I'm really in need of someones assistance with critical color management isssue!

**pschlute** · 15th January 2020, 02:01 AM

Do a google search for the difference between "convert to profile" and assign profile". They are very different things. Perhaps your workflow to date (exporting) has been "assigning" a profile sRGB to your wide gamut image and that will cock things up no end.

**xpatUSA** · 15th January 2020, 02:45 AM

Originally Posted by pschlute

Do a google search for the difference between "convert to profile" and assign profile". They are very different things. Perhaps your workflow to date (exporting) has been "assigning" a profile sRGB to your wide gamut image and that will cock things up no end.

Good point, Peter.

A little light reading for Jessie:

https://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/bl...olor-profiles/

http://www.gballard.net/psd/assignconvert.html

https://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/1...o-profile.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/us...-profiles.html

https://blog.xritephoto.com/2009/11/...rt-to-profile/

No disrespect intended, Jessie, but I think you're placing too much emphasis on monitor calibration. I've never calibrated a monitor (shock, horror) in over a dozen years of digital photography and I've never had the types of issues you're describing ... sorry.

**jjgibbs29** · 15th January 2020, 03:39 AM

Originally Posted by xpatUSA

Good point, Peter.

A little light reading for Jessie:

https://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/bl...olor-profiles/

http://www.gballard.net/psd/assignconvert.html

https://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/1...o-profile.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/us...-profiles.html

https://blog.xritephoto.com/2009/11/...rt-to-profile/

No disrespect intended, Jessie, but I think you're placing too much emphasis on monitor calibration. I've never calibrated a monitor (shock, horror) in over a dozen years of digital photography and I've never had the types of issues you're describing ... sorry.

No disrespect at all taken, I came here for help from a group and all have been as helpful as possible. I wasn't intending to place emphasis on anything at all actually, I just wanted to be as transparent as possible to what I am doing and list it out step by step, so that someone might see and be able to pinpoint an issue. I am with you when you say you have never calibrated a monitor....haha I had never had any issues that I knew about at least until I opened this can of worms, that changed the way that I do things. I only have all of this confusion because I have owned other monitors in the past and have calibrated and never had any issue either, so that has thrown me off is all.

Thank you for the above links also, I will read them all now, I have been full time for years and have even taken courses on this in college (art school for my wife but business school for me), as well as paid courses for further knowledge,and came here with the approach that I know nothing because compared to some in here regarding this subject (I know nothing lol). I was not trying to have others do work for me or search for me, which I have done and couldn't find a fix to this point. Ultimately I will get this fixed, I only aim to best represent myself to a client or potential client, and ensure the highest print and image quality to my paid clients! Again I thank everyone in here for all advice and input, the fact that you all took the time to even reply is amazing and greatly appreciated.

**dje** · 15th January 2020, 07:42 AM

Originally Posted by jjgibbs29

The monitor comes with 3 base modes -

sRGB -100 percent of sRGB color space coverage with almost perfect white point and gamma of 2.2
DCI-P3 - Wide Gamut color space that nearly encompasses the entire spectrum, but these colors are meant for cinematic means more than photography.
Vivid- Which after much research is microsoft doing a terrible job naming this space because I found out that it is actually P3-D65 which is basically a much larger color space than sRGB or even Adobe so it is wide gamut, with a gamma of 2.2 and the most accurate white point of d65 that this screen offers.

These are the 3 options that come with the surface studio- factory set. After Calibration the custom ICC profile is loaded and now my monitor has a 4th option (the new iCC profile named the same name that was produced by my xrite device.)

sRGB as a photographer makes sense because it is the safe option and apparently the best option without issue- but I feel limited by this option, because I know that there are other photographers out there working in wide spaces and not having the issues I am having so I want to figure out what I am doing wrong….

So I put my screen into the 4th option which is the custom calibrated workspace…..When i did this initially for the first time I had my computer set to factory settings (i don’t remember which workspace was set when i calibrated but I think it was srgb. And I am not sure that this matters or not.)

But I noticed a color shift and the during calibration I had the calibration tool auto adjust the contrast in the screen as I am not able to do that manually, but I do manually adjust brightness to the level indicated that is correct during calibration….when completed the first time I noticed a definite color shift from the pre calibrated state which looked funky to me but quickly my eyes adjusted and it began looking normal. Now Each time I calibrate I notice hardly any difference from the last calibration.

If you are going to use your own calibration profile, I reckon you would have to create a custom profile for each of the three gamut modes because they will all be different. This may be where your problem is. If you just use the factory calibration, does the problem disappear?

I think you would be best using the so called Vivid gamut mode for your editing work. This is apparently Display P3, a color space designed by Apple similar to DCI-P3 (same primaries) but with a WP of D65 and an sRGB gamma curve. Incidentally the sRGB gamma curve is not strictly a power law of 2.2 as it is linear around the black end and then transitions to a power law of 2.4 at higher luminance levels. It approximates straight 2.2.

Dave

**Manfred M** · 15th January 2020, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by dje

I think you would be best using the so called Vivid gamut mode for your editing work. This is apparently Display P3, a color space designed by Apple similar to DCI-P3 (same primaries) but with a WP of D65 and an sRGB gamma curve. Incidentally the sRGB gamma curve is not strictly a power law of 2.2 as it is linear around the black end and then transitions to a power law of 2.4 at higher luminance levels. It approximates straight 2.2.

As a photographer, I would ignore P3 as it is an RGB colour space designed for editing feature films shown by digital projectors in movie theatres. The gamut of this colour space closely matches the output of these devices. It is biased towards the yellows that are out of gamut for both standard displays and photo printing processes and does not include some of the saturated blues and greens that are in gamut.

Just as we did not edit to the NTSC or PAL screens in the television days, it makes no sense to edit to this colour space. Films that released by the major studios are converted to sRGB for streaming services and hard copy (DVD or BluRay). If one is working as a video editor for one of the major film studios, this should be the go to colour space to work with, but not really for anyone else.

**xpatUSA** · 15th January 2020, 05:36 PM

Perhaps it would help if Jessie were to post a troublesome JPEG in an accessible location, so we could download and analyze it to death.

Are Gallery images here downloadable, with their original meta-data untouched by CiC?

**DanK** · 15th January 2020, 06:46 PM

I believe "Firefox send" will allow uploading a large file and a temporary link to access it.

**dje** · 15th January 2020, 08:10 PM

Originally Posted by Manfred M

As a photographer, I would ignore P3 as it is an RGB colour space designed for editing feature films shown by digital projectors in movie theatres. The gamut of this colour space closely matches the output of these devices. It is biased towards the yellows that are out of gamut for both standard displays and photo printing processes and does not include some of the saturated blues and greens that are in gamut.

Just as we did not edit to the NTSC or PAL screens in the television days, it makes no sense to edit to this colour space. Films that released by the major studios are converted to sRGB for streaming services and hard copy (DVD or BluRay). If one is working as a video editor for one of the major film studios, this should be the go to colour space to work with, but not really for anyone else.

Manfred I think you mis-understand me, I might have been a bit unclear. I am referring to the gamut setting on his monitor, not the working color space in his editing software. The three choices he has with his monitor are sRGB, DCI-P3 and Vivid which is Display P3, Apples's variation of DCI-P3. The gamut corresponding to the P3 color space is therefore the only wide gamut he has available.

Dave

**Manfred M** · 15th January 2020, 08:23 PM

Originally Posted by dje

Manfred I think you mis-understand me, I might have been a bit unclear. I am referring to the gamut setting on his monitor, not the working color space in his editing software. The three choices he has with his monitor are sRGB, DCI-P3 and Vivid which is Display P3, Apples's variation of DCI-P3. The gamut corresponding to the P3 color space is therefore the only wide gamut he has available.

Dave

Thanks for clarifying; this is the same issue with the newest Apple screens too. They must be using LG displays as they are the only ones I know of who are producing P3 screens.

I'm surprised the Microsoft Surface is using an Apple colour space.

**dje** · 15th January 2020, 08:39 PM

Originally Posted by Manfred M

I'm surprised the Microsoft Surface is using an Apple colour space.

That might be why they call it Vivid

**jjgibbs29** · 16th January 2020, 04:53 AM

Originally Posted by Manfred M

Thanks for clarifying; this is the same issue with the newest Apple screens too. They must be using LG displays as they are the only ones I know of who are producing P3 screens.

I'm surprised the Microsoft Surface is using an Apple colour space.

Yes it is interesting if it in fact an apple colour space, when I calibrate or profile my monitor the ICC name that xrite gives me gave me the insight to who the manufacturer of the monitor or display I guess as this is the Surface Studio not to be confused with the tablet service devices, a much more capable and stand alone system

I guess Samsung is the creator of these displays as I am provided with the name of the icc by xrite at the end of calibrationg SAMSUNGLTM28RL01_20200114 in this case as of recalibration yesterday.

this article is one of the reasons I figured to buy the surface studio for my workstation, https://www.anandtech.com/show/11050...tudio-review/5

it goes into detail on the monitors ability and each colour profile (which i found confusing as everything made me want to just put the monitor into vivid setting (which does natively look best to my eye and is misnamed for certain) but i simply chose sRGB in the beginning just to be safe, and now I have custom calibrated/profiled my monitor so the profile on the monitor is set to that profile- which led to a mess along the way!

**jjgibbs29** · 16th January 2020, 05:02 AM

Originally Posted by dje

That might be why they call it Vivid

By the way I did not get a chance to thank you for your input yesterday or today, as I slept a bit today as I pulled an all nighter editing. I love the surface studio display and the fact that it is a 28 inch 4.5k touch screen with a pen with over 4k levels of pressure sensitivity has been amazing for my retouching workflow etc. I, like you mention wanted to choose vivid setting on my monitor as the out of the box it looks the most vibrant an the skin tones etc all look amazing. But not being certain I went with what I know to do and custom calibrated/profiled the monitor with my colormunki photo xrite device, and everything shifted from there haha. You mentioned custom profiling each display mode I believe in an earlier post. I am not sure how to even to that or did not know that was possible as when I calibrate it simply provides one unique icc profile and sets the new monitor viewing conditions to that icc profile as determined by the name shown in the monitor color mode.

**dje** · 16th January 2020, 05:30 AM

Originally Posted by jjgibbs29

By the way I did not get a chance to thank you for your input yesterday or today, as I slept a bit today as I pulled an all nighter editing. I love the surface studio display and the fact that it is a 28 inch 4.5k touch screen with a pen with over 4k levels of pressure sensitivity has been amazing for my retouching workflow etc. I, like you mention wanted to choose vivid setting on my monitor as the out of the box it looks the most vibrant an the skin tones etc all look amazing. But not being certain I went with what I know to do and custom calibrated/profiled the monitor with my colormunki photo xrite device, and everything shifted from there haha. You mentioned custom profiling each display mode I believe in an earlier post. I am not sure how to even to that or did not know that was possible as when I calibrate it simply provides one unique icc profile and sets the new monitor viewing conditions to that icc profile as determined by the name shown in the monitor color mode.

Jessie I don't own a surface studio so I can't go through the steps in detail but it should just be a matter of:

Set the Color Mode (Gamut mode or whatever it's called) to sRGB, place your Colormunki on the screen and do a calibration. Assign a name to this icc profile which includes sRGB.

Then change the Color Mode to DCI-P3 and repeat the process this time giving the profile a name with DCI-P3 in it. Because the color mode has changed, the readings of the test colors on the Colormunki will have changed and a different profile should be produced.

Similarly for Vivid.

If you can go through this process and send me a copy of the three profiles (.icc files), I will check how they differ. If the profiles are different, then you may have to manually select the right one in Windows when you change the display Color mode.

Dave

**jjgibbs29** · 16th January 2020, 05:58 AM

Originally Posted by dje

Jessie I don't own a surface studio so I can't go through the steps in detail but it should just be a matter of:

Set the Color Mode (Gamut mode or whatever it's called) to sRGB, place your Colormunki on the screen and do a calibration. Assign a name to this icc profile which includes sRGB.

Then change the Color Mode to DCI-P3 and repeat the process this time giving the profile a name with DCI-P3 in it. Because the color mode has changed, the readings of the test colors on the Colormunki will have changed and a different profile should be produced.

Similarly for Vivid.

If you can go through this process and send me a copy of the three profiles (.icc files), I will check how they differ. If the profiles are different, then you may have to manually select the right one in Windows when you change the display Color mode.

Dave

Dave, I have no idea why I never thought of doing this or why I never learned to do this haha. I always went with how I was taught to make sure monitor was set to factory setting for the first calibration (which was weird to me) because I didnt know which display mode was "the factory default" and out of the box I hadn't changed anything with any settings manually. I am dumbfounded by the simplicity of what you just suggested haha, I think I took factory default to mean the default settings and that a particular mode was default as well (meaning one mode was the mode). Wow, I now realize that all modes are factory default simply meaning each modes default icc profile : such as surface-srgb.icc, surface-DCIP3.icc and surface-Vivid.icc. I looked at the list and thought well DCI-P3 is greenish to me and research showed as stated previously its wide gamut but for cinema (so i left it as is) Vivid (my favorite of all after looking out of the box and the mode it was set to when I turned monitor on, I left it alone as well...because its called vivid haha, only after much research did I find out that this might be the best option for the wide gamut...and as this article:https://www.anandtech.com/show/11050...tudio-review/5 suggests vivid is the most accurate space on this device (hence the poor name choice). So I only have ever calibrated sRGB because as a photographer I felt it was the go to and safest choice, and the only one that made sense via its name. I am going to re profile each of the other spaces and send to you. I am sure it might be late wherever you are so I will post here when I am done and thank you for helping me...moment of clarity haha wow.

**Manfred M** · 16th January 2020, 03:02 PM

Jessie - my wide gamut screen (Benq SW2700) has three selectable colour spaces; Adobe RGB, sRGB and monochrome.

If I wanted to run multiple profiles, I would go through the calibration and profiling process for each of the two colour modes (no need to for monochrome) and could switch between them. Using the Windows 10 Color Management screen (found in the settings).

I'm really in need of someones assistance with critical color management isssue!

I don't use the default names that xRite comes up with and do make them identifiable. I run a dual screen setup, so these are the settings for my main working screen and I use the October 2019 version for my work. If I recall correctly, the other profile is the one that shipped with the screen and I have left it, primarily as a baseline. I could add an sRGB profile if I wanted to, but that is not part of my workflow, so I have not bothered. I do my own prints, but if I used an external supplier, I might set up an sRGB screen just to compare.

Let me show you the difference between the various colour spaces using Photoshop's Soft Proofing functionality. An inkjet colour photo printer has the widest colour gamut of any devices we tend to use for output and glossy papers have a wider gamut than matte papers. I own an Epson P800 printer, so I use this in my examples. I have chosen an image that has highly saturated blues and greens, which is where we gamut failures. I use the Relative Colorimetric rendering intent to keep the other colours consistent in this exercise.

Areas of gray show the out of gamut areas.

1. Epson P800 on Epson Photo Glossy paper - virtually the whole image is in gamut

2. ProPhoto Colour Space - as it is the widest RGB colour space, very similar to what we see in the P800 print

3. Adobe RGB Colour Space - significant clipping in the vivid colours, as expected some issues with the most saturated blues and greens

4. P3 Colour Space - even more issues with saturated colours than Adobe RGB. This is why I don't like that colour space and screens designed to use it.

5. sRGB - clipped colours everywhere. This shows why we try to not work in that colour space

Just to be clear, these are issues only when dealing with images that have highly saturated colours. Here is an image of mine that falls completely in the sRGB colour space, where using ProPhoto is actually overkill. There are no areas shown as being out of gamut using sRGB soft proofing.

Just one more comment; all screens and printer / paper combinations have problems with saturated reds, even with the widest colour spaces.

Generally my default colour space is ProPhoto, but there can be problems with it if the pixels get pushed too hard and one can end up with artifacts; 16-bit ProPhoto edits are a bit like 8-bit (JPEG) edits and artifacts can show up. Adobe RGB is often the safest route, especially if there are no deeply saturated colours. I do a fair bit of work in L*a*b* for images that need a lot of dodging and burning as working in the L* layer means none of the changes impact saturation. If I have to edit an sRGB image, I will stick to that colour space. I have done some commercial press images which meant working in CMYK; this has happened a total of two times over the past couple of years.

**xpatUSA** · 16th January 2020, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by Manfred M

<> ... Generally my default colour space is ProPhoto, but there can be problems with it if the pixels get pushed too hard and one can end up with artifacts; 16-bit ProPhoto edits are a bit like 8-bit (JPEG) edits and artifacts can show up. <>

Excellent post, Manfred, pardon the big snip!

Does "16-bit ProPhoto edits are a bit like 8-bit (JPEG) edits and artifacts can show up" also apply to an editor that uses 32-bit floating point for all calculations while editing?

For example:

https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/The...g_Point_Engine

I ask because I adjust the raw image with the converter review (aka "working space" in Sigma-speak) set to sRGB so that I can see gamut problems, etc., before exporting. Then I export 16-bit ProPhoto TIFF to RawTherapee which uses 16-bit ProPhoto by default. My final output is always sRGB because I don't print and my monitor is sRGB and I only view on that monitor, nothing else.

Thanks.

**Manfred M** · 16th January 2020, 09:12 PM

Originally Posted by xpatUSA

Excellent post, Manfred, pardon the big snip!

Does "16-bit ProPhoto edits are a bit like 8-bit (JPEG) edits and artifacts can show up" also apply to an editor that uses 32-bit floating point for all calculations while editing?

For example:

https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/The...g_Point_Engine

I ask because I adjust the raw image with the converter review (aka "working space" in Sigma-speak) set to sRGB so that I can see gamut problems, etc., before exporting. Then I export 16-bit ProPhoto TIFF to RawTherapee which uses 16-bit ProPhoto by default. My final output is always sRGB because I don't print and my monitor is sRGB and I only view on that monitor, nothing else.

Thanks.

I suspect this is correct as the problem is likely related to representing a large colour space with 16-bit data, so the "distance" between two adjacent colours is large. In theory 32-bits would be better, but of course, the file size will be larger too.

In all my years of working in the ProPhoto colour space, I've only come across this issue once and I was pushing the image quite hard and the artifacts were definitely visible. I edit in 8-bit if required too and the problem is similar; push the pixels too hard and artifacts may occur.

**xpatUSA** · 16th January 2020, 11:13 PM

Originally Posted by Manfred M

I suspect this is correct as the problem is likely related to representing a large colour space with 16-bit data, so the "distance" between two adjacent colours is large.

Thanks, Manfred, an interesting point about the "distance" traveled on a chromaticity diagram!

Comparing the red primaries for 16-bit ProPhoto versus 8-bit sRGB in CIELCHuv space, Prophoto has a delta of 5*10^-3/bit whereas sRGB has a whopping 684*10^-3/bit!

Where would we be without Bruce Lindbloom!

**jjgibbs29** · 17th January 2020, 12:01 AM