G5 won't calibrate - colors are very saturated?

Hi guys.

Okay - just got back in.

Here something else I will throw your way (wonder if it means anything....)

When I boot into Tiger, as soon as my desktop is in view, the colours look normal for a second. Then, after my Menu bar and desktop icons load, the colours darken. Could this be something in the startup items? If so, is there a way to select only the systems startup items and trash those?

BB.

If so, is there a way to select only the systems startup items and trash those?



Go to System Preferences/Accounts/Log In Items and if some profile or unknown application is listed and is scheduled to load at startup remove it.

Joe

Sounds like Joe may be on the right track. Your monitor profile gets loaded much sooner than that. There must be a startup item that's throwing things off.

Hold your mouse over each Login Item. A yellow tool tip will appear after a couple of seconds showing you exactly where that item is on the hard drive. Write that information down if you think you may need to add it back in. Otherwise, if it's something you think may be throwing the color off, highlight it and press the minus button to remove it. Restart to see if it affects the color. If you do need to add it back in for some other application that needed that item, press the plus button and navigate to the path you wrote down before removing it.

If it's an old enough version of Photoshop you're using, it may be that Adobe Gamma was loaded into your startup items. That will throw things way out of whack. If you see that one there, remove it.

Also, after trying the above steps by Kurt if it still does not work.....

Go to Applications/Utilities and open ColorSync Utility, select Devices in the upper Menu, and choose your display under Display. Then select the arrow at Current Profile and set the monitor back to default. Does the monitor Change?

There is also a Profile First Aid in the Upper Menu, I have never used it so please read the precautions first. After running the Verify and Repair is there any difference?

Joe

Hi guys.

You two at least should get A+ for all your efforts!

Sigh. I tried all of your above mentioned suggestions. No improvement. Joe - to answer your question about using the Colorsync Utility, yes - there is a differnce when I revert to my factory default, but it isn't the profile I need to make the colours work the way the should. Adobe RGB 1998 is the one that my Panther disk uses.

thanks again, guys.
B.

Hi Kurt and Joe.

I just talked to my supplier and he's wondering if it's a video card issue. I have an ATI card, model: ATY,Rage128Pro. He thinks that perhaps it's incompatible with Tiger.

I will be bringing my computer in to him soon so that he can plug an old card into the PCI slot - see if that makes a difference. If it does, it's been hardware all along...!

I'll keep you both posted. In the meantime, if you think of anything else, please feel free to share your thoughts.

Thank you both for all of your help!
B.

Hmm, that card should be supported by Tiger. I just took a peek in the Extensions folder and there are kernel extensions for both:

ATIRage128.kext
ATIRagePro.kext

So it should work. "Should" being the operative term. 😉

You may also want to consider changing your color setup. Adobe RGB 1998 isn't really a monitor color space. It's meant to be used as a working color space for your images. Each monitor should have it's own profile since all monitors will be different from one another. Even those that are the exact same brand and model. The only really accurate way to calibrate and profile your monitors is with a colorimeter, which come with the software needed to use them. An excellent choice is the Eye-One Display 2.

Hi Kurt.

Thanks again!

Well, I suppose I have nothing to lose (except gas and time) taking my computer in and trying another card. We'll see.

As for Adobe RGB 1998, what you say is true, I'm sure (I defer this to your expertise). All I know is what worked best for my Panther settings.

At any rate, stay tuned and I will post my video card troubleshooting results!

Take care,
B.

All I know is what worked best for my Panther settings.

It "works", but only because it's defined as an RGB color space, which of course any monitor also is. But it doesn't represent your monitor's actual output. The whole idea of a profile is to let the system know, "What gamut and color range is this device capable of reproducing". Since Adobe RGB 1998 is not based on your monitor's color range or gamut, it's meaningless. You're telling the system, "This is what my monitor looks like.", when it doesn't actually reference it at all.

BB, Kurt is correct, you should choose a display profile for your display. Preferable your display Samsung SyncMaster 214T, if not then at least a default monitor profile. Did you try this in the above post?

Joe

Hi guys.

Thank you yet again.

I understand what you're saying. Yes, I've tried every single profle there, and have recalibrated my monitor numberous times (once even with SuperCal).

Here's the thing: I can actually acheive a good monitor setting so that my icons and desktop look like they do in Panther - which is to say 'normal' and pleasing to the eye. This occurs only with Generic RGB, sRGB or my SyncMaster factory settings.

However, when I open Panther-created files in my CS apps after choosing one of these monitor profiles, the colours are all out of whack. They all have the Adobe RGB embedded profile.

Does this help in determining anything?
B.

Message was edited by: Belly Buckle

Please disregard the above entry - I tried editing it and it wouldn't let me.

This is what it should say:


Hi guys.

Thank you yet again.

I understand what you're saying. Yes, I've tried every single profle there, and have recalibrated my monitor numberous times (once even with SuperCal).

Here's the thing: I can actually acheive a good monitor setting so that my icons and desktop look like they do in Panther - which is to say 'normal' and pleasing to the eye. This occurs only with Generic RGB, sRGB or my SyncMaster factory settings.

However, when I open Panther-created files in my CS apps after choosing one of these monitor profiles, the colours are all out of whack. They all have the Adobe RGB embedded profile.

Another footnote: when I recalibrate my monitor, everything appears to be going well until I click 'done' and rename my profile. Then I see everything on my desktop turn as dark and contrasty as the Adobe RGB profile.

Does this help in determining anything?
B.

Hi Belly Buckle,

When it comes to calibrating your monitor, there simply is no replacement for a hardware/software solution such as the Eye-One I linked to above. If you do a lot of prints, or just professional color work in general, $200 is a cheap investment for color matching.

This is because no matter how much you move the sliders or other controls around, your Mac still does not know what the phosphors of your monitor actually look like. All you're doing in the Displays control panel is shifting the LAB values around visually. This produces a profile that is still not based on your monitor's actual display. What a good colorimeter and its software will do, such as the Eye-One, is read the real LAB values the RGB phosphors of your monitor is capable of displaying and then create a profile based on those values. So it doesn't matter how many times you use the Advanced settings, or a program like SuperCal. The Mac still has no idea what your monitor can actually do.

As far as settings, that depends on what you can live with. The default gamma for the Mac is normally 1.8. This gamma most closely simulates the reflective density of paper. Most Windows computers use a default gamma of 2.2. This a much richer and darker gamma, but it's also pretty much impossible to reproduce on paper; photographic, inkjet or otherwise.

For white point, the default is 6500K, which is daylight white. This is a very bright bluish white that cannot be reproduced on paper. A white point of 5000K is much closer to what you can print in regards to light, vibrant colors. The higher (and bluer), the white point, the brighter and richer light colors become on screen.

So your choices are:

1) Use a 6500K white point along with a 2.2 gamma for images on screen that really pop, but will look flat and with less color saturation on your prints in comparison.

2) Use a 5000K white point along with a 1.8 gamma that will cause your monitor to look somewhat flatter and a bit less colorful, but will match your prints much closer as your monitor is set up to more closely simulate a print.

Well, not your only choices. These are the two most commonly used settings. The first is supposed to represent the world around us. The second is used by just about every print shop in the country. But the software for the colorimeter will let you choose pretty much any white point and gamma you want.

However, when I open Panther-created files in my CS apps after choosing one of these monitor profiles, the colours are all out of whack. They all have the Adobe RGB embedded profile.

Which kind of leads back to a possibly damaged OS. More specifically, ColorSync is damaged. Or, it's just your use of profiles that is throwing things out of whack.

When you view an image, ColorSync takes care of the conversions necessary in order to display the color across different devices so the color of each device is as close as possible to each other. Here's a quick example.

1) You open the image in Photoshop, which has Adobe RGB 1998 set as it's working RGB color space. If the embedded profile for the image is not the same, PS converts the data to the working color space, unless you've set the preferences not to do that. If your working profile and the embedded profile of the image are identical, PS simply opens and displays it.

2) So what is PS doing if it has to convert to another profile while opening the image? Since every profile will have different white point, black point, gamut and color range values, PS reads the LAB values of the profile assigned to the incoming file. Since there are a fixed number of these points, it knows where to line them up to the target profile. It then calculates the difference in the LAB values between the two profiles and alters the data of the image to make the image's embedded color match the target color LAB values as closely as possible. The result is color of an image that looks almost exactly like it did on another system even though they used different profiles.

3) The last step for PS and ColorSync now is to perform the same calculation between the image profile and your monitor profile to maintain the correct visual color. If you don't have a proper monitor profile, all of this work by PS is lost. Say you're using Adobe RGB 1998 as your monitor profile. Well, your image has the same profile, so as far as ColorSync is concerned, there's nothing to do to make the color appear correctly on your monitor. It therefore allows the video card to display the LAB/RGB values straight up. The only thing "controlling" color now is whatever you have your monitor's controls set to. In other words, there's no control. If you're using a canned profile such as sRGB, then at least ColorSync has something to work with as far as an actual monitor profile to make the adjustment. But that still doesn't tell ColorSync what your monitor is set to. Is it at a 6300K white and a 2.0 gamma, or somewhere else? It doesn't know. It therefore can't make a proper adjustment of color to your monitor. It's like trying to make the most difficult dessert in the world without the recipe.

This is where the Eye-One colorimeter comes in. It physically reads the LAB values being displayed by your monitor and builds a profile based on the data it reads. Now ColorSync knows exactly what your monitor looks like and can properly, and easily make color appear as it should from monitor to monitor. Assuming all have been profiled using the colorimeter.

Hi Kurt.

Thank you very much for the indepth response. This is great info.

I agree that you totally know what you're talking about.

I could buy Eye-One and find out my monitor's true profile. However, if that makes my already existing CS files look different from the way I 'think' they look in Panther, I won't know how to judge colour in a newly created file properly.

I've had these files professionally printed and the colour always matched closely what I see on screen.

If the Eye-One profile makes me see the colours differently in CS, how will I know, if I create new files, how they will look compared to my old ones?

For example, I have an Illustrator file with a square painted 91% magenta and 100% yellow. It is the perfect orange hue in Panther AND it prints to my satisfaction. When I boot into Tiger, it is blood reddy orange. When I move the Magenta slider down to 75%, it resembles more closely the way I see it in Panther.

So if the Eye-One were to actually show my CS file with the orange square as more reddy or too bright or whatever, I would have to recreate the actual colour values in Illustrator for my screen image to match the one I see in Panther.

Oh my head hurts. 🙂

B.

For example, I have an Illustrator file with a square painted 91% magenta and 100% yellow. It is the perfect orange hue in Panther AND it prints to my satisfaction. When I boot into Tiger, it is blood reddy orange.

Properly printed, 91M, 100Y is a very reddish orange. If by printing to your satisfaction you mean it looks like your monitor when you use your printer, then ColorSync is just doing what it's supposed; making your prints look like your monitor as much as possible. But that doesn't mean it's the correct color for the CMYK values being used.

However, if that makes my already existing CS files look different from the way I 'think' they look in Panther,...

From what I've read in your previous posts, what you see in Panther won't change color a whole lot with a proper monitor profile. What it will do though is get you consistent monitor color across all of your Macs in both Panther and Tiger.

...I won't know how to judge colour in a newly created file properly.

With correct profiling, it will actually be more accurate and consistent. However, RGB is not CMYK. Printed output will almost always look different than your monitor. Mainly in the form of saturated colors that simply can't be reproduced in CMYK.