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Author Topic: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??  (Read 32644 times)

One Frame at a Time

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #40 on: April 02, 2017, 11:23:00 pm »

thanks Tony.  Yea, I've had a NEC Spectrview for a while 26WUXI.  But even though I've read much on the subject I am by no means an expert.  Especially as things change.  Im using the new photo viewer on a brand new machine.  I tried v2 and v4 profiles and see no difference.  As you say, its not color managed.

But I dont understand the application of the internal lut settings.  If they reside inside the monitor, why does the system need to be color managed to make the profile corrections appear on the screen?  Probably a dumb question but why isnt all output to the monitor adjusted by the internal LUT? 
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Simon Garrett

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #41 on: April 03, 2017, 04:20:00 am »

But I dont understand the application of the internal lut settings.  If they reside inside the monitor, why does the system need to be color managed to make the profile corrections appear on the screen?  Probably a dumb question but why isnt all output to the monitor adjusted by the internal LUT?

With monitors with internal three-dimension LUTs, they can be calibrated to a specific colour space (provided that colour space is smaller than, and entirely within the native colour space of the monitor, determined by the dyes, phosphors etc on the screen).  For example, I can calibrate my wide-gamut Eizo to sRGB.  That means that I don't need colour management in the program provided I am sending an sRGB image to the screen. 

However, that's a rather special case.  The point of colour management is to provide any-to-any colour mapping.  I want colour to be right on the screen whatever the colour space of the image, and whatever the colour space of the monitor.  Simply calibrating the colour space to a known setting solves only part of the problem. 

With most monitors without internal 3D LUTs, you can't alter the colour space.  It is what it is.  But the issue of colour management is the same whether the colour space of the monitor can be calibrated or not.  In general, you need colour management to map colours from image colour space to monitor colour space, and that has to be done by the program (not the monitor or monitor driver) because only the program knows both image colour space and monitor colour space. 
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TonyW

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #42 on: April 03, 2017, 06:08:35 am »

thanks Tony.  Yea, I've had a NEC Spectrview for a while 26WUXI.  But even though I've read much on the subject I am by no means an expert.  Especially as things change.  Im using the new photo viewer on a brand new machine.  I tried v2 and v4 profiles and see no difference.  As you say, its not color managed.
Yes if you want to stay with Windows software you will need to reinstate the older Windows Photo Viewer as stated earlier and you would also need to use V2 profiles not the default X-Rite V4.  You may also want to investigate the other free offers by third parties and see which you prefer.  In that case I do not know what flavour of ICC supported but perhaps the safe route is V2

Quote
But I dont understand the application of the internal lut settings.  If they reside inside the monitor, why does the system need to be color managed to make the profile corrections appear on the screen?  Probably a dumb question but why isnt all output to the monitor adjusted by the internal LUT?
Certainly not a dumb question.  Colour aware applications such as Lightroom and Photoshop rely on an accurate description of the monitors state at any given time to allow the display of 'correct' colour.  An accurate monitor profile describes the monitors condition and allows LR and PS to alter the image display to account for irregularities described in the profile against our required standards.  Therefore should the monitor display be a little too yellow the application (PS) can correct for this to display the image with adjusted colour to reflect the image data with more accuracy. 

The advantages of hardware calibration are really high precision and good gradation.  For a little more in depth explanation of LUT's and colour depth
http://nativedigital.co.uk/site/2015/02/luts-and-luts-of-bits-look-up-tables-and-monitor-colour-depth-explained/

Since the hardware/software combination is dealing directly with the internals of the monitor you do not have the loss of gradations that you would have with a software only method.  Further the calibration being fully automatic the precision remains higher than variations introduced by each adjustment in software calibration.  The bottom line being that hardware calibration should allow us to achieve more accurate profiles by adjusting the monitors electronics internally to our required standards than the software only method.

You cannot calibrate your device to sRGB, Adobe RGB etc. these are synthetic spaces that do not describe real world devices such as monitors and printers.  sRGB perhaps comes the closest to describing a device but that device based on a theoretical CRT display using a particular phosphor, therefore still a synthetic space.  Adobe RGB being a fortunate error in transcribing SMPTE information incorrectly, but having realised this the colour space found to be worthwhile

Our monitors have their own colour space with their own gamut limitations usually described by the manufacturer as 97% sRGB, 99.8% Adobe RGB, etc.

What we are aiming at with the calibration and profiling steps is to set our monitor to a known condition and characterise how closely our monitor matches those conditions.  This characterisation is our monitor profile and will accurately describe how our monitor really displays colour vs the required conditions.  Having this information a colour savvy application such as LR or PS is able to alter the image appearance to match the true values of our image data.  That is if the display is say a little too yellow from the White point aims the application will adjust the image display internally to get as close as possible.
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One Frame at a Time

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #43 on: April 03, 2017, 12:03:01 pm »

Wow, thanks for your replies!  Learned a lot more than I expected.  It's amazing how our Hobby / profession combines so many fields of science in such complex ways.  Cheers!
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One Frame at a Time

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #44 on: April 20, 2017, 12:57:24 am »

I needed to preview some jpeg exports yesterday and went ahead and installed Xn viewer.  The images aren't color managed in this app either!
I read that I need to point the program to the monitor profile.  So I tried.  For 2 hours.  For some reason the Windows/system 32/Spool folder does not show up in the directory selector within the program.  It's not hidden since I can see it and navigate to the Spool/Color folder in Explorer. 

Any ideas???
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TonyW

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #45 on: April 20, 2017, 06:00:59 am »

I have only ever briefly looked at XnView but I do believe that it is a colour aware app.  As you say you do need to turn on colour management as I think it is not switched by default. 
Below is a screenshot demonstrating the settings.  Make sure you have ticked the Use ICC Embedded Profile.  If you cannot select the monitor profile (in this case C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\CS240 Custom 6500K G2.2.icc) then it could be a corrupt install.  In this case I can only suggest download again, making sure you select the correct one 32/64 bit for your OS and after uninstalling the current try installing the new.

Other than that you may want to try another just in case there is a system error elsewhere - perhaps give IrfanView a try?  Note Colour management will need to be turned on in this app.
http://www.irfanview.com/

EDIT:Scratch the above about XnVIew.  I thought I would give it another try to see if it is useful.  I can see the problem you are having (at least I think I can!).  When trying to point to the 'spool' folder in C:\Windows\System32\, it is just not shown - everything else appears to be normal (Windows 10 64 bit).  Not experienced this behaviour before in any application.

You can get around this by copying the location e.g. C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\ into the File name box and then selecting your monitor profile - as in attached 2nd image
« Last Edit: April 20, 2017, 06:56:03 am by TonyW »
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One Frame at a Time

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Re: Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??
« Reply #46 on: April 20, 2017, 01:56:28 pm »

 :) :) :)

That worked Tony!  Thanks so much!  Dont understand why you cant navigate to it with the Program dialog.  Guessing it may need to have some additional permissions??

Cutting and pasting the path, then manually typing in the specific icm file makes the viewer display jpeg files properly. 
A real PIA! - because I move back and forth from running my laptop with a wide gammut BenQ and its built in screen. 
Windows will automatically select the proper calibration profile but I am guessing Fn Viewer will need manual intervention each time. 
There has to be a better way......

Thanks again,
Paul
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