I guess I am struggling why there is such a
difference in my color managed applications. Seems this would be impossible
to work with! I just want my monitor to show accurate color.