[BigMackCam]

Do systems like Spyder or DisplayCAL just create ICC profiles that Windows or other operating systems use as the basis for their own colour management? Or do the profile loaders that Spyder and DisplayCAL run at startup bypass the operating system's colour management and take direct control of it themselves? For example I use a plain white desktop background and both the Spyder and DisplayCAL systems alter the shade of that white, even though my understanding is that Windows itself doesn't colour manage the desktop.

Again, sorry if I'm putting things in an overly simplistic way. I feel I should keep adding caveats that this is a learning process for me, and to an extent my posts in this thread are a way of sort of thinking aloud and of course to seek very helpful input from others. There's no intention to cause any confusion.

In its simplest application, DisplayCAL "merely" produces an ICC profile that you can set your OS and / or applications to use. This is exactly how I use DisplayCAL on my old Linux Mint laptop. In later versions of DisplayCAL - and in my HP ZBook's proprietary profiling software - it seems to integrate with or override (I believe the former, but I'm not certain) the OS in activating and switching to the profile.

It's my belief that Windows does use colour management for the desktop, but lets applications handle it themselves (hence, Windows can use one ICC profile, but colour managed applications can be set to use different ones). But I'm doubting myself now on Window's implementation of colour management at the desktop level. I'll have to read up some more tomorrow...

monitor calibration colour management in general is a flippin' nightmare.

Fixed that for you, Dave

To add to our nightmare, you might read the following article. Initially, it seems skewed towards printing, but in fact it applies to any output device.

Pay particular attention to the sections towards the bottom, titled "What does all this mean?" and "What about the other intents?" (the latter explains absolute colormetric rendering, and I've some concerns over that).

http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/understanding-rendering-intents.html

At the risk of some overall saturation loss, I'm going to stick with perceptual rendering intent both for my display profiles and individual photo export files. At least this way I'll see all nuances in images on my display and sent for printing, and avoid potential banding artefacts...

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 02-14-2020 at 05:25 PM.

[Dartmoor Dave]

At the risk of some overall saturation loss, I'm going to stick with perceptual rendering intent both for my display profiles and individual photo export files. At least this way I'll see all nuances in images on my display and sent for printing, and avoid potential banding artefacts...

Thanks for the link Mike. It's a shame that all the online articles about rendering intent are always completely printing oriented, but that one at least mentions monitors. One of the great things about DisplayCAL is the ease with which you can switch between different profiles, so for a while I expect I'll be looking at photos using all three of the rendering intents that I've got stored. And, knowing me, I'll probably never be able to reach a final decision about which one works best.

Or maybe I'll just go back to shooting slides. Life was so much easier in those days, when all you needed was a 6500K light box.