This poll is addressed to people who edit or process photos on their PC.
Background
When viewing or editing pictures / photos on your monitor, you need to be able to trust your monitor and operating system to display the colors correctly. However, if the monitor and / or the operating system's windows manager is not adjusted correctly, chances are that the colors you see on your screen do not exactly resemble the colors that are actually in the picture.
Here is where color management and monitor profiling come in.
Under Windows and Mac OS there are simple utilities to improve the faithfulness of the colors on your screen. Application software like Adobe Photoshop provide also utilities, mainly a Gamma adjustment utility. Such Gamma adjustment utilities are now also available under Linux.
However, there is a long way from simple Gamma adjustment to a color managed monitor display.
A short story to make my point: Some time ago I spent several days editing around 150 photos and submitted them to a photo lab for prints. When I got them back, ALL of them had a blueish tint and were useless. I then spent $250 to buy a monitor calibration device to put an end to this uncertainty. This device, together with the supplied software, can calibrate the monitor so there are (nearly) no bad surprises.
Monitor calibration under Linux
The number of photo editing applications under Linux is growing rapidly. Many of them are real good. Many of them even support the import of RAW images from high-end DSLR cameras, which usually provide a wider tonal range (more than 8 bit per color channel, i.e. Red, Green or Blue).
However, the support of out-of-the-box color management and display calibration under Linux is still way behind the competition (sigh). Many photo editors have integrated color management by now. But that doesn't do any good if one cannot calibrate the monitor in an easy and reliable fashion.
I've been searching a lot on the Internet to find a suitable solution. There is little mentioning on this subject, and very few contributions from the Linux community.
This is a bit of a surprise, as I cannot imagine that all those digital camera users don't care how their photos turn out?
The poll
The above poll is aimed at getting a feedback from other Linux users on if and how they like to have color management and monitor calibration being implemented - FROM A USER POINT OF VIEW. The options given here may or may not be technically feasible or practical - I'm not the expert to say.
There are several options:
1. The user uses a Gamma adjustment utility and visually adjusts the monitor via the monitor controls. There is no adjustment to the graphics card driver or windows manager / X display. This option will NOT work for laptops, as there are no adjustments to the screen.
2. In a dual-boot environment, a utility like xcalib could load the specified monitor profile (.icm) from the MS Windows / Mac directory and adjust the monitor when loading the X display. This requires a Windows / Mac partition to be available, which contains the .icm monitor profile. This option would allow users to use a hardware monitor calibration device (such as the GretagMacbeth i1 Display 2 or similar which is unfortunately only supported under Windows / Mac) under Windows (for example) and have Linux use this profile. An easy alternative is to copy this profile into the appropriate Linux directory. However, it requires that Linux distributions ship and install with xcalib or a similar utility that can modify the LUT or Gamma ramp of the monitor. The advantage of it is that once you load X the monitor will be calibrated.
3. Similar to 2., a utility like xcalib would read a monitor profile from a Linux directory and apply the settings (LUT) to the monitor when starting X. This does not solve the issue of creating an appropriate monitor profile.
4. Either the manufacturers of hardware monitor calibration devices, or some bright Linux developers, develop software to support popular monitor calibrators such as the one mentioned under 2. An option could be to support the manufacturer provided software under Wine, but I doubt it will work (never tried, though). THIS IS THE BEST SOLUTION, IMHO. As far as my experience shows, there is nothing that can replace a colorimeter. Graeme Gill has put a lot of effort into argyllcms, which is as far as I know the one and only solution which does support some hardware colorimeters under Linux.
5. One can either color manage the display, or an application such as digikam, Gimp, Cinepaint or Lightzone (to name a few) can color manage the display, that is the picture you see. Unless you use a color managed application, the display will not be color managed and what you see on screen is not necessarily what you will get when printed or what others see with a color managed display. Again, this option does not solve creating a calibration profile for the monitor, but how an existing profile will be used. In each color managed application, one has to specify the monitor profile to be used (it should be always the same profile, unless you use different screens for different applications).
6. If none of the options work for you, or you think there are other ways to tackle the task, tick this option.
7. Life is great - so why bother with color management under Linux? If you're color blind, this could be the answer.
Please note that you are welcome to select several options. Hope to hear your opinion.
Thanks,
Heiko
Background
When viewing or editing pictures / photos on your monitor, you need to be able to trust your monitor and operating system to display the colors correctly. However, if the monitor and / or the operating system's windows manager is not adjusted correctly, chances are that the colors you see on your screen do not exactly resemble the colors that are actually in the picture.
Here is where color management and monitor profiling come in.
Under Windows and Mac OS there are simple utilities to improve the faithfulness of the colors on your screen. Application software like Adobe Photoshop provide also utilities, mainly a Gamma adjustment utility. Such Gamma adjustment utilities are now also available under Linux.
However, there is a long way from simple Gamma adjustment to a color managed monitor display.
A short story to make my point: Some time ago I spent several days editing around 150 photos and submitted them to a photo lab for prints. When I got them back, ALL of them had a blueish tint and were useless. I then spent $250 to buy a monitor calibration device to put an end to this uncertainty. This device, together with the supplied software, can calibrate the monitor so there are (nearly) no bad surprises.
Monitor calibration under Linux
The number of photo editing applications under Linux is growing rapidly. Many of them are real good. Many of them even support the import of RAW images from high-end DSLR cameras, which usually provide a wider tonal range (more than 8 bit per color channel, i.e. Red, Green or Blue).
However, the support of out-of-the-box color management and display calibration under Linux is still way behind the competition (sigh). Many photo editors have integrated color management by now. But that doesn't do any good if one cannot calibrate the monitor in an easy and reliable fashion.
I've been searching a lot on the Internet to find a suitable solution. There is little mentioning on this subject, and very few contributions from the Linux community.
This is a bit of a surprise, as I cannot imagine that all those digital camera users don't care how their photos turn out?
The poll
The above poll is aimed at getting a feedback from other Linux users on if and how they like to have color management and monitor calibration being implemented - FROM A USER POINT OF VIEW. The options given here may or may not be technically feasible or practical - I'm not the expert to say.
There are several options:
1. The user uses a Gamma adjustment utility and visually adjusts the monitor via the monitor controls. There is no adjustment to the graphics card driver or windows manager / X display. This option will NOT work for laptops, as there are no adjustments to the screen.
2. In a dual-boot environment, a utility like xcalib could load the specified monitor profile (.icm) from the MS Windows / Mac directory and adjust the monitor when loading the X display. This requires a Windows / Mac partition to be available, which contains the .icm monitor profile. This option would allow users to use a hardware monitor calibration device (such as the GretagMacbeth i1 Display 2 or similar which is unfortunately only supported under Windows / Mac) under Windows (for example) and have Linux use this profile. An easy alternative is to copy this profile into the appropriate Linux directory. However, it requires that Linux distributions ship and install with xcalib or a similar utility that can modify the LUT or Gamma ramp of the monitor. The advantage of it is that once you load X the monitor will be calibrated.
3. Similar to 2., a utility like xcalib would read a monitor profile from a Linux directory and apply the settings (LUT) to the monitor when starting X. This does not solve the issue of creating an appropriate monitor profile.
4. Either the manufacturers of hardware monitor calibration devices, or some bright Linux developers, develop software to support popular monitor calibrators such as the one mentioned under 2. An option could be to support the manufacturer provided software under Wine, but I doubt it will work (never tried, though). THIS IS THE BEST SOLUTION, IMHO. As far as my experience shows, there is nothing that can replace a colorimeter. Graeme Gill has put a lot of effort into argyllcms, which is as far as I know the one and only solution which does support some hardware colorimeters under Linux.
5. One can either color manage the display, or an application such as digikam, Gimp, Cinepaint or Lightzone (to name a few) can color manage the display, that is the picture you see. Unless you use a color managed application, the display will not be color managed and what you see on screen is not necessarily what you will get when printed or what others see with a color managed display. Again, this option does not solve creating a calibration profile for the monitor, but how an existing profile will be used. In each color managed application, one has to specify the monitor profile to be used (it should be always the same profile, unless you use different screens for different applications).
6. If none of the options work for you, or you think there are other ways to tackle the task, tick this option.
7. Life is great - so why bother with color management under Linux? If you're color blind, this could be the answer.
Please note that you are welcome to select several options. Hope to hear your opinion.
Thanks,
Heiko
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