Confused about Win7 CM settings

[walter.sk]

I've been using SpectaviewII to generate profiles and calibrate my NEC 3090 for 3 years now with no problems, but I have looked at the Advanced tab in the Win7 Color Management dialog and am now confused.  (I am easy to confuse when it comes to this stuff.)

In the Devices tab, I have my profile selected as the default, and I have checked "Use My Settings."  In the Advanced tab, under Windows Color System Defaults, I have the Device Profile set for my monitor profile, and the Viewing Conditions profile set for WCS Profile For ICC Viewing.  I have "Use Windows Display Calibration" unchecked.  I left the rendering intent section the way it was.

Are these settings correct if I want to use my display profile all the time?

A second question:  When I profile a digital projector (Epson PowerLite 730C) using Colormunki and a laptop, the I zeroed out all of the projector's settings, and have it set for sRGB.  Should the Win7 Color Management settings be the same as the above, but using the profile generated for the projector?  Something seems wrong, as we are getting severely oversaturated color with the projected images.

[artobest]

I'm resurrecting this orphaned thread because I too would like a competent description of Win7's Colour Management settings, especially the Advanced tab. By accident or design, the structure of the thing makes it appear to be applying double profiles if you follow it to its logical conclusion. Trouble is, most, if not all, the CM experts here seem very narrowly focussed on Mac OS, which leaves the rest of us (dare I say the majority?) pretty much on our own. I'm absolutely not trying to start a platform flamewar (each to his or her own), just saying it's pitiful the amount of truly informed knowledge about Win7 CM there is out there compared to Macs.

[Rhossydd]

Actually the CM system in Win 7 is all very straight forward and simple. All you need to know is explained in the help system if you click on "Understanding color management settings"

The advanced options are only a source of confusion if you've failed to understand that they are the overall system default settings that control how programs without proper colour management options handle colour. If you're using well behaved colour managed programs like Photoshop, Lightroom, Firefox etc and using a decent hardware calibration system for your display, there's no need to worry about them at all.

The reason that you don't seem to read much about CM issues with Win7, or Windows in general, is that hardly anything has changed for years, so it's all well known, works as expected and device drivers are all well behaved as a result of that stability. Most of the CM issues you read from Windows users seem to be the result of inexperience and lack of understanding, rather than underlying software issues.
Apple have messed around with colour management rather a lot in recent years, so there's a degree of confusion and as a result CM sometimes seem to behave unexpectedly or just wrongly. This means that even very experienced users seem to be having trouble using some combinations of drivers and OS versions in addition to the normal inexperience problems all beginners suffer on any OS.

[Pete_G]

I think you should have, "Use Windows display calibration" checked if you want Windows to load your display profile. I found that the Spectraview (Basicolor) loader was not loading my 'B' monitor profile correctly, so wanted Windows to control the whole thing.

I've suggested this link in another thread but take a look at it:

http://www.pusztaiphoto.com/articles/colormgmt/win7/


As Rhossydd suggests, I think Win 7 has most of what we want, but it is not presented in the most logical way yet, let's hope this improves. As always, google is your friend and you should be able to decipher Microsoft's approach to CM after reading a few online guides.