Dennis Dunbar wrote:
Is anyone else familiar with the different approaches to color management? And if so could you help clear up the fog for me? (Do they really have something there, or are they just blowing smoke?)
Mostly blowing smoke :-) Typically Video and Film are aiming at a very specific sub set of general color management: Emulation of a particular standard. The print equivalent is side by side proofing. So most of the talk is about calibration (ie. making a display device behave in a specified way). ICC profiling is more general and flexible, and provides a mechanism for actually achieving the color management sub set desired by video or film. Another key difference between Video/Film and general color management is the mechanics used to transform color. Computer systems can use software, which is very flexible but not necessarily real time. Video/Film often have either very simple hardware controls (ie. "brightness" and "contrast" knobs. "RGBCMY" primary controls that don't work so well, per channel curves etc.) or the high end actually has hardware capable of per channel, matrix and 3D cLUT transforms (ie. all the machinery ICC profiles use). What's loaded into the 3D cLUT is the equivalent of a device link. (Note though that real time computer color CMM's can be implemented using GPU's.) Graeme Gill.