Where is the monitor profile stored on a Windows system?
It depends on the version of Windows you are using and since you haven’t specify the version of Photoshop you are working with then:
Win98/Me – Windows/System/Color
WinNT – WinNT/System32/Color
Win2K- WinNT/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color
WinXP – Windows/System32/Spool/Drivers/Color
Is there a system-wide preferences/control panel/setting, whatever, that selects that profile?
Windows itself is brain dead when it comes to figuring what needs to be "done" with monitor profiles. You can define the default monitor profile from the Control panel by choosing Display>Settings>Advanced>Color Management, adding the profile and then choosing Set As Default. However, to get it to actually work correctly you’ll need to ensure that you have a "profile loading" application installed (e.g. AdobeGammaLoader.exe) in the Startup folder. Windows itself has no "profile loading" app, but all the third party software and hardware alternatives to Adobe Gamma do and will install the loader app into the correct location by default. Once you build the monitor profile it will automatically be set as the default monitor profile and Photoshop will automatically use it.
Knowing the answer to that, I believe I can intelligently take a group of photographers through Photoshop’s various controls, who are hopelessly lost and have bitterly given up even trying to understand color theory and management, all due to Windows obstacles.
The only real obstacle that Windows puts in the way of CM is the absence of a monitor "profile loader". Adobe provide this out of the box, install it in the correct location and Photoshop automatically use the default monitor profile. Just make sure that you don’t have two "profile loader" apps in the startup folder.
Thanks Ian,
As I mentioned, I am trying to give advice on a photography forum where Windows users appear to be in the majority. I had directed them here (both this Mac and the Windows PS section) initially, but they claim to have gotten even more confused after their efforts to get help via the Adobe sites. That’s entirely possible, because once the confusion and frustration sets in, many people can’t benefit from well-intentioned advice simply due to the frustration level they’re already dealing with.
There are also several photographers on Macs having equal difficulties. At least in their cases, I can knowledgably help them with their OS/system issues and start focusing on understanding the workflow in PS itself.
It’s a shame when this kind of thing happens. In every arena I’ve experienced it, (primarily the printing industry itself and among photographers) the result is a condemnation of color management itself, ICC profiles, CIE measurement, etc.
I apologize to anyone I may have miffed by the title of this thread. I probably am not helping the issue by my off-handed reference to Windows systems as the "dark side." But I find everything I have to do when I’m forced into that system to be a frustration with evidence everywhere that the design philosophy of the system actually holds the user and the task at hand in contempt. About 2-3 times a week I need to interact with several photographers whose work I receive who work in Windows. Thank goodness their digital camera files are tagged with SOME profile right out of the camera. But I never can be confident that they really know what the color balance of an image is they have worked on, nor do their "proofs" from their inkjet printers provide any real prediction.
VL
The chaos shall continue until Adobe starts listening to the ever so popular thing called "the mo factor"
Mike,
What is "the mo factor?" Memory overload?
I find it very hard to understand objections to color management that occur all the time. Imagine if musicians objected to tuning their instruments to the same key. What chaos.
In our industries we have the equivalent of musicians playing on instruments made by companies who have hidden the tuning keys or made them unpredictable in their effect. Then the players insist that difficulty in reaching the keys or understanding the consequences of adjusting them justifies throwing out the entire concept or practical consequence of everyone playing in tune.
And I make no apologies for blaming Microsoft (one again) for sabotaging the process (to what end, I know not). I have had no problem using Adobe’s implementation of color management all through its evolution in Photoshop from version 4 to the model now in place.
It is also strange to me that photographers, as a group, have failed to embrace the concept. There are very notable exceptions, of course. Photographers for years used practical application of a color management model using filter packs with color negative material and negative working color printing paper when printing on the enlarger. We fine tuned our work flow for every new emulsion batch of paper or film.
But today, ask a photographer to accept the need to control color translation from one space to another in the computer – one would think understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity had been demanded instead.
VL
I find it very hard to understand objections to color management that occur all the time.
I do.
mo logic:
if musicians objected to tuning their instruments to the same key. What
chaos.
THE MUSICIANS AREN’T THE PROBLEM.
THE RECORDING INDUSTRY IS! 🙂
No, all the artist playing the instruments suck.
It’s like a college band on bad Acid.
We need standardization that Adobe is very god fearing of.
Funny how my birthday is the day after Christmas.
antimatter?
or Antichrist.
The sex pistols best describe it…
Oh dady…
Venicia,
I accidently came across a Windows thread from an Adobe forum search once that stated certain graphics cards on certain Windows systems would prevent or turn off gamma loaders placed by different apps.
I think it had something to do with ATI or nVidia. I’m not sure, but it’s just to add to your point of the pitfalls implementing CM on an off the shelf computer.
Macs have their problems as well. No one’s yet explained how monitor profiles become corrupt causing strange color anomolies in PS. But all you have to do to fix it is reprofile your monitor starting with a fresh uncorrupted OS supplied canned profile like sRGB or AppleRGB. Makes no sense.
