color management and monitors in virtualized environments and through RDP or X

[bteifeld]

Let's suppose you want to be able to run your graphic arts and imaging
applications remotely using RDP or X, or perhaps in a virtualized display
in a VMware or Virtualbox environment. If you color manage your real
physical monitor with an appropriate profile, will this allow you to properly
see and work with color?

[digitaldog]

Not sure I understand the question or what you are tying to do. How is the file format (in this case PDF) different from another kind of document (TIFF) that supports color management with embedded profiles?

[bteifeld]

Mr. Rodney, thank you for your reply and interest.

To clarify my question better- I am speaking of two computer usage
scenarios for one purpose. Let's say for example that in both cases,
I want to use Photoshop to do some photo editing.

In the RDP example, let's assume I have a laptop at a customer
location with a good broadband connection. I am using a Windows
operating system on the laptop, and I use the remote desktop client
to connect to my server computer which is running Windows, my
copy of Photoshop, and also has all my photo files. I have calibrated
and profiled my LCD screen on the laptop, and want to remotely
connect to my server to do some work on images in the Photoshop
that is running on the server.

In the virtualization example, let's say I have a laptop running
Linux as the base operating system, and I am running VMware Desktop
with a Windows instance that runs under VMware Desktop. Within the
Windows instance, I have Photoshop and all my photo files. I have
calibrated and profiled my laptop's LCD under Linux, and I want to do some
editing of the photo files in the Windows instance using Photoshop in
the Windows instance.

When I calibrate and profile the laptop's LCD monitor, can I be guaranteed
the correctness of the color in both the RDP example and the virtualization
example?

[digitaldog]

If the software used supports ICC color management, you have a profiled display, they should match within the confines of the display gamut and qualities. They can be different operating systems, even if one or more is using virtualization. The catch would be calibrating the display though the virtualization software I suspect to ensure the graphic path is utilized for both calibration and software usage. IOW, have virtualization running, use calibration software for display, then run something like Photoshop (or another ICC aware app). On the other system, as long as it too has been calibrated with either virtualization the same way, or calibrated with the native software, and the ICC aware software is run as well, the match should be very close (again with limitations).