Is Windows 10 Photoviewer ICC Aware??

[Simon Garrett]

I don't think the W10 Photos app is colour managed, not even part colour managed. 

• The Windows 10 "Photos" program is not colour managed.  It doesn't use either the monitor profile or the image profile.
• The Windows Photo Viewer program, present on Windows 10 and earlier Windows (since Vista AFAIK) is colour managed.

Here's how to test, and what I think the test shows.  To demonstrate that the Photos app ignores both image and monitor profile, you need two calibrated and profiled monitors, one wide-gamut and one standard-gamut (but the latter at least as wide as sRGB).

Here are two images.  The first version is an sRGB version (so no colours outside sRGB gamut), the second is the same image, but converted from sRGB to Adobe RGB (so it still won't have any colours outside sRGB gamut).

sRGB version of image
Adobe RGB version of identical image

Note: I've included these as images to download, as viewing images in browsers is misleading.  Some browsers don't colour manage properly, and AFAIK all browsers use only the main monitor profile, so you can't usefully compare images on multiple monitors in a browser.

What should happen in a colour-managed viewer: these two images should look identical on any calibrated/profiled monitor that has sRGB gamut or larger (i.e. virtually all monitors except laptops, which are often narrower than sRGB). 

Note: identical.  Not "identical, expect [except?] for the normal wide to small color space changes you would expect".  In this case, there are no colours outside sRGB gamut so no colour space changes are expected between different monitors (provided they are calibrated/profiled to the same white point, gamma curve and brightness).  There should be no colour difference.  That is what colour management does: get the same colour on any monitor, provided the colours are within monitor gamut.

This is what happens on my computer with Windows Photo Viewer: these two images look identical both on wide-gamut and standard-gamut monitors.

But with the Windows 10 "Photos" app, they don't display correctly:

• On any monitor, the Adobe RGB version is displayed less saturated than the sRGB version, showing that the Photos app is ignoring the image profiles.
• Both images are displayed less saturated on standard gamut monitors than wide-gamut monitors, showing that the Photos app is ignoring the monitor profiles.

If I've misunderstood what's going on here then someone please enlighten me, but I'm pretty sure the "Photos" app isn't colour managed at all. 

[TonyW]

......
If I've misunderstood what's going on here then someone please enlighten me, but I'm pretty sure the "Photos" app isn't colour managed at all.

I also need enlightenment as I too may have misunderstood.  To try and clarify to see that we are all on the same page:

There are two photo viewing apps in Windows one called Windows Photo Viewer, the other just called Photo.

Windows Photo Viewer that featured in 8 and 7 was colour managed and if you upgraded from these colour management maintained.  If you did a clean install of Windows 10 colour management was no longer available without the registry tweak linked to in this thread.

The new for Windows 10 app called Photos is not colour managed in any way, other than expecting an sRGB image tagged or otherwise. 

Any other tag e.g. Adobe RGB will be ignored and the image treated as though sRGB with unfortunate results.

You cannot change Photos to be colour managed.  Either use Windows Photo Viewer with the registry hack or choose another colour managed app.

[Simon Garrett]

I also need enlightenment as I too may have misunderstood.  To try and clarify to see that we are all on the same page:

There are two photo viewing apps in Windows one called Windows Photo Viewer, the other just called Photo.

Windows Photo Viewer that featured in 8 and 7 was colour managed and if you upgraded from these colour management maintained.  If you did a clean install of Windows 10 colour management was no longer available without the registry tweak linked to in this thread.

Agreed. 

The new for Windows 10 app called Photos is not colour managed in any way, other than expecting an sRGB image tagged or otherwise. 

Any other tag e.g. Adobe RGB will be ignored and the image treated as though sRGB with unfortunate results.

I'd express it slightly differently. 

Non colour-managed programs like the W10 Photos program don't assume images to be sRGB or anything else in particular - they don't assume anything.  It just happens that sRGB images will be display approximately correctly on standard-gamut monitors, because standard-gamut monitors have approximately sRGB colour space (by design).

If a program is colour-managed, then this is what happens:

• The image profile (sRGB, Adobe RGB or whatever) describes the colour space of the image - it says how the R, G and B numbers should be interpreted.
• The monitor profile describes the unique colour space of that monitor - it says how R, G and B values are displayed on the screen.
• A colour-managed program reads both profiles, and uses them to map RGB values from the image into the the monitor's colour space. 

If a program isn't colour managed, then it doesn't do anything to RGB values - it just sends them straight to the monitor.  If the image colour space and monitor colour space are different, then clearly the wrong colours are displayed.  However, most standard-gamut monitors have a colour space very roughly equal to sRGB.  That means that even without colour management, sRGB images will display on a standard-gamut monitor with very roughly the right colours. 

You cannot change Photos to be colour managed.  Either use Windows Photo Viewer with the registry hack or choose another colour managed app.

AFAIK that's right.  It appears that Photos ignores both monitor profiles and any profile embedded in an image.  There is also a "Color space" metadata tag in jpegs (called "Color representation" in Windows file properties), and this tag is sometimes used to indicate the colour space in image files without embedding a profile.  I've just checked, and Photos ignores that too.  It appears that it just doesn't do colour management. 

[rasworth]

I have to disagree, from my experiments Photos does do a conversion from ProPhoto to sRGB, but does not use the monitor profile thereafter.

I set my BenQ to sRGB mode, i.e. it's native response is sRGB with no monitor profile involved.  I then used an image rendered in ProPhoto, with a ProPhoto profile embedded, and viewed in Photos, it was displayed correctly.  I took the same image and viewed in Paint, there was obviously no profile conversion since the image came out in that dull almost colorless state that is characteristic of viewing a ProPhoto image on a standard (sRGB ) monitor with no conversion.

I believe it you google the subject you will find numerous posts supporting my conclusion wrt to Windows 10 semi-color management.

Richard Southworth

[Simon Garrett]

I have to disagree, from my experiments Photos does do a conversion from ProPhoto to sRGB, but does not use the monitor profile thereafter.

I set my BenQ to sRGB mode, i.e. it's native response is sRGB with no monitor profile involved.  I then used an image rendered in ProPhoto, with a ProPhoto profile embedded, and viewed in Photos, it was displayed correctly.  I took the same image and viewed in Paint, there was obviously no profile conversion since the image came out in that dull almost colorless state that is characteristic of viewing a ProPhoto image on a standard (sRGB ) monitor with no conversion.

I believe it you google the subject you will find numerous posts supporting my conclusion wrt to Windows 10 semi-color management.

Richard Southworth

When you say "it's native response is sRGB with no monitor profile involved", what do you mean?  Did you have your monitor set to sRGB mode, and have a monitor profile set that corresponds to sRGB mode?  If there's no monitor profile (or a monitor profile that doesn't correspond to the monitor's current state), then colour managed isn't going to work anyway, and colours are likely to be wrong in most circumstances. 

In my tests, using a monitor with sRGB gamut correctly calibrated/profiled (i.e. with a profile that reflects the monitor's sRGB gamut), the Photos app certainly did not display a ProPhoto RGB image correctly. 

In addition to the images I linked above (in sRGB and Adobe RGB), here is the same image but converted to ProPhoto RGB and saved with an embedded ProPhoto RGB profile, in order to replicate what you described:
ProPhoto RGB version

When I view this in Windows Photo Viewer (or any other colour-managed viewer, such as Photoshop) it looks the same on a wide-gamut monitor and on a standard-gamut monitor (both calibrated/profiled). 

However, if I view it with the Photos app, it looks grossly under-saturated on a (calibrated and profiled) sRGB monitor.  It also looked somewhat undersaturated on a wide-gamut monitor, which is again what one would expect. 

Unless we're somehow talking at cross purposes, I don't understand what you have found. 

PS - "I believe it you google the subject you will find numerous posts supporting my conclusion wrt to Windows 10 semi-color management."

Can you find me any links that say that?  I'm not disputing what you say, but I've googled, and all those I've found with a view on the matter suggest that it is not even partly colour managed!

Are you thinking of Edge and IE?  They are both partly colour managed: they ignore the monitor profile, and always convert the image to sRGB. 

[TonyW]

Photos does what it does, but what it does not do is any form of colour management. 

Regardless of whether it uses the monitor profile or not the colour display is incorrect and does not represent a true picture of the image data in Photo. 

The monitor profile stored in Windows from our calibration devices is not just a placeholder but rather a description of our monitor behaviour against the known standards we have set which enables colour savvy applications to display images correctly.  These include LR, PS, Windows Photo Viewer (upgraded or reg hack).  But does not apply to Windows application called Photo.  If it did the screen grab below (LR, Windows Photo Viewer and Photo) would show all images equal, whereas viewing even on an sRGB limited screen the difference should be obvious i.e. the only one that is out is the Photo app. showing oversaturated Red Green and Blue

[rasworth]

Here's one link, refers to Internet Explorer, but Photos is same, google search field was [ "windows 10" photos color management ].

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/d83b3379-39ed-44e1-a37a-83dc790d8d5e/windows-10-color-management?forum=WinPreview2014General

I opened my reference image, rendered in ProPhoto and with an embedded ProPhoto profile, in Photos and Paint side by side on my monitor when in sRGB mode.  The attached screenshot demonstrates that Photos is doing half of the job, i.e. taking the image from ProPhoto to sRGB.

I am a color management professional, several years experience calibrating/profiling displays and printers, so I do understand the basics.

Richard Southworth

[rasworth]

I should modify my assertion, Photos is doing some sort of conversion out of ProPhoto to something resembling sRGB, not necessarily correctly.  And of course it completely ignores the monitor profile.  Paint on the other hand is more "honest", sends the pixel RGB values directly to the monitor with no modification.

I believe we all agree Photos is not handling color management correctly in almost any sense, but I do detect it's "trying" to do something.

Richard Southworth

[Simon Garrett]

Here's one link, refers to Internet Explorer, but Photos is same, google search field was [ "windows 10" photos color management ].

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/d83b3379-39ed-44e1-a37a-83dc790d8d5e/windows-10-color-management?forum=WinPreview2014General

I opened my reference image, rendered in ProPhoto and with an embedded ProPhoto profile, in Photos and Paint side by side on my monitor when in sRGB mode.  The attached screenshot demonstrates that Photos is doing half of the job, i.e. taking the image from ProPhoto to sRGB.

I am a color management professional, several years experience calibrating/profiling displays and printers, so I do understand the basics.

Richard Southworth

I'm not sure what to make of that.  I repeated what I understand to be your exercise, but get different results. 

I displayed an image in ProPhoto RGB colour space (with an embedded ProPhoto RGB profile) on an sRGB calibrated/profiled monitor in the Photos app (left), Paint (centre) and Windows Photo Viewer (right).  See the a screen snip below. 

The colours are correct in Windows Photo Viewer, but in my case wrong (identically) in both the Photos app and Paint. 

There must be something different either in our configurations or in what we are doing. 

However, we're agreed that the Photos app isn't properly colour managed to some extent, so the details probably don't matter!

[rasworth]

It's curious that your Photos and Paint renditions match, and mine don't.  Here are my system color management settings, devices and advanced:

Richard Southworth

[Simon Garrett]

Allowing for the difference in profile name, my settings are the same.  Very odd!

[rasworth]

Windows 10 version?

I converted the same image into three color spaces, sRGB - Adobe1998 - ProPhoto.  Photos rendered each identically, Paint all three differently as expected.  I don't believe Photos rendered the image correctly, even taking into account the wide gamut monitor, but at least they were all visually identical.  And of course Photoshop rendered all three identically and correctly, ignoring any clipping that may have occurred in sRGB.

Richard Southworth

[rasworth]

And lastly the Photos version:  17.313.10010.0

Richard Southworth

[Simon Garrett]

That's interesting. 

Similar Windows info except that I use Win 10 Home, same processor except that I have the K version, I have 32G memory - none of that should make a difference.

But: you're version of Photos is 17.313.10010.0, mine is 16.511.8780.0.  I don't know if there might be some relevant difference between these versions. 

I'm not sure why we have different versions of Photos unless the Pro version distributes a different version.  My W10 is up to date (I just checked). 

[rasworth]

Set up for Apps automatic update?

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-check-app-updates

Richard Southworth

[Simon Garrett]

Nope.  I don't use any of the new-style apps (except Settings), so I have updates set to manual.  Odd, as apps often seem to get updated automatically anyway. 

I updated it manually, and I now have v 17.214.10010.0 - still not the same as you.  And on my machine it behaves as before, as in the clip I pasted a few posts ago. 

[One Frame at a Time]

Maybe the differences are due to something I mentioned earlier.  The Ben Q has an internal lut.  If your using palette master to calibrate,  your profile is operating in a way that's different than a system level profile created in the X rite SW?

[Simon Garrett]

Maybe the differences are due to something I mentioned earlier.  The Ben Q has an internal lut.  If your using palette master to calibrate,  your profile is operating in a way that's different than a system level profile created in the X rite SW?

Well, I tried with an Eizo wide-gamut that has an internal LUT, and set it to sRGB mode (calibrated/profiled), and got the same results (that is, Photos appearing to do no colour management).  There could be some difference in the way the Eizo and Benq use internal LUTs to emulate a smaller colour space, I suppose.

[One Frame at a Time]

Hmmm.  A new version of Palette Master just got released.  I'll install and see what happens on my system when I use the monitor based lut.

[TonyW]

Hmmm.  A new version of Palette Master just got released.  I'll install and see what happens on my system when I use the monitor based lut.

Questions: 
R U using the Photos app?
If you are why waste your time it is Not colour managed.  Your monitor profile will make no difference to seeing an accurate representation of your data in this case
Or
R U using Windows PHoto Viewer instead? 
If yes then have you either upgraded to Win 10 or got a completely clean install?
A completely clean install is going to need the registry hack the upgrade from 7 or 8 will carry over colour management.

Unless you want to play and see what happens use V2 profiles not V4

IMO hardware based calibration using the internal 10, 12 or 14 bit LUT is the way to go and guarantee your monitor can be set to the best state against your reference standard.  Hardware calibration is not new it has been around for many years with the likes of Eizo and NEC monitors