Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Down

Author Topic: Finally - Color Management on Mobile  (Read 23241 times)

samueljohnchia

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 498
Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« 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!
Logged

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #1 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.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Bart_van_der_Wolf

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 8913
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #2 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
« Last Edit: March 17, 2014, 11:40:28 am by BartvanderWolf »
Logged
== If you do what you did, you'll get what you got. ==

samueljohnchia

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 498
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #3 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.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2014, 11:52:17 am by samueljohnchia »
Logged

samueljohnchia

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 498
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #4 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.
Logged

Kevin Raber

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1339
  • Kevin Raber
    • Kevin Raber
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #5 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
Logged
Kevin Raber
kwr@rabereyes.com
kevin@photopxl.com
rockhopperworkshops.com
photopxl.com

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #6 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....
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #7 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.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

MarkM

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 428
    • Alaska Photographer Mark Meyer
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #8 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.
Logged

Czornyj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1948
    • zarzadzaniebarwa.pl
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #9 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.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2014, 04:06:20 pm by Czornyj »
Logged
Marcin Kałuża | [URL=http://zarzadzaniebarwa

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #10 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.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #11 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.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Czornyj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1948
    • zarzadzaniebarwa.pl
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #12 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.
Logged
Marcin Kałuża | [URL=http://zarzadzaniebarwa

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #13 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!
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #14 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).
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

PhilipCummins

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 133
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #15 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.
Logged

mlewis

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 118
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #16 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.
Logged

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #17 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.
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #18 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
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Czornyj

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1948
    • zarzadzaniebarwa.pl
Re: Finally - Color Management on Mobile
« Reply #19 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...
« Last Edit: March 18, 2014, 06:33:30 pm by Czornyj »
Logged
Marcin Kałuża | [URL=http://zarzadzaniebarwa
Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Up