Re: Call for user feedback
Re: Call for user feedback
- Subject: Re: Call for user feedback
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 09:32:18 +0100
(Start part 2 of Mac OS 9 / ColorSync 3 UI make-over + buzzing Adobe -:))
e. ColorSync 3 autoinstalls a nested folder called Display Profiles
in the ColorSync Profiles folder. That folder should as a matter of
course be called Monitor Profiles and not Display Profiles.
f. Revisiting item (c) above then I've often grumbled here on the
List over the fact that the 'ColorSync Profile' scrollbox and
'Display' popup show non-monitor spaces such as CIERGB and AppleRGB
and AdobeRGB and whatever else. These profiles are properly type
<space> = color space conversion profiles. They are not type <mntr>
in any functional sense of the word. Therefore, a common user error
is to set a synthetic RGB space as monitor profile. I wonder how many
thouasands upon thousands of users set the same profile in the
'ColorSync Profile' scrollbox as in RGB Setup in PS5 - my take is
around 50%!! John Gnaegy is right that Apple can't help it if other
vendors for internal architectural reasons choose to name type <spac>
profiles as type <mntr>. But it is not a practice I think would be
called user friendly -:). Form follows function so please Chris Cox
and Mark Hamburg and Thomas Knoll and all the rest of you, make sure
you classify a profile according to what it does! Because the effect
of Adobe's fuddled classification is that Linocolor 6 and Photoshop 6
are color managing to a synthetic RGB space which has zip and zero to
do with the actual monitor sitting in front of the user. And that's
not what ICC color management is about.
g. The AppleVision recalibration and reprofiling mechanism gets
around problem (f) in the following way: When the user clicks
Recalibrate in the Monitors control panel, the monitor recalibrates
itself, recharacterizes itself, and installs the recharacterization
under the same name as the current monitor profile (e.g
'StudioDisplay Series Number'). The mechanism will bump any third
party profile set in the 'ColorSync Profile' scrollbox and therefore
also in the 'Display' popup in the ColorSync control panel. This
means that owners of Apple monitors run a lower risk of setting a
synthetic RGB space as monitor profile than owners of other brand
monitors. It is quite simply harder to get it wrong, if all you know
is to recalibrate regularly. This doesn't solve the problem with
misnamed color space conversion profiles, but it is not a bad idea
either. Except if you've forked out for Optical or ProveIt! or
ViewOpen or ProfileMaker plus a colorimeter and don't realize how the
Apple monitor calibration framework functions ... -:).
h. The Color dialog in the Monitors control panel actually consists
of two separate panels, the Apple DigitalColor Technologies panel and
the ColorSync Profile panel. Apple defined the Video Card Gamma Tag,
and ProfileMaker and ViewOpen and Optical and ProveIt! and everybody
else on the Mac now use it - even Barco Calibratortalk after a little
persuasion -:). But but but ... the top and bottom panels of the
Color window aren't wired together even for Apple monitors. So if I
rotate through the monitor profiles for my monitor listed in the
'ColorSync Profile' scrollbox, for instance 850 D50 G1.9 - 850 D65
G1.8 and so on and so forth, then the monitor should hardware
recalibrate. It doesn't do that, though. Linking the VCGT feature to
the recalibration mechanism would make for consistency - and endless
waits each time I selected the wrong monitor profile ... -:). Maybe
(h) is a problem, maybe not, but it's inconsistent.
i. Many of the words used in the Monitors and ColorSync control
panels are too hard, especially those in the Monitors control panel.
There might be suggestions for more experience-near terms to replace
'Gamma Curve' and 'White Point', for instance.
k. The 'Recalibrate' button should be 'Recalibrate and Reprofile'
because that's what actually happens. Fred Bunting is quite right
that 'calibrate' refers to changing the behaviour of the device and
'characterize' refers to changing the numbers sent to the device in
order to reproduce a desired color appearance. Even if Adobe and
Heidelberg confuse 'calibrated colors' with 'characterizing a
device', it doesn't follow that the Apple UI has to follow suit -:).
--
Henrik Holmegaard
TechWrite, Denmark