Colorsync in MacOS Mojave
Colorsync in MacOS Mojave
- Subject: Colorsync in MacOS Mojave
- From: Wire ~ via colorsync-users <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2020 14:45:42 -0800
So the reason I am even here — and I recently submitted my first post in
about 15 years, since back in the day when fine-art Inkjet printing was all
the rage and I found this list from reading the epson-inkjet forum, where
the lovely Bruce Fraser was always on hand to clarify things for newbies
and throw-down with the heavies — is because when I fired up my old DTP94
after a decade of being away from photography, I found that my copy
ColorEyes Display Pro was dead and gone forever due to software version
creep and changing tides in the industry. I went looking for an alternative
and quickly came across DisplayCal. THERE IS A GOD! Suddenly I was back
into building display profiles and sorting through the mysteries of system
alignment, wondering what had changed in so many years, and noticing video
and phones are now the hot topic in color, giving rise to new display
standards. WCG displays are becoming common, and creating common pitfalls.
As an aside, I am surprised to find that for all its promise, ICC CM is as
much of a can'o worms as ever, even more so. And getting worse, with the
evolution of UHD TV. And it's the most vertically integrated company,
Apple, that's able to slip a new bigger gamut display standard into the
market in a way that doesn't cause ordinary users total mayhem. Wasn't
Colorsync supposed to be about the democratization of great color?!
As I worked with DisplayCal, I discovered my late-model MacOS was doing
something strange: Its color management was producing different display
black-patch rendering depending on whether I was using built-in Preview, or
Quicklook, or Adobe Photoshop, and Apple's programs will sometimes get it
obviously wrong. So happens I was playing with DisplayCal's XYZ LUT
capability and the DisplayCal and other forums were abuzz with concern
about how Apple could get it wrong and what can be done. Florian reported
that it was becoming common knowledge that Apple SW can't handle XYZ LUT
profiles and I asked if he had checked in over at the colorsync-users list
from back in the day — I suggested to him those guys ought to know what's
going on and have some traction with Apple. He said he was on the list, but
threw up his hands.
Mac has as bad a reputation as Windows these days, and if I were a new
creative generation is looking towards progress, I would look towards
Linux, where the skilled user has the more freedom and look forward to the
sort of fun and promise that used to be celebrated on Mac in days of yore.
Those days are gone, of course.
I decided to come over here and ask what's going on. So I wrote up my crude
explanation of what I was seeing and posted it here, and found dead
silence. Not even Rodney showed up to tell me what an idiot I am for posted
such uninformed airheaded observations!
Then I realized why Florian had shrugged.
I wrote up a bug report and submitted it to Apple, to no apparent avail—not
that I was expecting anything. Then I ruminate for a bit about how the
Colorsync mailing list has become a forgotten backwater of pre-press nerbs
using Windows, and Apple doesn't even care about Colorsync any more.
I decided to stop by the ICC and noticed they were on the 3rd page of
google, far behind the structured cabling solutions, the International
Criminal Court, Al Jazeera ICC News, and the International Cricket and
Chess Clubs. I found the ICC homepage and they are bragging about some
wonderful developments, and I quote:
//The iccMAX specification was approved by the ICC Steering Committee in
July 2016, and ISO TC 130 members voted unanimously to approve this as a
Working Draft of ISO 20677.//
GREAT NEWS!
So just punted and went along with learning how to align my old displays in
the new world, and along the way DisplayCal forums Florian graciously and
diligently helps anyone and everyone get the most from his killer software,
and explained to me about the limits of my old DTP94 and I worked through
what standard Apple's seemingly excellent built-in display profiles adhere
to. Over at that forum they have a Rodney too, but he's apparently a
specialist in display tech and he will absolutely clobber you over the head
with his immense understanding of all the ways this tech can go right or
wrong, and how you're an idiot for not thinking about the subject hist way.
He will tell you how much Apple sucks at a moments notice.
So this is the state of Colorsync and the ICC...
Meanwhile UHD TV is blasting away with change. And it turns out they don't
even expose the concept of color management outside of the confines of the
specific tool. Who cares what the Windows UI looks like. They just pick a
standard and build the gear to it. At the end of the pipeline, a display is
given a personality either with a built-in LUT or using custom renderer.
Reps go around youtube explaining—quite properly—that you pick a gamma to
suit your viewing conditions. Sony is in bed with Panavision and all that
gear is rented,
Some things change and some stay the same.
There's a wonderful youtube talk by John Seale at the
Australian Cinematographers Society ACS Victoria conference (I want to
share but has since been taken down) were he describes how he did Mad Max
Fury road, that it was his intro to digi coming out of film, and how
Panavision supplied a guy as the color consultant who sat by himself in
truck a mile away from the action, looking at levels in the dailies and
telling Seale and camera crew what to do with capture to help the FX guys
down the line "boost the exposure guys, you've got tons of headroom and the
FX crew hates noise in the shadows. They'll grade it down in post" I loved
how his open an approriate ignorance was no impediment to his work, as
should be true for all of us, something that simply comes with the
territory of new tech. What an odd duck in the lone photographer trying to
do his craft and make sense of such vastly corporate tools and technologies.
The market has a way of its own. Apple is just dropping P3 on the world,
and making it work, and it's barely a talking point. Keynotes just mention
"great color." It's UHD HDR jibber-jabber that's all the buzz with the Pro
XDR.
Andrew, please brow-beat me some more over this post. I feel like I'm
giving you a reason to live.
Meanwhile, it's annoying that Apple's latest SW can't handle well-formed
display profiles that meet spec laid down 25 years ago and just quietly
does the wrong thing and not only does no one on the Colorsync Users list
care, no one here is even using Mac and the listserv is 30 yo technology.
Apple probably has probably completely forgotten this thing.
/wire
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