ICC Profiles….PLEASE HELP! MANY QUESTIONS!

JR
Posted By
J_Renteria
Oct 30, 2003
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486
Replies
7
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Closed
Forgive my ignorance, but I have several (probably basic) questions concerning color correction, calibration, etc. I’ve tried to find as much info on this topic as possible (including adobe help), but I still haven’t found the exact answer I’m looking for. Can anyone help with some or all of these questions?

1. Am I right to assume that 2 settings control how a monitor looks: hardware and software settings, where software settings are ICC profiles or drivers and hardware settings come from the physical buttons on the front of a monitor?

2. Do ICC profiles override or change hardware settings, or is what we see on screen a combination of both?

3. Can more than one ICC profile run at once? For example, one for the system and one for a specific program like Photoshop?

4. The monitor control panel in Windows allows you to apply icc profiles, if I create a profile in Adobe Gamma and select it in the Windows control panel, is that the same as placing gamma loader in the start menu? If gamma loader is in the start menu, and a different icc profile is set in control panels, which will load?

5. Are ICC profiles different from working spaces? how are they related? again, would a working space (profile) in a program nest inside of the icc profile set for the system? What if I had photoshop, illustrator and windows set to different profiles?

6. Can a printer’s output color be adjusted or is that more or less standardized depending on the printer?

7. Should scanners and printers be adjusted before or after the monitor?

8. Will postscript increase a printers ability to accurately produce colors?

9. Is there a difference between U.S. Coated (SWOP) and U.S. Coated (SWOP) v2?

10. Why do pantone colors look different in photoshop and illustrator? i notice this when importing an .ai or .eps file into photoshop eventhough both are set to U.S. prepress Default.
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help icc profile question

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Z
zippy2000
Oct 30, 2003
To answer those questions will take 20 minutes…just go Ian Lyons site and do his tutorial on monitor calibration…everything is there…the best 20 min you will ever spend.

<http://www.computer-darkroom.com/ps7-colour/ps7_1.htm>

All your questions will be answered there.

ZIP

🙂
L
LenHewitt
Oct 30, 2003

J.R.

1) Yes

2) A combination (which is why once a monitor is calibarted you must NOT touch the monitor buttons

3) No. (That is regarding monitor profiles)

4) Use only Adobe Gamma. Do NOT set the profile via Windows

5) Your monitor profile tells the CMS what values the monitor requires to display a particular colour. Other ICC profiles define colour spaces. These can be working spaces and also output device (printer) colour spaces.

6) The printer ICC will determine the relationship between the file data and the printed output

7) Monitor comes FIRST!

8 ) Only if sending CMYK data. Non-PostScript printer drivers are incapable of passing CMYK data so it has to be converted on the fly to RGB before sending to the driver. THe printer firmware then converts this to CcMmYK for the printer heads. The double conversion can lead tp colour degradation.

9) Yes, but it is not major. How often do you send output to an offset web printer??? Most print other than newsprint and magazines is from sheetfed machines.

10) Illustrator doesn’t support a device independent colour space (L*a*b) whereas Phoptoshop does. Photoshop representatons of Spot inks is therefore more accurate.
JR
J_Renteria
Oct 31, 2003
zip, thanks, this website is perfect. very helpful.
JR
J_Renteria
Oct 31, 2003
LenHewitt, thanks for your help. just wanted to clarify something:

if both software and hardware control the final on-screen colors, shouldn’t the hardware be calibrated too? maybe im misunderstanding, but it seems like most calibration guides only ask that the contrast be set all the way up before using adobe gamma, color sync, etc. does that mean that the manual controls for rgb, color temp, brightness, etc on the monitor should be set to the factory settings? from what i can tell adobe gamme is merely overcompensating for the physical harware settings. if thats true, why isn’t the hardware calibrated first using the physical controls on it, and then fine tuned with adobe gamma? or am i completely wrong and adobe gamma actually is changing the physical properties of the monitor?
GH
Gernot_Hoffmann
Oct 31, 2003
Yes, this is correct for the calibration by Adobe Gamma or by instruments. It´s often ignored.

a) If the monitor settings are rather wrong, then the look-up tables LUTs on the graphics card are fighting against the monitor settings. The video signal is already spoiled.

b) The dark point has to be adjusted by Brightness (sun symbol) and the luminance by Contrast (half black/white circle). A LUT cannot deliver negative outputs (for RGB<0) or too large outputs
(for RGB>255).

c) The calibration by instruments works much more accurate if the hardware settings are already near to gamma=2.2 and color-temperature= 6500K. At least for X-Rite Monitor Calibrator which delivers then a very precise fine tuning. Tested by other instrument (calibrate by instrument 1, check by instrument 2 and by accurate programmed test patterns (below in the doc) ).

d) Setting the Contrast to Maximum for all three channels RGB is wrong, because this results in a high color temperature, e.g. 9000K…10000K, the generic monitor white. For 6500K one needs more R and less B and about the same G. This can be done only by lower total luminance, e.g. with Contrasts R=100% G=90% B= 80% (just an example).

e) If the monitor is misadjusted then the Adobe Gamma setting "White Point like Hardware" doesn´t
correct the wrong white point.

<http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/caltutor270900.pdf>

Best regards –Gernot Hoffmann
L
LenHewitt
Oct 31, 2003
JR,

shouldn’t the hardware be calibrated too?<<

In an ideal world, yes. See Gernot’s post for further explanation.
GH
Gernot_Hoffmann
Nov 2, 2003
Lawrence Hudetz told me, that some calibration instruments + software have direct access to the gun adjustments in the CRT monitor. Thanks for this information.

Best regards –Gernot Hoffmann

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