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Author Topic: OSX Colour Management Problems  (Read 99807 times)

tale

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« Reply #40 on: February 27, 2007, 07:00:42 pm »

With both, Photoshop CS2 and CS3 beta this phenomenon occurs. Also, Safari works just like Photoshop or Preview - wrong colors!
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Tim Lookingbill

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« Reply #41 on: February 27, 2007, 09:37:06 pm »

Hey, Andrew.

The imac that's on order is a PowerPC 2004 1.8ghz G5-M9250LL/A. It's not a MacInteL. It will have 10.3 preinstalled. It'll be my first time using OS X. I've been using 9.2.2 for the past several years dreading the day I'ld have to move up to X. I'm not looking forward to cron scripts, repair permissions, log on as administrator, user accounts...etc. I've been quite happy with trashing pref's and restart with extensions disabled. But anyway...

Love the guide for photographing your display. I had a Fuji F10 and did the same thing with my CRT, but it required extensive editing to get the standard PDI color target to look right. The reds came out too orange and so did the fleshtones. I think I over exposed it and didn't set manual white point.

You make it look easy. I'ld suggest you hit up these display manufacturers with the idea of doing this as a way to promote the accuracy of their product line. Probably some good money in it if you can swing a deal. From ready all the concerns many have in the many forum discussions I've frequented regarding certain models and brands not calibrating well, it's seems a need looking for a supply.

Hope you get your color problems resolved. I wish I could help you. Good luck.
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Andrew Fee

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« Reply #42 on: February 28, 2007, 12:56:11 am »

Well, this is interesting...

I have now got Windows running with the Photoshop CS3 beta installed. If I take an image and load it into CS3, preserving the embedded sRGB profile, it still looks red. If I turn on soft-proofing using my display profile and "preserve RGB numbers" it looks the same when editing as it does in unmanaged applications (correct!) so I can now edit in Photoshop with soft-proofing enabled, export using "Save for web" and it should look the same accross all my web browsers. (as save for web doesn't include any profiles)

If I disable the "preserve RGB numbers" option for soft-proofing and use "relative colorimetric" rendering intent, it looks the same as I have been getting in Aperture, Safari and CS3 on the Mac. (I'll have to try installing CS3 on OSX again to see what happens there)


So at least now I think I know why there are differences in what I'm seeing, but it doesn't change the fact that in Aperture / Safari, what should be an orange box still turns red, meaning that Aperture is still totally useless for editing colour if the image is to be put on the web. The whole point of me buying Aperture was to replace using iPhoto to manage files and Photoshop for editing / corrections and have it all done in one program.


The only way I can get consistent colour out of Aperture is to export using my display profile, which not only makes the file sizes huge, but as it appears to be using a relative colorimetric rendering intent rather than preserving RGB numbers, it just means that it looks wrong in everything.

I have tried the Lightroom demo on both OSX and Windows, and I can't even see a soft-proofing option there, so once again the orange box turns red, on both platforms.



I am now at a loss at what to do / try. Surely there must be some way to have the same colour in Aperture/Lightroom when editing as I get when exporting for the web. I realise that a lot of people use these programs in fully colour-managed workflows (print) but there must be a way to get the same colour as I am seeing when editing as when I export?


I'm currently installing the entire Creative Suite 2 right now (disc 3/4) and downloading the Photoshop CS3 beta to see how they deal with things compared to windows. (I suspect it is the same)
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #43 on: February 28, 2007, 01:42:37 am »

Again, soft-proofing to the monitor profile just disables color management. No wonder Lightroom doesn't offer it. Your problem is with color management, don't try to disable it - try to fix it.

If sRGB images look significantly different in color-managed and non-colormanaged applications it's because the profile indicates your monitor is not "similar" to sRGB. So the applications do some drastic color correction to compensate for that. Does it make sense? Tell me if it doesn't.

The fact that you get similar results in Windows on the same computer only reinforces my impression that there's a problem with a profile.

I'll look at it again tomorrow...
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tale

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« Reply #44 on: February 28, 2007, 04:34:09 am »

As I wrote at the related thread at photo.net, I tried and recalibrated using a current Spyder2 software version - still the same.

Is there anybody here with a Core Duo 2 Macbook (pro), who is using a calibrated screen *without* the problems outlined here? Godfrey's Macbook (over at photo.net) works as expected, anybody else? An Adobe, Apple developer probably?
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Andrew Fee

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« Reply #45 on: February 28, 2007, 04:37:35 am »

Quote
Again, soft-proofing to the monitor profile just disables color management. No wonder Lightroom doesn't offer it. Your problem is with color management, don't try to disable it - try to fix it.

If sRGB images look significantly different in color-managed and non-colormanaged applications it's because the profile indicates your monitor is not "similar" to sRGB. So the applications do some drastic color correction to compensate for that. Does it make sense? Tell me if it doesn't.

The fact that you get similar results in Windows on the same computer only reinforces my impression that there's a problem with a profile.

I'll look at it again tomorrow...
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I had a feeling that soft-proofing to the display profile would be disabling colour management, but the problem is that when I do that, colour looks correct. It looks very close to what I actually see with my eyes, how it looks on the back of the camera, and how it looks on any other device I have that I can load the image on.

What you're saying about it being due to the display does make sense, but the resulting images mean that I cannot do anything involving colour and get reliable results. As soon as colour management gets involved the image is drastically wrong - oranges turn red, greens are very over-saturated, blues turn purple. It's not a case of it being slightly different where it wouldn't really matter.

Surely something else must be going wrong rather than that. I was hoping it was a simple case of me making a stupid mistake somewhere, but that's looking less and less likely to be the case.


Apple is selling these machines as "the ultimate mobile photography workstation" if I can't get anywhere near accurate colour on it, then I'll be demanding a refund, as it is totally useless to me as things are right now. I bought this primarily for photography, and because Apple was supposedly so good for colour management. (which has caused me nothing but trouble) I didn't pay £1700 for their top of the line 15" notebook along with a colorimeter, Aperture and the Adobe Creative Suite 2 to get these kind of results.

I just can't understand why images look great in unmanaged programs, but awful in colour-managed ones... if anything it should be the other way around I would have thought.


Also, I should have said it sooner, but I really appreciate all the responses I've had so far from everyone trying to help though, thanks.
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orangekay

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« Reply #46 on: February 28, 2007, 07:02:53 am »

Aside from the fact that marketing rarely ever has any basis in reality, it probably is the "ultimate mobile photography workstation" since mobile photographers are typically most concerned with getting their images off their cards, weeding out the obvious duds and uploading them to an editor's workstation somewhere else for further processing as quickly as possible. Had they said "ultimate retouching" or "ultimate pre-production" workstation instead, then that would be an outright lie.

I honestly have no idea why you're still bothering with trying to get acceptable results on any laptop screen at this point, but have you tried connecting a different display to it yet?
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tale

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« Reply #47 on: February 28, 2007, 07:05:13 am »

I just attached an external display and calibrated that - on both displays, laptop lcd and external lcd, the effect is the same, respectively with different color casts of course. Conclusion: Not a hardware but a software issue, whatever that could be...
« Last Edit: February 28, 2007, 07:05:50 am by tale »
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orangekay

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« Reply #48 on: February 28, 2007, 02:50:26 pm »

And just out of curiosity, how long have those of you experiencing this problem been using color management effectively in your professional work? I have no problem believing ColorSync is absolutely riddled with bugs, but it seems to me that if it were genuinely flat-out broken on Intel Macs there'd be a much bigger stink about it coming from the people who write books about this stuff for a living.
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tale

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« Reply #49 on: February 28, 2007, 03:44:44 pm »

I have been using color management for about three years, on windows though - didn't have any problems. I am by no means an expert on this topic but I don't claim that ColorSync is broken on Intel Macs, I just experience the same problem as the guy who started the thread. I am merely curious what the hell could that problem be, and a (partly) broken ColorSync is at least not completely improbable. But you have a point - if this would be a general "ColorSync is broken on Intel Mac(books)" problem, Apple wouldn't have sold these things like sliced bread.

Either way - I for one am sure that I have these problems, yes I could be blind but I have used this stuff for quite some time and was quite sure I can at least *use* it properly. You can believe me, I am still puzzled what is going wrong.

Please, if you have any ideas, let me know, I'll try it - I am eager to solve this puzzle.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2007, 03:44:55 pm by tale »
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orangekay

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« Reply #50 on: February 28, 2007, 06:11:14 pm »

I don't touch laptops at all but I've calibrated enough of Apple's Intel desktop offerings to cast some doubt as to the underlying instruction set architecture's responsibility in any of this. If there is indeed a non-workflow related problem involved, it would seem to be tied to that specific hardware model.

If we take Aperture out of the picture and revert to ACR in order to keep the number of CMMs involved to an absolute minimum, list every step you take the image through from camera to web on a separate line, however insignificant they may seem.
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Andrew Fee

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« Reply #51 on: February 28, 2007, 06:42:17 pm »

Ok, I think I now have my colour management problems sorted.  

The first thing I did tonight was use an older Windows machine I have that still has an old compaq CRT hooked up to it. I calibrated the screen to the Spyder 2's sRGB target (2.2 gamma, 6500k temperature, 80cd/m2 white and 0.80cd/m2 black)

I downloaded and installed the Windows Colour Control panel, got rid of Colorvision's profile loader, and made sure everything was properly set up with it. (including adding a shortcut to the application with /L to the startup folder to make sure it's loaded properly when the machine boots)

I checked the gamut of the profile, and it was slightly larger than sRGB, as I had expected. When viewing the orange box in a web browser, it was a nice strong, bright orange - a little too strong in fact, but presumably that's due to the larger gamut. When viewing it in the Lightroom beta, it was still orange, but a little less saturated - which is how it is meant to look. So after switching to the Windows Colour Control Panel, things were starting to go right, on this machine at least. It still didn't quite match up with my camera though, but it did look like the box actually does.

So now onto the MacBook Pro. I rebooted into Windows, and after having a pain setting up dual displays (so much hassle compared to osx) and switching to the Microsoft colour control panel, I was able to create a profile for the CRT that looked the same as it did on the other Windows machine, and once again colour was looking right in lightroom, now that I had everything properly set up.

So onto OSX... I still had the CRT plugged in which was auto-detected and all I had to do was copy over the profile off my Windows partition and everything was looking great on the CRT. Strangely though, after doing this, not only was the CRT looking good, but the internal LCD was too. I hadn't changed any settings / profiles at all on it, but colour on the MacBook Pro LCD was almost perfectly matching the CRT in Aperture (I say almost, as clearly it's not quite as good a display) keeping the orange box orange instead of turning it bright red, and while it still looks slightly different in unmanaged applications, I can now say that the colour-managed ones are more correct. Blues do still look a little off - a tiny bit towards violet, but they were like that on the CRT as well, which makes me think that's actually what the camera is capturing.

I took a shot with my camera at ISO3200 of a light, with a long exposure, to get a pure white image on it, then measured that with my Spyder using the "colorimeter" tool in the program, and found that, not only was the screen quite bright at its current setting (160cd/m2) but when I dropped it down to 80cd/m2 (to match my displays) it was measuring around 8500k, which now explains blues were looking a lot more blue on the camera than they do on my calibrated displays. Now that the brightness matches up, I get pretty consistent colour on the camera, CRT (though it won't be used) and MacBook Pro LCD. Unmanaged applications still look a little "off" but at least now I'm confident that it's their fault rather than the colour-managed ones looking wrong.

I really don't know what it was that got my monitor profile to start working properly in OSX, but at least it is now.
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #52 on: February 28, 2007, 07:11:57 pm »

So you haven't actualy calibrated the notebook display, just used a profile of a CRT?

Or using a profile created in Windows for the CRT reset the way the notebook profile affected color management?

What profile is currently assigned to the notebook display?
« Last Edit: February 28, 2007, 07:13:43 pm by Serge Cashman »
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #53 on: February 28, 2007, 07:19:52 pm »

It is conceivable that Aperture uses only one profile for gamut conversion in Mac OS (the CRT profile in this case). In Windows all color managed apps would only use one profile. But Photoshop definitely should be able to use two profiles in OS X - do you notice the profile switch when you move colormanaged images from one monitor to the other?
« Last Edit: February 28, 2007, 07:20:25 pm by Serge Cashman »
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sarangiman

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« Reply #54 on: February 28, 2007, 10:21:55 pm »

OK, a few fundamental things we need to work out:

1.) So you're satisfied now that colors look OK only when your MacBook Pro is hooked up to your CRT? Now, ditch the CRT, restart MacBook Pro. Are you still getting 'correct' colors?

2.) Please answer Serge's question: what monitor profile is OS X now using?

3.) To a number of the posters here: who the heck made it up in their minds that color-managed applications and non-color-managed applications are *supposed* display the same colors for a sRGB image when color management is properly set up and monitors are profiled? This is crazy, and would *only* be true if your monitor's profile, after proper hardware calibration, happened to basically be the exact inverse transform of the sRGB profile. And that would be true only if your monitor had a very 'sRGB-like response' (as Serge points out).

Non-color managed applications are not correcting for your monitor. Color-managed applications are. Why on earth would those two scenarios end up displaying the same colors? ONLY in the following two situations could one expect this:

     a.) If hardware calibrators (technically, hardware 'profilers', since these devices are not adjusting any hardware on your display but, instead, adjusting the output sent from your video card so that colors look more accurate on your display) were designed to bring your monitor back to a 'sRGB-like response', then, sure... you could then expect color-managed & non-color-managed applications to display the same colors.

     b.) If, upon profiling your display, the profile generated happened to roughly be the inverse transform of the sRGB profile (this would happen if your monitor had a very 'sRGB-like' response... meaning that a raw RGB value thrown at it from your OS is naturally displayed on your display as the corresponding CIE LAB color that Photoshop, or any color-managed application, would have calculated itself in taking any raw RGB value from a sRGB-tagged image and converting it to the PCS to then convert to the monitor profile).

4.) Andrew, your original colour.png image is flawed, as pure blue should be 0,0,255. In your image, it is 0,0,245. But, that's actually OK for the purposes of our tests. No big deal. The raw RGB values within a strip of blue still contain values of 0,0 for R,G respectively.

5.) When you import a sRGB image into LR, LR works with the image in the ProPhoto RGB color space. Of course, it does so 'non-destructively', so, for the sake of this discussion, let's just say LR creates a new copy of your image in memory when you go into the 'Develop' module. This will be much like opening up the image in Photoshop, and then converting the image from sRGB to ProPhoto RGB (using, e.g., relative colorimetric). This process DOES, in fact, change the raw RGB values of the image. That's why when you convert a sRGB image to the ProPhoto RGB color space, and save it in ProPhoto RGB, and then open up the image in Firefox, the image looks dull. Essentially, RGB values have been 'desaturated' because the ProPhoto RGB color profile itself 're-saturates' those dull RGB values... this is what allows it to have such a wide gamut (also why an image that is *not* ProPhoto RGB looks super-saturated if you *assign* the ProPhoto RGB profile to it).

The more important question to ask is: When converting from sRGB to ProPhoto RGB using relative colorimetric, do *pure* *primary* color values change? SHOULD they?

I have some very strange results regarding this, that I will post in a separate post (will come back to this forum and post the link).

Finally, Andrew, when I take pure blue (0,0,255) in the ProPhoto RGB color space and convert it to sRGB, the RGB values stay the same (0,0,255), yet the color on my screen changes (in Photoshop) when I assign *your calibrated profile* (that I downloaded) in OS X -- OR -- when I assign *my Eye-One Display 2 calibrated profile*. The color change is best described as blue going to bluish-purple/violet. I DO NOT see this color change when I have the canned Apple 'Color LCD' profile applied.

There is something really scary going on here.

Let me post my results regarding the changing of RGB values when converting between color spaces... it is really worrisome.
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Tim Lookingbill

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« Reply #55 on: February 28, 2007, 10:59:22 pm »

There's so many variables mentioned in this thread it's hard to keep track as to what caused what and how others with the same problem might benefit from this exchange.

After rereading this entire thread, the external display test showing the sRGB gamut comparison plot to the Toshiba TV profile got me to thinking how that display's DDC to video card info exchange may have caused some corruption either during the MacBook calibration and/or switching back and forth between display's in extended or mirrored desktop. Which LUT was chosen, loaded or written to during calibration? There's a variable.

Another variable is Andrew's relying on the accuracy of his Fuji F30's LCD preview matching what he's suppose to see in sRGB on his system. Those tiny 2" camera LCD previews aren't calibrated and can't be trusted for accuracy. I had the F10 and it never showed hue/saturation the same way as it did in sRGB on my calibrated system nor did it match the scene as shot. Its LCD previews were always a bit oversaturated with very cyanish greens and overly reddish browns.

Andrew, if you get the chance view the linked image at the bottom and assign sRGB, your CRT or Toshiba profile in what ever color managed app that allows it. The image is a composite of elements from several test targets which contain colors that shift noticeably when viewed in CM apps while changing the system display profile.

The reds should look hot red, not orange. The patch of blue to the right of the yellow PhotoDisc rectangle should look sky blue not purplish or violet. The yellows should not look overly cyanish or reddish. The womans head scarf should be slightly magenta-ish, but not orange. None of the colors should appear to glow as if oversaturated except the RGBCMY color purities.

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....ype=post&id=835
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sarangiman

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« Reply #56 on: March 01, 2007, 12:44:07 am »

Good point, tlooknbill, about all the variables posted here.

Basically, I think that Andrew & I are having the same problem here:
     -After hardware calibration, pure blues (0,0,255) look 'blue/violet' instead of pure, neon-like, blue. On top of that, for me, I seem to have a yellowish cast in all images now. Indeed, when I take an image in Photoshop from my MacBook Pro C2D LCD screen over to my Sony Trinitron (drag), the image looks drastically yellow before Photoshop has the time to start using the Sony's profile. As soon as the Sony's monitor profile kicks in, the image looks normal again (the Sony has NOT been profiled... doing that later tonight).

As a simple test, I did the following in Photoshop:

1.) New 200x200 pixel document in sRGB color space --> Paint Bucket (0,0,255)
2.) New 200x200 pixel document in ProPhoto RGB color space --> Paint Bucket (0,0,255)

On my MacBook Pro LCD (Eye-One calibrated), 1.) looked lighter blue/violet; 2.) looked like pure neon-like blue.

On my MacBook Pro LCD (using the 'canned' Apple 'Color LCD' profile), 1.) looked like pure neon-like blue; 2.) looked the same as 1.)

On my Sony Trinitron CRT (uncalibrated), 1.) looked pure neon-like blue; 2.) looked the same as 1.)

Seems like bad hardware profiling at first... but then, why are Andrew and I and the other fellow all having this problem (using different hardware profilers too, I might add!)?

On the bright side, hardware profiling has really brought out details in shadows (on black & white test charts, I can see the difference between the darkest and the next less-dark shades).

But the colors don't seem accurate... FYI I used 'Native' white point and a Gamma of 2.2 in the Eye-One profiling software (I found that, for some reason, when using both 'Native' white point & 'Native' Gamma, I got a bluish tint over my entire screen).
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sarangiman

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« Reply #57 on: March 01, 2007, 12:56:01 am »

Don't know if this really helps, but here's an observation:

In PS CS3:

Conversion from ProPhoto RGB to Monitor Profile (Eye-One calibrated):
     Original RGB values: 0,0,255
     New RGB values: 0,0,255

Conversion from sRGB to Monitor Profile (Eye-One calibrated):
     Original RGB values: 0,0,255
     New RGB values: 94,0,255

This explains that violet/purplish cast in 'pure blue' tones... it's coming from some red values being thrown at my monitor in the conversion process that color-managed applications are doing.

Very confused about where this is coming from. I can try some more tests with other colors... Please, anyone, let me know any ideas.

I've been very careful to NOT say 'colors are wrong after calibration'. 'Wrong' & 'right' are entirely subjective, and just because a non-color-managed applications is showing me the color of an object as I see it in the real world doesn't mean it's 'right'. There could be correction due to the possibility that the camera captured it incorrectly... essentially two wrongs making a right. I do believe in color management... especially seeing as how after calibrating my MacBook Pro LCD, colors are already starting to match up with other monitors in color-managed programs (the 'canned' profile for the MacBook Pro oversaturated oranges, for example).

I'm just concerned over this behavior over *pure primaries*! And the yellow cast I see, of course.
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #58 on: March 01, 2007, 01:31:24 am »

Quote
... FYI I used 'Native' white point and a Gamma of 2.2 in the Eye-One profiling software (I found that, for some reason, when using both 'Native' white point & 'Native' Gamma, I got a bluish tint over my entire screen).

Why all of a sudden a bunch of people are joining color forums with the same problem?

Now, let's concentrate on this quote for a second. A Native/Native profile would essentially just profile your monitor without any LUT adjustments. In Basiccolor the same thing would be achieved using "Profile, don't calibrate" (after loading a profile without LUT adjustments first). If the entire screen looks blue after that - the entire screen IS blue. The only way to correct it is videocard LUTs which is bound to have some artifacts.

In the profiles that Andrew has posted (Native/2.2 in basiccolor and Spyder2 Pro) you see an LUT  boost to green and red and a significant reduction in blue - all this  just to get the gamma to 2.2 (look at vcgt tag).

Assuming we deal with different people here and that they accurately describe their problem, the Macbook display is natively very blue. Can somebody else (who preferably hasn't joined the forum yesterday) load a profile with no LUT adjustments and check this?
« Last Edit: March 01, 2007, 01:39:42 am by Serge Cashman »
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Serge Cashman

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« Reply #59 on: March 01, 2007, 02:09:20 am »

I just realized that in OS X it might not be that easy to find a profile with no LUT adjustments or no vcgt tag. Here's a place to get test profiles, I believe D is what we'd need for this test:

http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?Vcgt.html
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