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calibrating Display

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L Robbin

Active Member
Premium Classic Member
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Mar 18, 2019
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219
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
5.x
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom 11.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
I sent this message to DataColor: "How do I calibrate the display on my iMac M using SpyderX Elite to either Adobe Color Pro or Adobe RBG."
Just in case someone on this forum knows, I'm sending this message out (you guys are very good at expeditious answers compared to support centers where it can take days)
 
When you calibrate a monitor, you do not calibrate it to a color space. A monitor is calibrated to against a known set of targets that the hardware reads from the software. If your monitor can be run in different color spaces, what space does DataColor recommend choosing when running the calibration?

--Ken
 
I simply let the Spyder-X do its 'thing' and create a monitor profile (the best it can do with my screen capability).
My graphics options are set to always load the Spyder created profile when Windows starts.
In the Spyder software (at the end of the calibration process) you can view a graph that indicates how your screen compares to the color spaces (sRGB, AdobeRGB, etc)
 
It didn't seem to recommend any color space. At the end, it said 100% sRGB and 85% AdobeRBG. Because I use Adobe RBG or Adobe Pro Color on my cameras and because I don't much if any on the web.
 
It didn't seem to recommend any color space. At the end, it said 100% sRGB and 85% AdobeRBG. Because I use Adobe RBG or Adobe Pro Color on my cameras and because I don't much if any on the web.
You are mixing and matching things which is not uncommon. We work in color spaces and we assign color spaces to certain files like jpegs. Your monitor can display certain color spaces, as is indicated by the results you have mentioned. But you do not calibrate equipment to color spaces. You calibrate equipment to know standards. The software that DataColor provides you tells its color "puck" what it should be seeing when you perform a calibration. Then it can it make adjustments to try and bring your equipment as close as it can to that standard.

If you have a monitor that is only capable of displaying sRGB at 100%, you may want to stick with with displaying that color space if you are dong color critical work. If your monitor is capable of displaying Adobe RGB at 100%, then the 85% reading is of concern. I am suspecting the former rather than the latter since sRBG monitors usually can display about that much of the Adobe RGB color space, give or take.

This does not mean that you cannot work with, or save, your files in other color spaces, but you will not be able to see the full gamut on your screen. If you are doing color critical work in LR, I would strongly suggest soft proofing anything before exporting.

Hope this helps,

--Ken
 
I sent this message to DataColor: "How do I calibrate the display on my iMac M using SpyderX Elite to either Adobe Color Pro or Adobe RBG."
If you mean an iMac M1, then that display is capable of reproducing the P3 color gamut.
P3 is a wide gamut color space, similar in size to Adobe RGB. Both Adobe RGB and P3 are much larger than sRGB.

The answer to your question is probably that the question does not need to be asked. What does that mean? First of all, as far as I know, iMac displays are like most displays out there, in that they can be software calibrated (measured and then a profile generated to correct any deviations), but not fully hardware calibrated. Because it cannot be fully hardware calibrated, you cannot tell it what gamut to reproduce. It’s going to reproduce the P3 gamut no matter what you do. That's why the gamut question doesn't need to be asked; you probably can’t do anything about it.

The function of the profile that Datacolor produces is not to change the gamut. What it does is make the display reproduce colors as accurately as it can, within the gamut it covers.

It didn't seem to recommend any color space. At the end, it said 100% sRGB and 85% AdobeRBG.
It did not recommend any color space for the reasons in the previous paragraph: An M1 iMac display going to reproduce P3, and you can’t change that.
It says 85% Adobe RGB probably because that is the difference in coverage between the P3 gamut of the display and the Adobe RGB gamut.

But the “missing” 15% has little meaning, it isn’t useful for comparison. It doesn't even mean that Adobe RGB has 15% more colors than the display. Color gamuts are 3D shapes that are not uniform. As stated earlier, P3 and Adobe RGB are both much larger than sRGB. Yet Adobe RGB and P3 do not cover all of each other, so you can’t say either one “covers the most.” However, P3 does cover almost all of sRGB, which is why it claims the iMac P3 display covers 100% of sRGB. But a better answer would be that the iMac P3 display covers well over 100% of sRGB.

Another complication is that those percentages are often measured at a single luminance level, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. If measured from light to dark, at some luminance levels sRGB extends beyond Adobe RGB or P3, even though sRGB is overall much smaller. A single percentage doesn't account for this.

ColorSync-Utility-3D-sRGB-vs-Adobe-RGB-&-P3.gif


The Adobe RGB gamut is not a holy grail standard for anything, so not having 100% Adobe RGB coverage is normally not a concern when you also have 100% coverage of P3 (which the profiler did not list). The P3 gamut of the iMac is about the same size as Adobe RGB, it’s just a different slice of the visible RGB colors. P3 is actually more consistent with sRGB than Adobe RGB is. For all of these reasons and more, saying “85% of Adobe RGB” is not a cause for concern on its own, so you should not get hung up on it. Depending on the colors in the photos you take, either Adobe RGB or P3 might be a better fit as demonstrated at this link (The Wide Gamut World of Color — iMac Edition).

If you were to measure P3 coverage on an Adobe RGB display, that test could end up saying "85% of P3,” but again, that percentage wouldn’t make that display look bad if the point of the display is to cover Adobe RGB and not P3.

The #1 reason the percentages are not useful is because they don’t tell you which colors are not covered: Are they unnatural colors that are never in your photos, or natural colors that are always in your photos? Missing 15% of unused colors is no problem, missing 5% of frequently used colors is a big problem. But the percentage specs never talk about it that way.

And if you are editing in Lightroom, neither Adobe RGB nor sRGB matches because Lightroom converts all imported images for editing in the ProPhoto RGB color space, and exports to the color space you choose. This is also totally normal color management, not a problem.

Hope all this didn’t just confuse you further… :) Just run the Datacolor software and accept the profile that comes out the other end, and you will have a calibrated wide gamut P3 display, ready for you to edit photos and enjoy editing on your M1 iMac!
 
Thanks, thanks... I liked the explanation. It is clearing up some big mysteries for me.
 
Thanks, thanks... I liked the explanation. It is clearing up some big mysteries for me.

Lightroom processes in the ProPhotoRGB color space which is larger than the others listed. ProPhotoRGB is considered a computational colorspace. A display color profile will have a smaller envelop due to the hardware limitation of the device. Computed colors that fall outside of the display envelop will be conferred by the color profile being used to create the display image to the margins of the color profile envelope. For P3 and AdobeRGB that shift in minimal and usually not noticeable. This. Is especially true when viewing a Lightroom computed image on a display media color tuned to AdobeRGB or P3.

sRGB was developed by HP and Microsoft ~25 years ago to describe the color capabilities of CRT display monitors.

Adobe developed the AdobeRGB colorspace to describe the color capabilities of print media about the same.

When creating a derivative image file from Lightroom, consideration should be made for the destination display media characteristics and the audience.

With the advent of newer flat screen monitors color capabilities of display monitors improved to the Adobe RGB/Display-P3 capabilities. However, most internet browsers are not tuned to anything higher than sRGB. For this reason any image file created for general consumption should be constrained to the sRGB ColorSpace.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
The intended display image is: a Blurb book; a Blurb e-book; prints that I make on a Canon Pro-100 printer.
 
The intended display image is: a Blurb book; a Blurb e-book; prints that I make on a Canon Pro-100 printer.

Canon Print Profiles are available for a number of different paper media. You should determine the paper brand and type and choose a color profile specific to you or printer and paper. These can be saved as derivative images files (preferably TIFF) and imported into the master catalog. You can then use these files as the source for your Blurb book.
ICC color profiles vary with the paper being used. A matte paper absorbs ink while a Glossy paper can float more ink on its surface.

If you are printing a book, then you want to select a two sided paper that can take a photo quality print on each side.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
"You should determine the paper brand and type and choose a color profile specific to you or printer and paper. These can be saved as derivative images files (preferably TIFF) and imported into the master catalog. You can then use these files as the source for your Blurb book.
ICC color profiles vary with the paper being used."


The first sentence above, of course, I follow... I think. There is a Canon Glossy paper that I like and I have color profile I use that seems to work. I tend to check out photos in PS and print from there because I'm used to doing it that way. And I also check photo files intended for a Blurb book in Adobe and "apply" in View the Blurb ICC profile. But... can you unpack what you write next? What is the "derivative image"? Is it a photo file with a specific Color profile assigned to it? Or something else? I guess I need to know what you mean before I follow what you write next (import into master catalog, use as source for Blurb book).
I think I'm getting a very useful education here.
 
Lightroom uses ProPhoto RGB Color Space. It has been described previously. Every export file from Lightroom is a derivative image (with Lightroom Edits) hence the term derivative file. To create this new image file you need to save it in some color space other than ProPhotoRGB. I don’t know the Blurb ICC color profile but it probably is a color profile for printing through the Blurb site using their printer and paper. IOW that color profile only matches their paper and ink.

Every export has an option to include the derivative file in the catalog inventory (i.e. import). Once the derivative image is in the catalog, you can use the Book Module with those images to create your book Your Canon Glossy paper is one sided so you can not print on the back side too create a regular book. You may want to rethink this process.
 
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