Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Colour Management => Topic started by: samueljohnchia on March 17, 2014, 09:17:57 am

Title: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: samueljohnchia on March 17, 2014, 09:17:57 am
http://www.xrite.com/colortrue

Looks like X-rite has finally released a proper color management app. Remains to be seen how well its adopted!
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 10:55:32 am
Looks like X-rite has finally released a proper color management app. Remains to be seen how well its adopted!

Proper? That's up to debate and time will tell. You're still dealing with a far less than ideal display system for precise image editing.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 17, 2014, 11:28:24 am
http://www.xrite.com/colortrue

Looks like X-rite has finally released a proper color management app. Remains to be seen how well its adopted!

Hi Samuel,

It was about time for some colormanagement on tablets. Glad to see Android support, but I'm disappointed that the I1Pro is not supported (I1Pro 2 is).

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: samueljohnchia on March 17, 2014, 11:50:34 am
Hi Samuel,

It was about time for some colormanagement on tablets. Glad to see Android support, but I'm disappointed that the I1Pro is not supported (I1Pro 2 is).

Cheers,
Bart

http://spyder.datacolor.com/portfolio-view/spyder-gallery/

Apparently Datacolor's support tablets for some time now and android too. I wonder how their calibration accuracy compares. The demo video shows most images getting more contrast after calibrating, while one usually expects the opposite.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: samueljohnchia on March 17, 2014, 11:57:43 am
Proper? That's up to debate and time will tell. You're still dealing with a far less than ideal display system for precise image editing.

I'm actually quite pleased by how good the iPad air's display is, and the current iPhone 5s. Unit to unit consistency is very good too, from what I hear. I'm mainly interested in getting a more color accurate display when showing my pictures to others on these devices. I have no interest in editing images from them.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Kevin Raber on March 17, 2014, 12:22:03 pm
Installed the app today and ran it.  All went perfectly.  Interesting to see the difference.  I thought my images looked pretty good before, they certainly look better now.  Xrite just placed an ad on our site and the they have a very good landing page for the product.   Now I am wondering if this has any timing connection with the reported Lightroom mobile rumor. 

Kevin Raber
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 12:36:45 pm
I thought my images looked pretty good before, they certainly look better now. 
That's good but it doesn't mean it's correct. It matches a print or another display? Isn't that the idea? Viewing a color reference image results in a preview of memory colors that look closer to what you expect after than before? Calibrating something doesn't necessary make it right, and yes, we'd expect to see a difference in the before and after (othewise the product doesn't do squat).

If you calibrate the ipad and your desktop, and the two show a very close match, that's a very good sign. At least we can make two vastly different devices appear the same. Both may be incorrect and by altering the calibration targets, we should be able to adjust to produce a 'correct' preview that matches say a print. Big problem I see with this new app, from what I've read, is the target aim points are fixed. I suspect we need full control over at least white balance, the ability to enter CCT Kelvin values to tweak the WB to produce a match. My understanding is you're 'stuck' with a couple presets (D50, D65 etc). Once again, did X-rite dumb's down the product for the market, instead of providing tools to make the product work better for more users?

Quote
Apparently Datacolor's support tablets for some time now and android too. I wonder how their calibration accuracy compares.
http://regex.info/blog/2012-03-27/1964
Doesn't appear to work....
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 12:38:37 pm
Unit to unit consistency is very good too, from what I hear.
From whom, tested how? Not saying that's not the case, I'd expect that to some degree from Apple. But IF that's true, this app isn't necessary! At least in building a profile. A generic profile would do the same assuming all the displays are indeed consistent from unit to unit.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: MarkM on March 17, 2014, 02:30:28 pm
It's interesting that their video says they are 'calibrating' the device. As far as I can tell that's not really accurate. It seems what they are doing is profiling the screen and adding a layer of color management on top the OS, which other apps can use if they chose to be 'ColorTRUE Aware'.

So (for iOS at least) what this doesn't do is get browsers or the default apps to honor color profiles embedded in images. In fact, the video suggest that if you want to use a correct profile you have to manually assign it, which is weird. Why not just read embedded profiles?

It seems X-rite will have substantial inertia to overcome from developers if this is going to be adopted. The latest batch of Apple mobile devices works pretty well for sRGB images and, since the screens are pretty damned close to sRGB natively, there's not a lot of advantage to sending AbodeRGB or any other color space to it. While I'm not going to use my phone for print proofing, I get a good enough match between phone and monitor that I'm happy with the way images look for just about all situations for which I'm likely to use the device. If I were developing an image viewing app, I would probably not go through the trouble of supporting this unless it involved very little cost and time.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Czornyj on March 17, 2014, 03:57:01 pm
Big problem I see with this new app, from what I've read, is the target aim points are fixed. I suspect we need full control over at least white balance, the ability to enter CCT Kelvin values to tweak the WB to produce a match. My understanding is you're 'stuck' with a couple presets (D50, D65 etc). Once again, did X-rite dumb's down the product for the market, instead of providing tools to make the product work better for more users?

It's dumbed down. The good news is that it seems to work, at least with iP5 and i1Pro2. It calibrates TRC to unknown target, and you can switch between D50, D65 and Native wtpt. The created profile hits the X-Rite Profile Cloud, so you can't play with it in any gamut viewer.

There are two other features that initially took my attention - soft proofing, and ambient light correction.
You can only soft proof using a couple of standardised offset press CMYK profiles, so not really all that useful for photographers. There's no possibility to use custom ICC profiles, or I'm too stupid to find the way how to do it. No paper white/black ink simulation either.

As for ambient compensation, I didn't see the difference that I expected, no matter what setting I used. There's a noticeable saturation change, but I can't see any significant TRC change.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 04:00:56 pm
As for ambient compensation, I didn't see the difference that I expected, no matter what setting I used. There's a noticeable saturation change, but I can't see any significant TRC change.
At least their use of this 'feature' is consistent with their other products ;D

As for custom white point, a very simple Tint/Temp slider would have done the job.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 04:16:43 pm
Downloaded the app, calibrated my iPad. The process IS very slick. But the results, not so much. None of the settings, D50, D65, Native or Uncalibrated match my NEC and the big disconnect is white point. D50 is the closest visual match but too warm. A slider or way to back off (add a bit more blue) could result in a match if that's the idea. It's better than nothing and cost me nothing but I wish X-rite would spend their limited engineering resources on i1Profiler already.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Czornyj on March 17, 2014, 04:47:16 pm
Hiding the profile in X-Rite Profile Cloud is also a bad idea. It could be useful for mobile app graphic designers to soft proof content using profiles grabbed from various devices. Yet another feel good product, the only practical thing is colour aware image viewer.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 05:44:46 pm
Found an x-Rite bug that is associated with their silly xrd protocol (yes, shocking I know  :o). After I calibrated the iPad, I could not get some 3rd party product to detect my instruments. If I rebooted, fine. But if I re-calibrate the iPad whatever talks between iPad and Mac take over the instrument. Going into Activity Monitor and killing xrdd fixed the issue and the 3rd party product then saw the devices just fine. Better than rebooting. Good work X-rite pre-release testers on Mac!
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 17, 2014, 08:09:54 pm
Make a Granger Rainbow in Adobe RGB (1998), look at it on the iPad after calibration. On this end, something looks very wrong with the magenta and oranges. You have to assign Adobe RGB (1998) too, the app doesn't look at the embedded profiles. Click on the little head icon (which is really odd looking).
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: PhilipCummins on March 18, 2014, 12:46:47 am
It seems what they are doing is profiling the screen and adding a layer of color management on top the OS, which other apps can use if they chose to be 'ColorTRUE Aware'.  So (for iOS at least) what this doesn't do is get browsers or the default apps to honor color profiles embedded in images.

Sounds like X-Rite needs to ask Apple to open up the equivalent of ColorSync/ICC profile management for the iOS devices with some options to let the user customise it & tie their [X-Rite's] software in as a means of generating the profile, or in combo with a Mac or PC. This would then open it up for all apps rather than just ColorTRUE Aware ones.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: mlewis on March 18, 2014, 09:08:06 am
That's good but it doesn't mean it's correct. It matches a print or another display? Isn't that the idea? Viewing a color reference image results in a preview of memory colors that look closer to what you expect after than before? Calibrating something doesn't necessary make it right, and yes, we'd expect to see a difference in the before and after (othewise the product doesn't do squat).

If you calibrate the ipad and your desktop, and the two show a very close match, that's a very good sign. At least we can make two vastly different devices appear the same.
This app makes images on my Nexus 7 tablet display a lot closer to images on my Spectraview 2690 monitor.  It's not the same but a lot better than before.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 18, 2014, 11:03:23 am
This app makes images on my Nexus 7 tablet display a lot closer to images on my Spectraview 2690 monitor.  It's not the same but a lot better than before.
Agreed but it's still half baked. Don't we want and expect a visual match? X-rite could have done this easily! Instead we have CMYK simulations of profiles we can't control. For an iPad? WTF are the brains at X-rite thinking? The product is great at it's current price point, that's about what it's worth.

What I'd like to hear is someone who has used the product and see's a visual match to their desktop display. You and I can't get it to work, you'd think someone at X-rite or their beta sites had at least one person who held up their iPad's next to their desktop's and saw a half decent visual match. Mine is off considerably albeit better than with no calibration. Plus their browser seems kind of slow, so I'm not sure I'd use it even with a slightly better preview. This appears once again to be beta software we are expected to believe is a 1.X product. Not quite. And the connectivity issues are par for the course for X-rite.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 18, 2014, 11:07:36 am
This was just posted to the ICC users group and I felt it OK to share (credits to Jan Peter Homann):

Quote
http://www.xrite.com/colortrueSDK

Graeme Gill had a short look how moniotr profiles are handled inside
this environment and stated on the OpenICC mailinglist as following:

***
X-Rite's profiles are in a folder called "iccprofiles" and
are called profileData.xml, but seem to be neither ICC profiles
nor (ICC) XML files.

So balkanized color management on handheld devices
- - here we come!
***

If the finding of Graeme Gill is correct, I would currently not
recommend software developers to support the X-Rite ColorTRUE SDK.

An SDK for bringing ICC profile support to Android and iOS which uses
an vendor specific format for monitor profiles instead of the
ICC-format does make no sense in my eyes.

By the way, Android and iOS devices try both to match sRGB in their
display color rendering. It would not a big deal to implement some
basic ICC support on system level and use sRGB as default monitor
profile.

Applications which need the highest graphics performance could just
bypass ICC support but must contain only sRGB images and graphics as
today.

Colorcritical applications could use an ICC infrastructure incl. the
default sRGB profile.

High-end profiling solutions could exchange the default sRGB profile
with an individual profile which could be used in every ICC aware
application.


Any comments ?

Regards
Jan-Peter
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Czornyj on March 18, 2014, 06:28:59 pm
This was just posted to the ICC users group and I felt it OK to share (credits to Jan Peter Homann):


Epic! ICC co-founder makes a non ICC compliant colour management solution for others ICC co-founder mobile devices. ColorMunkiTRUEbs...
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: mlewis on March 19, 2014, 05:25:50 am
Agreed but it's still half baked. Don't we want and expect a visual match? X-rite could have done this easily!
A visual match would be good but maybe the differences are down to hardware issues with the screen that prevent a match being possible.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Czornyj on March 19, 2014, 07:02:57 am
A visual match would be good but maybe the differences are down to hardware issues with the screen that prevent a match being possible.

There's no hardware issues - there's a lack of goddamn visual match slider, and custom x,y wtpt target calibration.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 19, 2014, 10:59:56 am
A visual match would be good but maybe the differences are down to hardware issues with the screen that prevent a match being possible.
Nope, not buying that. The product doesn't work. It is said to produce 'accurate color' (BS). It should provide controls to produce a visual match like any half decent display calibration package. Note that X-rite does produce at least one crippled product for this task outside of mobil systems, it's just as silly a software architecture as this new product is. Dumb it down to the point that it's impossible for it to produce the desired goal. Close(er) is good enough? NO. As I said, a very simple slider would have fixed this glaring issue, at least on my end. I'm simply not going to use the tools and controls in my high end NEC SpectraView to make a mismatch to my output, just to produce a match to my iPad calibrated with a half baked product. The iPad should, within reason and within gamut, produce a visual match to my NEC. It's not even close. And that's totally due to two WP aim points that are a mile apart with nothing in between to select. Result: mismatch.

So, anyone enthusiastic about this new product because it indeed did produce a visual match to their displays (and said displays are calibrated to produce a match elsewhere?).
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 19, 2014, 11:23:07 am
It is said to produce 'accurate color' (BS).

Am I being too harsh considering the descriptor of this product from the horses mouth?

Quote
In our on-the-go, photography-filled world, mobile devices have become one of the most important ways for displaying and sharing our images, but their color accuracy is not perfect. ColorTRUE is the super simple way for professional and enthusiast color perfectionists alike to get unrivaled color accuracy on their mobile devices. Show your TRUE colors – anywhere and everywhere you are!

Quote
So, you think the color on your tablet or phone looks pretty good, right? Try this. Hold your portable device up next to your desktop. Are your colors too pumped up or have they lost the level of saturation you expected to see? Are your shadows blocked up? Do your images look different on your tablet compared to your desktop? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it’s time to calibrate with ColorTRUE– the new color management app that delivers true tablet-to-desktop screen matching (from the leader in color calibration and profiling, X-Rite Pantone). Now you can show your photos with absolute confidence knowing they are color accurate.

Maybe unrivaled color accuracy is marketing speak suggesting 'better'. This enthusiast color perfectionist wants a match as he was promised!
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Ernst Dinkla on March 20, 2014, 05:36:33 am
This app makes images on my Nexus 7 tablet display a lot closer to images on my Spectraview 2690 monitor.  It's not the same but a lot better than before.

Same displays here, same result. It would have been better if the method used was ICC based and as I understand it Android at least has some basics for that approach. At least there is something done on tablet CM, other than the Surface Pro. Mentioned the SDK to the developer of DSLR Controller that runs on my Nexus 7.


--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
January 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: ThDo on March 20, 2014, 10:29:32 am
@samueljohnchia

What do you mean with finally?

The solution form the competitor (Datacolor) has been around for almost a year.

Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Ernst Dinkla on March 20, 2014, 10:58:40 am
Datacolor offers one application SpyderGallery that has the CM baked in and as far as my information goes no tool for developers to integrate the same solution in other apps next to SpyderGallery. Maybe ColorTrue will not get beyond its Gallery app but at least an SDK is available.


--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
January 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.


Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Alan Goldhammer on March 20, 2014, 05:06:22 pm
It was about time for some colormanagement on tablets. Glad to see Android support, but I'm disappointed that the I1Pro is not supported (I1Pro 2 is).

Cheers,
Bart
Since my i1 Pro still works fine and I'm not about to upgrade I guess I can't calibrate my Samsung Galaxy Tab.  I think I will survive somehow!
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Czornyj on March 20, 2014, 05:28:31 pm
Since my i1 Pro still works fine and I'm not about to upgrade I guess I can't calibrate my Samsung Galaxy Tab.  I think I will survive somehow!

I'm seriously thinking about writing a book "Survival in a colour managed environment", so I'd also take my chances ;)
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: samueljohnchia on March 20, 2014, 07:32:48 pm
@samueljohnchia

What do you mean with finally?

The solution form the competitor (Datacolor) has been around for almost a year.



I'm sorry, I don't see Datacolor as a competitor. The Spyder 4 colorimeter may be the best thing they had ever done, but their software is crap and some of their color management products I know of don't do color management. What the hell is a spectrocolorimeter?? The marketing speak for their app is even worse than X-rite's and the visual results, from their demo video appears dubious. No thanks, I'm staying far away from Datacolor.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: samueljohnchia on March 20, 2014, 07:41:38 pm
I am disappointed to learn that the ColorTrue app does not really use an ICC profile for the display calibration, and there is such limited control, traded for user simplicity. I see that the calibration cycles through the full range of backlight and I'm hoping there's some magic going on with different TRC applied for different 'brightness' settings. Tried on an iPhone 5s. We must be allowed to do white point matching afterwards otherwise this is all a waste of time. I see better separation mostly in the darkest shadows, and very slight differences in color before and after calibration, keeping the while point set to native. So the phone's display isn't much improved - better, but it's already quite decent. At least the app's gallery does not expand images to their full width or height, cutting off parts of the picture if the aspect ratio isn't the same as the phone display.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Some Guy on March 22, 2014, 01:14:01 am
Bah!  >:(

Doesn't work with either my ColorMunki Photo nor my i1 PhotoPro 2 unit, even though xrite claims it does with the i1 PhotoPro 2 on their website (But not so in their news on the unit), my Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1" won't even recognize the device with the newest Android OS (v4.2.2) installed today.

Don't know why the ColorMunki Photo is so much different from their ColorMunki Designer or whatever it is called that 'supposedly' does work.

Oh well.  $2,000 in xrite gear and I got squat to show on the Samsung.

SG
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: donbga on March 23, 2014, 11:31:11 am
I was disappointed to discover that 3 of my xRite manufactured devices aren't supported. Fail in my opinion.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Alan Goldhammer on March 23, 2014, 11:34:27 am
I was disappointed to discover that 3 of my xRite manufactured devices aren't supported. Fail in my opinion.
It's a nefarious plot to get you to upgrade to the newest device and of course nobody gives you any credit for the old device which doesn't work with the new software.  Pretty good business model!
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 23, 2014, 01:09:39 pm
It's a nefarious plot to get you to upgrade to the newest device and of course nobody gives you any credit for the old device which doesn't work with the new software.  Pretty good business model!

Hi Alan,

I beg to differ, pissing off your loyal customer base is rarely a good business model. The first thing I did when my I1pro wouldn't connect is send a 1 star rated review, and look for alternatives.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Czornyj on March 23, 2014, 01:12:01 pm
and look for alternatives.
Now that would be the tough part ;)
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: digitaldog on March 23, 2014, 01:21:00 pm
It's a nefarious plot to get you to upgrade to the newest device and of course nobody gives you any credit for the old device which doesn't work with the new software.  Pretty good business model!
To some degree that may be true but I suspect it's more about X-rite's severe lack of engineering resources, poor software architecture design and such factors than a nefarious plot. For example, the newer i1Pro-2 Spectrophotometer (or whatever it's supposed to be called) is backwards compatible like the older hardware and thus compatible with their older software products . I can use it in ProfileMaker Pro as if it were the older Spectrophotometer. Good job X-rite. Now one has to ask, why didn't they do the same with the newer product under discussion here that doesn't work anyway? Too much engineering to support the older products? Don't know. What I do know is their high end software product rots on the fine while they build solutions that don't work well because they see this huge market for tablets. They are kind of like a child with ADHD, they can't sit still and finish a project before moving to another, only to produce yet a newer half baked result. It's a shame they don't know they are really a very good hardware company and a pretty piss-poor software company. To be expected with no real competition. So, do they fix this product so it actually works? Or go back to i1Profiler which years after the death of PMP and i1P is still lacking lots of functionality those products provided? 
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on March 23, 2014, 01:25:38 pm
Now that would be the tough part ;)

Sure, but then I had already started to program a generic utility to assist in optimizing the color rendition of portfolio/presentation images on tablets. Now that I've only found one 'competitive' (by DataColor) offering to the X-Rite app, there seems to be room for something more affordable than a free app + required investment.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: Some Guy on March 28, 2014, 05:28:21 pm
Fwiw, x-rite had a webinar 3/27 that explained the ColorTRUE thing.  Showed which units works with what system, Android or Apple.  My choice would have to be a ColorMunki Display, or their i1Photo Display for Samsung Tab 3 10.1 (Android.).

Luckily, I found a dealer who had a ColorMunki Display open-box sitting on a shelf.  Plugged it in, the ColorTRUE app found the device (Both the i1Photo Pro 2 and ColorMunki Photo were dead to it: "No device found."), and did its thing for maybe 5 minutes.

Yes.  The color display looks a lot better and it also did boost the shadow detail a lot too in the unit.  The webinar said it would, and the store's salespeople agreed.  You have a small button on the side of the screen you can press to show the Before and After too.

They are running some one-day sale following their webinar on the ColorMunki Photo and the i1Pro Display along with a ColorChecker Passport for $40 off some already in place $50 off sale.  So almost $100 cheaper until March 29 (B&H and Adorama both show the sale as does Samy's in LA area.).


SG
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: tho_mas on March 29, 2014, 10:30:25 am
On my iPad the Color True App produces a useable grey scale (visually pretty consistent from black to white)... in particular the differentiation of dark tonal values is more accurate with calibration enabled.
I would never use my iPad for color critical work - if at all I use it for image presentation. And for this the App actually works pretty well.
Title: Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
Post by: free1000 on April 08, 2014, 06:42:55 am
Some interesting insights in this thread. I am the author of the Foliobook iPad portfolio app and have been approached by some users and vendors regarding adding colour management to the app.

I am watching and waiting before definitively deciding what if anything to do about this. Foliobook is predominantly a presentation authoring app, but future developments would be enhanced by colour management.

Today I downloaded Adobe Lightroom Mobile, that has some wonderfully slick syncing with a desktop LR catalogue, allowing remote editing with smart previews.

But, of course it has no support for colour management, and it really needs it, the colour profile is very different from that presented by my NEC Spectraview, so for me this mobile app is useless for colour work.

I wonder if Apple has plans for a more systematic approach to color on iOS?  Developers will get previews of iOS 8 in June but there is no rumour of color management support. It's possible that the software and puck vendors are far ahead of what the platform is really capable of, for me the iPad remains primarily a presentation device.