Help wanted for digital photo frame with poor color balance

[Darryl Kerney]

Maybe someone can help me, i have a 17" photo frame that doesn't have any RGB color balance or temp settings to adjust it's output , and compared to the calibrated display i use for editing it is not accurate, too much blue especially, is there any way to either hack it to be able to adjust RGB and color temp values to get it closer to accurate, or to properly adjust my photos to obtain closer color balance/temp ?
i do have a X-Rite idisplay pro calibration unit, is it possible to measure the photo frame's default output and then somehow apply a correction to the photos i want display on it to get them at least closer to what they look like on my calibrated display ?

[xpatUSA]

Maybe someone can help me, i have a 17" photo frame that doesn't have any RGB color balance or temp settings to adjust it's output , and compared to the calibrated display i use for editing it is not accurate, too much blue especially, is there any way to either hack it to be able to adjust RGB and color temp values to get it closer to accurate, or to properly adjust my photos to obtain closer color balance/temp ?
i do have a X-Rite idisplay pro calibration unit, is it possible to measure the photo frame's default output and then somehow apply a correction to the photos i want display on it to get them at least closer to what they look like on my calibrated display ?

Sounds like you know your color stuff, so can we take it that the frame has no accessible color management?

Did your get a color patch-card with your X-rite, for example their Color Passport?

You could shoot that with your camera at it's standard settings, put the image up on the frame, shoot again and then use that image to make an ICC profile to embed in your frame-bound jpegs ...

Or make a .dcp with Adobe stuff and save your frame-bound images with that.

All a bit unsatisfactory and a lot of work. I might Google <frames> and see if any come as sRGB out of the box!

Not much help, am I?

[Darryl Kerney]

Sounds like you know your color stuff, so can we take it that the frame has no accessible color management?

Did your get a color patch-card with your X-rite, for example their Color Passport?

You could shoot that with your camera at it's standard settings, put the image up on the frame, shoot again and then use that image to make an ICC profile to embed in your frame-bound jpegs ...

Or make a .dcp with Adobe stuff and save your frame-bound images with that.

All a bit unsatisfactory and a lot of work. I might Google <frames> and see if any come as sRGB out of the box!

Not much help, am I?

That's an interesting idea, yes the frame has no controls for color or way to manage color, just for brightness, contrast and saturation.
i do have a color passport too, i'm still learning this color management stuff and maybe not getting it quite right so far, not sure how i would use the icc profile or .dcp file.
also the frame does have an HDMI input, i'm wondering if i were to measure its output could i use that somehow to apply a correction to the photos rather than the display ?

[Darryl Kerney]

if i just use the frame as a monitor and edit the photos to look right on it, i wonder if they will display the same from the SD card or USB drive ? and what profile would i use for it as a monitor ? a standard sRGB profile ?
does it make sense to try profiling the frame with displayCAL and then using that profile like i would with one made by using the color passport and applying that to the photo instead of the camera's ?

[Manfred M]

One thing to consider is that your digital frame is likely not capable of properly reproducing even the sRGB colour space. Colour fidelity is unlikely to be something that the designers of your product ever considered and more than the companies that turn out smart phones or tablets do.

The second issue is that the display driver / software likely are not calibrated either, so who knows what they output. Again, the same is true for the software running on portable devices; it is not colour managed either. I have calibrated and profiled my iPad and use a piece of colour managed software on it to see how close the other software on it gets the colours right. In short, it doesn't.

If displayCAL is capable of calibrating and profiling the device, you might get closer, but that assumes that the OS running on the picture frame can work with the software and profile output by the software. I personally suspect you might be wasting your time and effort, but the only way to find out is to try it.

[Darryl Kerney]

One thing to consider is that your digital frame is likely not capable of properly reproducing even the sRGB colour space. Colour fidelity is unlikely to be something that the designers of your product ever considered and more than the companies that turn out smart phones or tablets do.



The second issue is that the display driver / software likely are not calibrated either, so who knows what they output. Again, the same is true for the software running on portable devices; it is not colour managed either. I have calibrated and profiled my iPad and use a piece of colour managed software on it to see how close the other software on it gets the colours right. In short, it doesn't.

If displayCAL is capable of calibrating and profiling the device, you might get closer, but that assumes that the OS running on the picture frame can work with the software and profile output by the software. I personally suspect you might be wasting your time and effort, but the only way to find out is to try it.

I ran displaycal with it connected to my pc, i got 96% sRGB result, better than the monitors I'm using right now, which I'm getting 92 and 90 % with, although the deltaE was not as good but still not too bad. (I'm waiting on the Origin PC laptop i ordered which will be calibrated and 100% aRGB).
The frame is an Andoer 17", one of the photos that looks really wrong on it now looks good, pretty much the same as my monitor, so it's capable enough for decent output, but how to get it to do that in standalone mode ?
Is there any way to use that profile to make my photos display with that correction ?

[Manfred M]

Unless you can hack the frame's operating system and load software that lets you do this, the answer is no. If they use a hard coded ROM for the firmware (always likely on low end products), that would be impossible. If they use a form of eprom, then it would be technically feasible but would take a lot more knowledge than I have to do it successfully.

[Darryl Kerney]

Unless you can hack the frame's operating system and load software that lets you do this, the answer is no. If they use a hard coded ROM for the firmware (always likely on low end products), that would be impossible. If they use a form of eprom, then it would be technically feasible but would take a lot more knowledge than I have to do it successfully.

I wonder if there's a way to "correct" the photos themselves so it displays them as intended ?
Unless I'm misunderstanding icc proflies it seems to me it should be possible, it would instruct the frame's OS on what values to use instead of the ones file contains wouldn't it ?
If i could batch process the photos to embed the right profile maybe it could work ?

[dje]

I wonder if there's a way to "correct" the photos themselves so it displays them as intended ?
Unless I'm misunderstanding icc proflies it seems to me it should be possible, it would instruct the frame's OS on what values to use instead of the ones file contains wouldn't it ?
If i could batch process the photos to embed the right profile maybe it could work ?

Darryl it appears that the Frame doesn't support color management. If that's the case, you won't be able to get it to take any notice of any profiles you might embed. My only suggestion is to experiment with a trial and error approach to modifying the color of the jpegs especially for Frame viewing.

eg take say three quite different shots, get them looking how you want them to look on your pc, then try changing say the Color Balance control (or whatever it is called on your software) by shifting the Cyan/Red slider towards red by a certain amount. Export the jpeg with this setting and open it in the Frame from an SD card and see how it looks. With a bit of experimentation you just might get something that looks OK for a variety of shots. If so, record the settings as a preset and use it to produce specially modified jpegs for the Frame. Might work, might not, possibly worth a try.

Dave

[Manfred M]

I wonder if there's a way to "correct" the photos themselves so it displays them as intended ?
Unless I'm misunderstanding icc proflies it seems to me it should be possible, it would instruct the frame's OS on what values to use instead of the ones file contains wouldn't it ?
If i could batch process the photos to embed the right profile maybe it could work ?

Definitely worth a try. I would expect that you should be able to come up with an action that makes the adjustments. The process you are thinking about is somewhat similar to how inkjet photo prints can be made on with a computer screen that has not been calibrated and profiled. Not ideal for high end work, but passable for day to day stuff.

[Darryl Kerney]

Well it appears the frame doesn't support color management,
i tried assigning the icc profile that displaycal made for it when exporting my raw file to jpeg, made no difference, still displayed the same way, unless that's not the way to do it. i also tried assigning that profile in the Rending section of my DxO Photolab, it made it really dark, and it also displayed that way on the frame, not at all correct.

[Manfred M]

Well it appears the frame doesn't support color management,
i tried assigning the icc profile that displaycal made for it when exporting my raw file to jpeg, made no difference, still displayed the same way, unless that's not the way to do it.

No surprise there at all. In order to support colour management there has to be a way of feeding that information to the display driver in the frame.

i also tried assigning that profile in the Rending section of my DxO Photolab, it made it really dark, and it also displayed that way on the frame, not at all correct.

The way that I would proceed is to make the adjustments in PhotoLab and load the image to the frame until you get it looking the way you want. Record those settings and apply them to the other image that you load to the frame. In other words, figure out the level you need things to look wrong on your computer that ends up looking right on the frame. No need for profiles or anything else.

Use a low tech approach, rather than a high tech one.

This is very much the way we worked in the wet colour darkroom many decades ago; base the printing parameters on what looked right on the end product and then apply those same settings to the final print output.

[Darryl Kerney]

No surprise there at all. In order to support colour management there has to be a way of feeding that information to the display driver in the frame.




The way that I would proceed is to make the adjustments in PhotoLab and load the image to the frame until you get it looking the way you want. Record those settings and apply them to the other image that you load to the frame. In other words, figure out the level you need things to look wrong on your computer that ends up looking right on the frame. No need for profiles or anything else.

Use a low tech approach, rather than a high tech one.

This is very much the way we worked in the wet colour darkroom many decades ago; base the printing parameters on what looked right on the end product and then apply those same settings to the final print output.

It seems the frame maybe uses sRGB internally, seeing as it looks the same when i use sRGB instead of the displaycal profile as it does when using it standalone. I tried editing a photo to look right on it as a secondary monitor but cannot get it right so far, using warmer white balance and trying to reduce blue and green output doesn't work. I have another idea i will try later after work, maybe i can make an altered camera profile to apply to images for use on it that will correct for its imbalance ?
Example, a picture of a wild rose i took on the weekend is of course pink on a proper display, but on the frame it is a light purple, way off, far too blue. Also i just realized i could plug my camera (D750) into it with HDMI and try making a custom Picture Control that way, or on the computer, that i could apply to the Rendering the way we use the Color Passport, maybe computer is better though, if i could match the curves that displaycal came up with. I've never played around much with that, have to see if there's a way with that approach.

[Manfred M]

It seems the frame maybe uses sRGB internally.

That is hardly surprising as it is the most commonly used colour space.

What you might want to try is to duplicate what you see on the frame on your computer. Once you know how to make it look incorrect apply the opposite correction to the image. For instance, if you need to add +40 magenta to get your computer screen to look like the image on the frame, apply -40 magenta on the image you want to display. That should get you close to matching the two displays.

I wonder what taking a picture of your ColorChecker, displaying it on the frame and photographing it. Use that image to create a custom profile for the frame on your computer and then use it to correct the images you send to the frame? The only issue I see is that I don't seem to remember being able to create custom profiles with DxO PhotoLab. I've done so for Adobe Camera Raw / Lightroom and Phase One Capture One, but not for PhotoLab.

[xpatUSA]

I wonder what taking a picture of your ColorChecker, displaying it on the frame and photographing it. Use that image to create a custom profile for the frame on your computer and then use it to correct the images you send to the frame?

Yes, that was my thought too:

Help wanted for digital photo frame with poor color balance

There's some free apps that can make profiles from a ColorChecker shot. Even Adobe has some.

[Darryl Kerney]

The color passport idea could maybe work but only for the lighting conditions the first shot was taken with, as it is intended to be used.
Photolab2 version updated the program with the ability to use the color passport, assigning the created file in the Rendering section.
I'm hoping that maybe creating a custom Picture Control will work, i tried editing the photo displayed on the frame but nothing seemedcto get it anywhere near right.
Maybe the amber/blue and magenta/green adjustments will work better or if i can replicate the RGB curves that the displaycal calculated, not sure yet if the Nikon Picture Control utility can do that.

[Darryl Kerney]

Yes i have the app to use with the color passport.

[Manfred M]

The color passport idea could maybe work but only for the lighting conditions the first shot was taken with, as it is intended to be used.

Not quite correct, although some would have you believe otherwise.

If you have shot the Passport in full spectrum lighting, you will have a profile that is quite usable under most shooting conditions from sunlight to flash. I've tested profiles shot under a number of different lighting scenarios and found it makes no difference. I got similar answers from some of the commercial photographers I know that do work for Fortune 500 companies. I suspect this is more of xRite trying to provide value after investing all that money in a ColorChecker Passport. I suspect a custom profile might be useful when shooting under fluorescent of LED lights that have spikes at certain frequencies, but then I generally try to avoid that type of lighting.

With respect to jumping through hoops to get the frame to look right, I'd suggest a simple old-fashioned brute force method as per the comments in #14. I wouldn't overthink this one too much.

[Darryl Kerney]

Not quite correct, although some would have you believe otherwise.

If you have shot the Passport in full spectrum lighting, you will have a profile that is quite usable under most shooting conditions from sunlight to flash. I've tested profiles shot under a number of different lighting scenarios and found it makes no difference. I got similar answers from some of the commercial photographers I know that do work for Fortune 500 companies. I suspect this is more of xRite trying to provide value after investing all that money in a ColorChecker Passport. I suspect a custom profile might be useful when shooting under fluorescent of LED lights that have spikes at certain frequencies, but then I generally try to avoid that type of lighting.

With respect to jumping through hoops to get the frame to look right, I'd suggest a simple old-fashioned brute force method as per the comments in #14. I wouldn't overthink this one too much.

Oh wow, didn't know that. So i checked the Nikon Picture Control Utility, it doesnt do what i thought it might, guess i was thinking of the custom white balance settings that have the amber/blue and green/magenta adjustments.
I checked the displaycal curves, green is reduced a lot and blue even more, since i didnt use interactive mode red is at 75% while blue is at 52 % with green roughly in the middle between red and blue, at the high end 255, but of course the lines are not parallel, the reduction is greater as the level increases. Turning up the saturation helped a fair bit, it did reduce the excessive blue but not enough.
I will have to try the suggestions and see how that works.
It's a shame the balance is so bad, the panel itself seems quite good, sharpness and detail are excellent using the displaycal profile and color matches my monitor very well, if only it had RGB levels control it could be adjusted to get at least close in standalone use.

[Darryl Kerney]

with that in mind could i maybe use another app that can just adjust the RGB levels of my jpegs ?
Photolab2 has the HSL section, but with more colors than RGB, i couldn't get proper results using that, i guess because the bands are too narrow ?