Andrew,
How can it be a problem with the 'Intel machines' if, when you go back to Display Preferences and apply the original 'Color LCD' ICC profile supplied by Apple as your monitor profile, blues no longer shift to violet in color-managed (CM) applications (make sure that when you switch profiles, you actually click on the image window in Adobe Photoshop so that Photoshop uses the new monitor profile)?
I think there's a serious problem with the monitor profiles being generated by our colorimeters/software. I don't have these problems when profiling my Sony CRT; only my MacBook Pro LCD. Blues remain blue in CM applications on my Sony CRT (running off my same MacBook Pro, of course).
What's also really bothersome is the fact that pure blue (0,0,255) paint dumps in images in different color spaces look very different in CM applications while using my i1-calibrated monitor profile.
Take a look here:
The square on the left is blue (0,0,255) paint dumped on a new sRGB image in PS. The square on the right is blue (0,0,255) paint dumped on a new ProPhoto RGB image in PS. My working space is ProPhoto RGB; but that is irrelevant, because the same exact effect is seen even when my working space is sRGB, aRGB, etc. The laptop screen has been tilted downward for emphasis on the difference in colors. The square on the left is literally *purple*!
Here's another shot taken with the screen at a more reasonable angle:
Here the difference is harder to see but, basically, the square on the left should be lighter and more violet than the square on the left (this is what my eyes see when looking at my MBP screen).
As soon as I soft-proof through my monitor profile (essentially viewing the image as in a nonCM applications), both squares look the square on the right... i.e. pure blue.
Andrew, why don't you give this a shot in Photoshop? That is, creating some blue squares with different color profiles in PS, and seeing how these colors show up in CM vs. nonCM applications?
My explanation:
What's happening is simply that the monitor profile is telling Photoshop to throw in some red. That's why when you convert to the monitor profile, (0,0,255) goes to (101,0,255).
Initially I thought this had something to do with the fact that the monitor profile shows the gamut of the monitor extending, in the blues, well outside the gamut of sRGB, as can be seen here:
http://web.mac.com/rishisanyal/iWeb/Homepa...Comparisons.jpgWhy did I think this? Because, take a look at the gamut of the original 'Color LCD' monitor profile provided by Apple against the sRGB color space. Its blues fall within sRGB, and, so, when I have this 'Color LCD' profile set as my monitor profile, all blues look pure blue... in both CM and nonCM applications.
Application of my i1-generated ICC profile (as well as Andrew's Spyder & DTP94 generated profiles) is what goes and mucks everything up.
Why? Perhaps because pure blue in the sRGB color space lies 'further inside' the i1-generated monitor profile (not the case with the original Apple-provided 'Color LCD' profile), and so color-management is doing something screwy to blues that fall 'further inside' the blue gamut of the monitor profile. Not the case with the blue square generated in the ProPhoto RGB color space, which has a blue gamut well outside of the i1-generated monitor profile.
But then I generated pure blue (0,0,255) squares in every single profile space available on my computer, and the ONLY ones that looked pure blue (in CM applications) were the ones generated in:
1.) ProPhoto RGB
2.) ROMM-RGB
3.) NTSC (1953)
4.) all monitor profiles generated by Andrew & I (obviously, since this is like turning off color-management)
I am frying my brain trying to figure out what the he$$ is going on here, but, so far, not a clue. It IS pretty obvious to me, though, that the monitor profile is at fault. Especially because I get the SAME BEHAVIOR as explained above when I switch over to my Windows operating system on the MacBook Pro, using the same i1-generated monitor profiles.