Tweaking monitor calibration

On 2011-03-22 08:43:25 -0700, Michelle Steiner said:

In article
,
Whisky-dave wrote:

Take this test:http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

Then report back, being honest (can you do that?).

I got 76, but not sure what it actually means

I got 18, for what it's worth.

Just for the Hell of it, I got a 4.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article 201103212246448930-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

On 2011-03-21 21:49:03 -0700, isw said:

In article ,
nospam wrote:

-- snippety-snip --

yes, that's true and it's not going to happen by eyeballing it, but he
really just wants his images to not be too blue. i doubt he's doing
colour critical work, or even cares about colour management at all.


Wrong, wrong, and wrong. If you don't understand how a Mac provides
color calibration, it won't make any sense, though.

After calibration "the Apple way", this:

http://photographerusa.com/screencheck/

looks just about perfect on my Dell 2407, while the MacBook display is
fairly seriously different.

All I want, is a way to "tweak" the profile data, instead of having to
do a full calibration, over and over, hoping to get that final blue (or
magenta, or whatever) tint out of the middle (or dark, or light) gray
levels.

Isaac

OK! I have a MacBook Pro 17, and an iMac. Both are calibrated with the
Apple display utility. Both show an identical correct response with the
screen check url you provided.
I am making the assumption that you are not using the Dell 2407 with
the MacBook, but with a second Mac. If you are using it as an extra
monitor with the MacBook they will require separate profiles.

They are both on the MacBook, and of course they have separate profiles.

How old is your MacBook?

It's a Core Duo -- about 2006. It was not anywhere near the first Mac I
did color calibration on, but it has always been the "fussiest".

Are you being sufficiently careful with the "right" slider adjustment
in the Apple 5 step profile adjustment?

The fact that the Dell monitor looks so good should be comment enough.
The problem with the MacBook's internal monitor is that I don't seem to
be able to get the final tint out of the darker gray levels, even with
the handle all the way to an edge.

It doesn't take much in any of the steps to leave the profile out of
whack with color/hue. It is tough to make that adjustment and sometimes
it is best to over correct and then back off to get to the neutral
point.

All correct, and that's precisely why I want a profile editor. The Apple
method can create (quite accurately, I think) a profile, but it cannot
*edit* an existing one.

Isaac

Savageduck wrote:

Then report back, being honest (can you do that?).

I got 76, but not sure what it actually means

I got 18, for what it's worth.

Just for the Hell of it, I got a 4.

Gosh... got a zero. It took me some time to figure out that it meant that
all 4 rows were correct.

But I have to admit that I'm a photographer and use a triniton CRT monitor,
callibrated with the Spyder Pro device.

Those pastel hues are a nightmare on flat screens, so anyone with less than
10 errors is completely excused...

Even on a non-triniton CRT monitor it will be very very hard to see.

In article ,
Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:

nospam wrote:
In article , Floyd L. Davidson
isw wrote:

Problem is, when the calibrator is invoked, it doesn't start from the
previous settings, it starts from scratch, every time. If the color
errors are subtle, repeated calibrations don't make it "better" they
just wind up "different" -- and still wrong.

That's the reason you really want a hardware unit to calibrate
your monitor. Your eyes just aren't delivering stable, repeatable
results over different tries.

I use Argyll software under Linux. [...]

that's wonderful. the original poster has a mac, not a linux box.

Argyll is --- as a very quick google would have shown you ---
available for Mac OS X.

Yes. I've know about it for a while. I can't see that it does any more
than what comes with the Mac already (except support for a hardware
calibrator, which I don't want to purchase). Plus, it does not seem to
have a profile *editor*. If it did, I could use it, because I have
Ubuntu running under VirtualBox on the Mac.

What I'd like, is a way to tweak the current calibration, similar to how
you can tweak a photo in GIMP or Photoshop -- just cut a bit of blue in
the highlights, or whatever.

Is there any way of doing that? Any tools that make it possible/easy?

Of course there will be ways --- after all, if you can generate an
ICC to correct a measured difference between what e.g. a monitor
delivers, given a certain settings, and what it should deliver,
(and there is software and there are people who can) you can
certainly generate an ICC that instead or in addition 'just cut[s]
a bit of blue in the highlights'.

I think it's more complicated than that. A profile is "just" a text
file. I did a very minor edit to a profile -- changed the name that
shows in a list (it's an internal string) -- and the profile vanished
from the list entirely. I think there must be some error control stuff
in it; maybe a hash. So an editor would have to know how to deal with
that.

Read the manual for the software you use to calibrate
the monitor with. That shouldn't be hard to do. Color
temperature is what you want to change.

what he was using is not separate software. it's *part of the system*.

And the system, or that part of the system, has no manual?

it also doesn't work very well since there's no hardware puck.

Do you have any hard evidence of that? I looked and could find none.
Folks *who understand it* say it gives results very close to what
hardware calibrators provide.

So the Mac is colour managed, including all the browsers, just
not very well by default. Hmmm.

Managed by default, yes. But there's no way a color display can be
handled "by default"; there has to be a way to deal with aging, if
nothing else. Plus, of course, Apple allows the use of third-party
monitors, which would need calibration.

Isaac

In article ,
(Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

However... note the story above about the friend's
mother! I can't do that. Not even close. Consider how
that works with sound too, which we see demonstrations
of every day by talented musicians, so I for one have no
problem believing that lady did the same thing with
color. Not all musicians, but perhaps most, can whistle
any given note, on call. If they sing or play multiple
instruments, they can often hit a given note within a
few Hz at will on all of them. And then they can go
down the road to the next music shop, pick up a violin
for example, and tune it to within a few Hz of exactly
what they played on a piano two days before. That's the
same as selecting the colors of cloth.

Unlike sound, there is always "clutter" in vision experiments outside
the laboratory. Surrounds, lighting, and other factors distort the
mind's perception. Consider:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomstiller/5550052613/

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

Tom Stiller wrote:
In article ,
(Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

However... note the story above about the friend's
mother! I can't do that. Not even close. Consider how
that works with sound too, which we see demonstrations
of every day by talented musicians, so I for one have no
problem believing that lady did the same thing with
color. Not all musicians, but perhaps most, can whistle
any given note, on call. If they sing or play multiple
instruments, they can often hit a given note within a
few Hz at will on all of them. And then they can go
down the road to the next music shop, pick up a violin
for example, and tune it to within a few Hz of exactly
what they played on a piano two days before. That's the
same as selecting the colors of cloth.

Unlike sound, there is always "clutter" in vision experiments outside
the laboratory. Surrounds, lighting, and other factors distort the
mind's perception. Consider:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomstiller/5550052613/

I'm not sure I see how sound is any different.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

isw wrote:
In article ,
Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:

nospam wrote:
In article , Floyd L. Davidson
I use Argyll software under Linux. [...]

that's wonderful. the original poster has a mac, not a linux box.

Argyll is --- as a very quick google would have shown you ---
available for Mac OS X.

Yes. I've know about it for a while. I can't see that it does any more
than what comes with the Mac already (except support for a hardware
calibrator, which I don't want to purchase).

You are just going to have to accept that until you
obtain and use a proper hardware calibration system, you
won't have a calibrated monitor. All the color
management in the world won't help you enough to make up
for that.

Of course there will be ways --- after all, if you can generate an
ICC to correct a measured difference between what e.g. a monitor
delivers, given a certain settings, and what it should deliver,
(and there is software and there are people who can) you can
certainly generate an ICC that instead or in addition 'just cut[s]
a bit of blue in the highlights'.

I think it's more complicated than that. A profile is "just" a text
file. I did a very minor edit to a profile -- changed the name that
shows in a list (it's an internal string) -- and the profile vanished
from the list entirely. I think there must be some error control stuff
in it; maybe a hash. So an editor would have to know how to deal with
that.

I've never looked for it, but I'm sure that there would be an
online source for the specifications. How can you even think
of hand editing something without determining, very precisely,
what the data in the file means!

it also doesn't work very well since there's no hardware puck.

Do you have any hard evidence of that? I looked and could find none.
Folks *who understand it* say it gives results very close to what
hardware calibrators provide.

It can, on occasion, do exactly that. You can't tell if it does or
not though, without comparing to a hardware generated calibration.

But if you want hard evidence... look at the first
couple of articles you posted in this thread, and tell
me you haven't provided just exactly that! Near as I
can tell you are a fairly knowledgeable person with the
required skills and talents, and apparently cannot come
close to what would be a lead pipe cinch with good
hardware.

So the Mac is colour managed, including all the browsers, just
not very well by default. Hmmm.

Managed by default, yes. But there's no way a color display can be
handled "by default"; there has to be a way to deal with aging, if
nothing else. Plus, of course, Apple allows the use of third-party
monitors, which would need calibration.

So part of the system is supposedly managed, but that management is
useless because the other part is erratic. Hmmm... I think that
"just not very well" is a wee bit understated, eh?

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

In article , Paul
Magnussen wrote:

One friend's mother
would amaze me with her ability to perceive, and even more uncannily,
remember colors accurately. She could go into a fabric-store and notice a
color she wanted, but the price would be too high. Then a week later notice
the same color in another store made by some other company, and buy it
because it was at a good price. When taking a swatch back to the first
store they'd be identical.

bull****.

No, I knew someone like that, too. Her husband used to say she had
absolute colour (like absolute pitch).

people say a lot of things. does she see blue in this? because there
isn't any. the eye is *easily* fooled, even hers.

http://www.psy.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/Monspiral4.jpg

nospam wrote:

One friend's mother
would amaze me with her ability to perceive, and even more uncannily,
remember colors accurately. She could go into a fabric-store and notice a
color she wanted, but the price would be too high. Then a week later notice
the same color in another store made by some other company, and buy it
because it was at a good price. When taking a swatch back to the first
store they'd be identical.

bull****.

No, I knew someone like that, too. Her husband used to say she had
absolute colour (like absolute pitch).

Paul Magnussen

In article ,
(Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

Tom Stiller wrote:
In article ,
(Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

However... note the story above about the friend's
mother! I can't do that. Not even close. Consider how
that works with sound too, which we see demonstrations
of every day by talented musicians, so I for one have no
problem believing that lady did the same thing with
color. Not all musicians, but perhaps most, can whistle
any given note, on call. If they sing or play multiple
instruments, they can often hit a given note within a
few Hz at will on all of them. And then they can go
down the road to the next music shop, pick up a violin
for example, and tune it to within a few Hz of exactly
what they played on a piano two days before. That's the
same as selecting the colors of cloth.

Unlike sound, there is always "clutter" in vision experiments outside
the laboratory. Surrounds, lighting, and other factors distort the
mind's perception. Consider:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomstiller/5550052613/

I'm not sure I see how sound is any different.

Since the issue is subjective, I can't offer an argument.

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF