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

[Manfred M]

Looking at your screen shots, you've managed to muck things up a bit, I think.

When it comes to colour management, you have two choices: either use a profiling tool like the xRite i1 or try to do it manually (something that does not work well). It looks like you have two approaches as you have created a profile with the i1 PLUS have used the manual Windows 10 display calibration. Running both is bound to cause problems.

On the Color Management screen, Advanced tab, make sure that the checkbox "Use Windows display calibration" is NOT checked. On the same Advanced Tab, the Default rendering intent should be set to Relative Colorimetric. In the past, Perceptual did not work and even if it does,the way the rendering intent works, it can result in inconsistent results and the only place it really makes sense to consider it is when you print. There I will compare how either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual look and go with it. I usually just stick with Relative Colorimetric.

The other thing to remember is that every time you create a new profile, it is just added to the list. You have to manually remove the old, obsolete ones.

I'm also surprised that your video card is set to 8-bit, not 10-bit. 8-bit is fine for sRGB, but not for a wide-gamut screen setting.

Finally, if you use your xRite i1 to calibrate and profile your screen, do not touch any of the screen controls (brightness, contrast, etc) as these will throw off the settings unless your screen has an internal LUT (Lookup Table). If so, it will lock down the controls and prevent you from doing any damage. I don't think the Surface has this feature but could be wrong.

[jjgibbs29]

Looking at your screen shots, you've managed to muck things up a bit, I think.

When it comes to colour management, you have two choices: either use a profiling tool like the xRite i1 or try to do it manually (something that does not work well). It looks like you have two approaches as you have created a profile with the i1 PLUS have used the manual Windows 10 display calibration. Running both is bound to cause problems.

On the Color Management screen, Advanced tab, make sure that the checkbox "Use Windows display calibration" is NOT checked. On the same Advanced Tab, the Default rendering intent should be set to Relative Colorimetric. In the past, Perceptual did not work and even if it does,the way the rendering intent works, it can result in inconsistent results and the only place it really makes sense to consider it is when you print. There I will compare how either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual look and go with it. I usually just stick with Relative Colorimetric.

The other thing to remember is that every time you create a new profile, it is just added to the list. You have to manually remove the old, obsolete ones.

I'm also surprised that your video card is set to 8-bit, not 10-bit. 8-bit is fine for sRGB, but not for a wide-gamut screen setting.

Finally, if you use your xRite i1 to calibrate and profile your screen, do not touch any of the screen controls (brightness, contrast, etc) as these will throw off the settings unless your screen has an internal LUT (Lookup Table). If so, it will lock down the controls and prevent you from doing any damage. I don't think the Surface has this feature but could be wrong.

Dang I just typed out long reply and session expired and everything disappeared...so I will be quick now that i am retyping again: i will list out briefly for confirmation-

1. I will uncheck Use windows display calibration - This was on when i purchased system by default as i have not changed nor manually calibrated with windows calibration utility. I assumed xrite software just read this all and adjusted.

2. I will change default rendering intent to relative colormetric from perceptual- again this was the system default I have never changed. (for one and two I dont understand how there are no instructions to make these changes if they are going to set me up for failure either by xrite or windows- I had to find you to help me!

3. I will delete old profiles to avoid confusion in future.

4. video card where do i find this setting?

5. I currently run calibration via custom to adjust brightness manually to 100 cd/2 and let software adjsut contrast and whatever else as I can not do this manually no control on surface studio only brightness can be adjusted. Should i just run and not choose custom - choose photo option and let it 100 percent take over? I also read reflection or flare brightness as my device does this and this screen is glossy, should i not do that either? I will go with what you suggest....

Finally I have only changed as shown in the advanced tab- the top option device profile which should or would have been System Default (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) i figured why is it still that? and changed it to reflect the calibrated profile in the drop down menu-----Im assuming this was wrong and have reset. Can you confirm it should always read she system default srgb iec61966-2.1? I will set it and leave it there....

Once I have confirmation on all of this- I will make changes and reset monitor display options i.e. vivid srgb and dci-p3 screen modes back to default and recalibrate correctly with these correct settings already set as you stated..

[Manfred M]

1. The Windows display calibration is only compatible with narrow gamut displays, so if you are set up as a P3 screen, it should not work. Secondly you don't want two different parts of the system trying to control colour; no knowing what will happen, so shut that one down.

2. Again, strange. Rendering intents are how the display driver handles out of gamut colours. In photography we use two of the four; Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual. What Relative Colorimetric does is it moves all out of gamut colours to the nearest in gamut colour and leaves all colours that are in gamut where they are. With Perceptual, this rendering intent redistributes all colours, including the ones that are in gamut. This means you will get some colour shifts. This can be fine when printing, but can be really confusing when you are batch correcting images (and some don't look quite right).

MS at one time did not properly support Perceptual for screen displays and I don't know if they have fixed this or not.

3. Okay - I do the same thing

4. This will be part of your video card software that should be on your machine. I use an AMD Workstation card, so can't help with nVidia. Look for something that looks along the lines of this:



5. If the profiling software takes care of this, great! With the flare profiling, you'll have to test that out. I work in a fairly dark room, so not really an issue for me.

I use the same profile as the one that was output by my i1 Display Pro; in my case, I run a Adobe RGB profile to edit and output to sRGB unless I print. I work to a single setting and don't switch profiles.

[jjgibbs29]

1. The Windows display calibration is only compatible with narrow gamut displays, so if you are set up as a P3 screen, it should not work. Secondly you don't want two different parts of the system trying to control colour; no knowing what will happen, so shut that one down.

2. Again, strange. Rendering intents are how the display driver handles out of gamut colours. In photography we use two of the four; Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual. What Relative Colorimetric does is it moves all out of gamut colours to the nearest in gamut colour and leaves all colours that are in gamut where they are. With Perceptual, this rendering intent redistributes all colours, including the ones that are in gamut. This means you will get some colour shifts. This can be fine when printing, but can be really confusing when you are batch correcting images (and some don't look quite right).

MS at one time did not properly support Perceptual for screen displays and I don't know if they have fixed this or not.

3. Okay - I do the same thing

4. This will be part of your video card software that should be on your machine. I use an AMD Workstation card, so can't help with nVidia. Look for something that looks along the lines of this:



5. If the profiling software takes care of this, great! With the flare profiling, you'll have to test that out. I work in a fairly dark room, so not really an issue for me.

I use the same profile as the one that was output by my i1 Display Pro; in my case, I run a Adobe RGB profile to edit and output to sRGB unless I print. I work to a single setting and don't switch profiles.

Perfect thank you, and last question because i was looking for it in your reply - do i leave the device profile that i believe i manually switched in the advance tab of color manager to the default of sRGB 2.1 and just leave it alone? sorry if you answered and i didn't understand.

[Manfred M]

It might be easiest to show you a screenshot of my Advanced Tab:




I noticed that Benq had a new version of the Profiling Manager when I checked something on their site, so I installed it and updated my profile.

[jjgibbs29]

It might be easiest to show you a screenshot of my Advanced Tab:




I noticed that Benq had a new version of the Profiling Manager when I checked something on their site, so I installed it and updated my profile.

Oh wow so it is in fact the calibrated profile in this box, which is what made sense to me and why i changed it, but I thought I may have been wrong so went back to the system default haha. Thanks again, I am going to set that to my profile once finished. I have set everything else as you have stated and your advance tab looks as well. Thank you again!

My second tab is also different from yours? mine says for srgb viewing conditions and yours for icc viewing conditions- i should match yours i assume..so many system default changes..

[Manfred M]

Oh wow so it is in fact the calibrated profile in this box, which is what made sense to me and why i changed it, but I thought I may have been wrong so went back to the system default haha. Thanks again, I am going to set that to my profile once finished. I have set everything else as you have stated and your advance tab looks as well. Thank you again!

I suspect the issue is that so few users actually have the need to calibrate and profile their screens, most people don't ever look at these settings.

[xpatUSA]

MS at one time did not properly support Perceptual for screen displays and I don't know if they have fixed this or not.

Not certain that it is only a Microsoft problem, Manfred.

My understanding is that ICC V2 profiles of type 'monitor' are normally of the matrix variety (no LUTs). But they often have their intent set to 'perceptual' which is ignored for matrix profiles by most, if not all, apps. I do have one sRGB monitor profile with LUTs + perceptual somewhere that works but I don't use it for my run-of-the-mill photography.

[Manfred M]

My understanding is that ICC V2 profiles of type 'monitor' are normally of the matrix variety (no LUTs).

I'm not certain that this is correct, Ted.

I just calibrated and profiled my screen using ICC V2 using Benq's Palette Master software (which is a modified version of xRite's i1 profiler) and I got several messages that said "Writing LUT". The process would not start until the screen and computer were connected via USB cable, so I can only conclude that this interface was being used to write to the screen's LUT.