Microsoft's color-management claims
Microsoft's color-management claims
- Subject: Microsoft's color-management claims
- From: Marco Ugolini <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 14:42:16 -0700
At the following URL you can find a reply to Edmund Ronald from Microsoft's
Joshua Weisberg (didn't he write a color management book once for Apple a
while back? Mmmm...):
http://photofeedback.blogspot.com
(By the way, thank you, Edmund Ronald, for making this document available)
I urge anyone of the many on this list with far more color science knowledge
than I will ever have to provide their comments, but here are some snippets
I find particularly puzzling.
Head-scratcher #1:
> ICC and WCS XML architectures are both profile-based. It is probably clearer
> to describe ICC profiles as pre-processed monolithic collections of device,
> viewing condition and gamut mapping data, where the WCS XML profiles are
> unprocessed modular profiles with separate profiles for the objective
> intra-device measurement data, the objective intra-viewing condition
> measurement data and the subjective inter-device/viewing condition gamut
> mapping data. In one sense, both ICC and WCS XML profiles contain the same
> basic information. ICC profiles combine them all together typically after some
> processing by the profile creation software to massage the objective
> measurement data into the format structure. WCS XML profiles keeps the
> information separate and unprocessed until invoked by the workflow
> transformation process.
If the measurement data have to be processed at some point, what difference
does it actually make to process them earlier or later? (I'm not being
polemical here: I am really asking for an answer. And what measurement data
are we talking about here? Colorimetric or spectral? And who is supposed to
provide the spectrophotometer to take the measurements? Does WCS come with
one?) At one point or another, some decisions still have to be made about
chromatic adaptation, interpolation and all the other factors which end up
making the profile usable. So saying that software packages other than
Microsoft's WCS "do the processing beforehand, but we wait until the
workflow requests it" (or something to that effect) may SOUND impressive,
but is it REALLY? Where are the numbers and tests that prove the superiority
of WCS over the current solutions?
(I make no mystery of my antipathy towards Microsoft, but I am not knocking
them on principle here: I am just not going to take their fuzzy wording on
the subject as PROOF that their solution is superior. Not quite yet.
Convince me, please.)
Head-scratcher #2:
>> 3) In what way is the drift of equipment addressed? Will MS encourage a
>> move to self-calibrating equipment, or is the user still supposed to keep
>> measuring his equipment and ensuring its color stability?
>
> This solution will enable 3rd parties to better address the problem of drift
> by supporting plug-in device models as well as device model profiles that
> are objective measurement data which can easily be compared against newer
> measurements to compute differences and recomputed the plug-in device
> parameters. While we did not solve all color management problems with this
> version, but this work lays the foundation for a long term commitment to
> solving color management problems.
In a white paper
(<http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/d/6/5d6eaf2b-7ddf-476b-93dc-7cf00
72878e6/WCS.doc>), Microsoft emphasizes how their Windows Color System (WCS)
is "transparent" and represents a step away from the necessity for color
experts to obtain color-managed results ("Troubleshooting color problems is
complicated and obscure for even the most knowledgeable expert users" --
"Color used to be the domain of experts" -- and so on, statements clearly
aimed at insinuating the impression that WCS is liberating us from the
tyranny of expert knowledge, though never quite explicitly saying so --
which allows deniability later, a trick common in political circles).
"Color management for the masses," if you will. Great. Apart from the fact
that the white paper offers no concrete workflow examples to illustrate how
such "transparency" is supposed to unfold, now this reply quoted above says
that things like device drift require user intervention. How many
"non-expert" users, or even moderately knowledgeable users, will be able to
do this on their own? Gather "objective measurement data which can easily be
compared against newer measurements to compute differences and recomputed
the plug-in device parameters"? How many will look at this and say" "Screw
it! I quit!"?
Again, Microsoft may really have a doomsday machine up their sleeves here,
just like the Soviet ambassador in Dr. Strangelove. But so far it's truly
hard to figure out behind the fog of their opaque explanations what truly
innovative offerings they have for all of us, and if they perform as well as
they claim compared to our present way of working.
--------------
Marco Ugolini
Mill Valley, CA
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