Re: Monitor calibration & profiling in a multiuser OSX environmen
Re: Monitor calibration & profiling in a multiuser OSX environmen
- Subject: Re: Monitor calibration & profiling in a multiuser OSX environmen
- From: Peter Miles <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 18:53:04 +1200
- Organization: Massey University
John Gnaegy wrote...
<Snip>
>
> Regarding the 'UNIX user right' philosophy
>
>
So what you want is to prevent users from creating profiles, and leave that right to the system administrator only....
<End snip>
Hi John
OUR AIMS (ideal)
What I'm wanting in our design computer Labs is a ColorSync configuration that would allow our students to be able to do basic color management of their Lab monitors by using (and making) monitor profiles with hardware calibrators such as the
i1Display.
I'd sure like to see our computer Labs' ColorSync configuration allow this outcome as a possibility. (Ideally with us technicians to be in the support / technical backup where needed!)
PROBLEMS
However in our multiuser environment, the OSX ColorSync architecture it's self is preventing us from configuring a workable environment that is this open to users.
REASONS
Our Issues with custom monitor profiles and the current OSX ColorSync architecture is one of levels of confidence, not of function. When our students trust the color accuracy of their monitors, they stop pressing the brightness / contrast buttons
and start adjusting their files instead (it's true!) Users having confidence in the display of our monitors is pivotal to getting color management used.
In our 1000+ student OSX multiuser system, when private monitor profiles are in use, our users simply cannot have confidence that a monitor is displaying color accurately .
This is because when allowing multiple users to create custom monitor profiles, there is no practical way of knowing that the calibration of a monitor is still relevant to your particular personal monitor profile next time you log on.
As was suggested as a solution, having users move the custom monitor profile they create for a monitor to the root level colorsync profiles folder would meet our institutions needs functionally I.e. - other users could now select the correct
profile for the new calibration state of that particular lab monitor.
However this now means that the confidence I have in the accuracy of a monitor depends to a large degree on some unknown student remembering and being able to successfully copy the correct profile from their ~/colorsync/profiles folder to
root/colorsync/profiles folder. Without a technician leaning over every students shoulder who makes a monitor profile, there is no practical way of knowing if someone forgot or was unable to do this. So it is difficult even to have confidence
that even these root level monitor profiles that are relevant either.
With this state of affairs our students would simply stop having confidence in the color accuracy of any of our labs monitors regardless of how they looked. And so would I for that matter.
SOLUTIONS
I'm talking with our IT people to see if they can write write a program to move the custom monitor profiles around in the manner outlined. Having computers move files around to the required locations is something my students and I would have more
faith in being done right every time, (assuming we get the program to work). But having to do this seems to me like a hack and seriously geeky. I feel that these sort of issues would be much better addressed by some additional multi-user support
in the ColorSync architecture.
Thanks again John for your time
and the loan of your long suffering ear.
Kind Regards
Peter Miles
--
Peter Miles
Photography Technician
College of Fine Art, Design and Music
Massey University
Wellington
New Zealand.
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