ICC profile editor

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

Hi. Anyone knows an ICC (ICM) profile editor (by Adobe or - in lack thereof - any other, preferably freeware) to fine-tune an ICC profile created by a calibration device ? Thanks.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

Also:
Is it true that I can create an ICC profile with Photoshop ?

I read this here:
<http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00GyM6>

"For example, if your results with the profile show a green cast: open the target scan in Photoshop, start a curve dialogue, and do a simple pull of the midpoint of the green curve, to make it *brighter*, say from 118 to 138.

Save as a copy, and create a new icc profile with this file."

[Gernot_...@adobeforums.com]

Generally spoken, profiles shouldn't need editing.

My practical advice is this: if the profile isn't
convincing, then change the parameters for the gene-
ration of the profile, based on accurately measured
target values. There are so many degrees of freedom,
concerning total ink limit, GCR strategy, starting
point of GCR etc..
So far my comment refers to printer profiles.

More feedback can be expected here (Adobe Color
Management):
<http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.eea5b31>

Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for your advice Gernot. I forgot to mention, it's about monitor profiles. And I don't have any parameters I can change unfortunately. And yes, the profile needs a bit of editing, unfortunately.

So can Photoshop create/edit ICC profiles (as posted above) ?

[Gernot_...@adobeforums.com]

Mark,

I'm using ProfileMaker5, and here it's really not
necessary to 'tweak' the monitor profiles.
I don't know whether PhS offers editing of (monitor)
profiles.
It should be discussed why your calibration device
doesn't deliver reliable profiles.

I'm not believing in the eternal truth of industrial
software, but concerning the monitor calibration,
the state of the art is IMO convincing.

Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

I'm using Datacolor's Spyder 3pro. One of the cheapest solutions. And it seems I'm paying the price for not having invested more ...

Please let me ask again:

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Monitor profiles really should never need or be edited. They are what they are, and they're supposed to represent the current state of your calibration. Datacolor should give you another puck if you're not getting dead neutral grays. When you bring up a neutral RGB "gray" ramp in any standardized RGB space, it should appear neutral or very near neutral throughout the tonal range.

I use ProfileMaker 5 too, and the Edit Module in it is one of the best available. There are plenty of times where you need to do a very specific Selective Color tweak to some output profiles. There are also times where I've edited a slightly steeper, and more contrasty, black curve in CMYK profiles for offset presses, but only after seeing that every file needed the same post conversion fix to make them pop.

Profile Editing in general is not something to be taken lightly, and often, "fixing" one thing unfixes something else. If you have the interest and the patience and the real need, editing can put that final touch that takes your output to the next level - just not on the monitor.

[Glen...@adobeforums.com]

No, I can’t think of any way at all you can edit your monitor profile in Photoshop. Your reference was to a not-very-scientific way of compensating for an imperfect scanner profile (basically, rebuilding it having used Curves to change the scanned values it is built on).

I’m wondering what it is you’re seeing that makes you feel your monitor profile needs adjusting? (Don’t forget, any sensor or profiler is limited by what the monitor is physically capable of).

BasICColor Display4 is an excellent monitor/display profiler and does have a fine-tuning edit facility (though I’ve never tried it out)… You can trial it
here <http://www.basiccolor.de/english/index_E.htm>…

Good luck
Glenn

[contact_me_via_my_website]

I too think BasICColor Display4 can do very good monitor profiles and it's quite unexpensive for what it does (especially compared with ProfileMaker).

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Mark - what are the white point/gamma/luminance settings? Have you tried using the monitor controls to get it roughly right and recalibrate?

While the Spyder3pro isn't the most expensive, it should be perfectly adequate for this purpose. I don't use it myself (I use a Spyder2 puck with ColorEyes Display Pro) - but I notice it has an ambient light sensor, could this be what's throwing it off?

Oh, one more thing, is your monitor properly warmed up (at least 30 mins) before calibration?

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

@PeterFigen: I know, they shouldn't be edited. Datacolor already exchanged the device, same results. We have problems on several different monitor brands. I feel, Datacolor's calibration doesn't do a good job. Thanks for suggesting ProfileMaker5's Edit Module, I'll try that out.

@Glenn_UK: Thanks for confirming that Photoshop has no such capabilities. And I admit, I didn't quite understand the article I was linking to. I just read "Open Photoshop ... Save as a copy, and create a new icc profile with this file" So I thought, maybe Photoshop has a function I'm not aware of. The problem I experience is that the monitor - after calibration - has a slight green cast (when compared to an industrial greyscale chart). So basically, I wanted to bend the green gamma curve a bit down. I know, that this is not a solution, but I have to get a job done and need this as a temporary fix in the meanwhile ... better than nothing. I will study other calibration devices afterwards, I just don't have the time right now for this work unfortunately.

@GustavoSanchez+Glenn: Thanks for suggesting BasICColor Display4. I'll look into that.

@Freeagtent: I work on an Eizo Flexscan Monitor. It has several predefined working modes: Text, Picture, Movie, Custom, sRGB. Obviously exluding the first three, I settled for sRGB, because in this mode I can only adjust the backlight, nothing else and I thought - or at least hoped - that it would be closest to my calibration target (sRGB) and thus make me achieve the best calibration results (because the less the display output has to be "corrected"/"adjusted", the better). Also, in custom mode, I have several settings and therefore more possibilities to do something "wrong" ... so I thought I stick to sRGB, because there are no parameters and the SpyderCalibration has no parameters in that case either, so at least there's no possiblity for a user-error.
And thanks for thinking about it, but yes, my monitor is warmed up >1 hour and I have the ambient light detection set to off (as suggested by Datacolor's support). I have filed a ticket with them more than 1 month ago and every once in a while I get messages, saying they are sorry, they are still evaluating the problem on it on different systems/monitors, so judging from that, I guess they might have a production problem.

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

It has several predefined working modes: Text, Picture, Movie, Custom,
sRGB.

I'd go for custom and get it in the ballpark on the monitor first. Then calibrate to D65 (6500), gamma 2,2 and luminance 100 - 120 cd/m².

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

@Freeagent: Thanks a lot. I'll try and compare the results. Just to understand the logic behind it ... why would "custom" be more adequate than sRGB ?

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

@Gernot Hoffmann + Peter Figen:
I am currently testing ProfileMaker5's "ProfileEditor". It looks really sophisticated.
For what I'm doing, I guess I need to select:
under A: "One ICC profile"
under B: the profile created by my Spyder-calibration-device. Then choose, RGB->LAB and perceptual.

But then ...?
The only tools available for this selection is Gradations and "profile white point". Given that I want to correct a green cast, can I use the "profile white point" ? I tried both tools, but am a bit clueless ...

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Mark,

Please, please, do not edit your monitor profile. It will only serve to confuse your issues and you'll never know exactly where you are, color or calibration wise. In the last 12 years of making hardware calibrated monitor profiles, I have never once encountered a circumstance where the monitor profile needed editing and I can't believe yours does either. What you are trying to do is compensate for bad hardware, and that's not what profile editing is for.

Order yourself up a Gretag/X-Rite calibrator and be done with it.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

I fully agree with you Peter. That's exactly what I'll do. I have not yet studied the Datacolor Sypder's competitors, but this seems to have a whole new concept (or does X-Rite do the same thing?):

<http://www.basiccolor.de/english/Datenblaetter_E/squid_E/squid_E.htm>

Or is this humbug ?

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I need a temporary fix for the next week or so, and then I'll look into a true solution.

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

why would "custom" be more adequate than sRGB ?

It was just that since the sRGB setting seemed to lock down all parameters you had nothing to lose. As the others say, a profile that doesn't give you dead neutral grays is basically useless.

Just go with what Peter says. He's been doing this for a long time.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

I see. Thanks, Freeagent. And yes, I specifically answered to Peter's suggestions.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

Or can anyone tell me how to modify the profile's gamma curve ? Because the spyder-calibrated-profile is considerably brighter than the prints of my photo-lab (even if one considers that paper has no backlight). I would use Adobe Gamma Loader for this, but it says it can't open the .icc file I created with my Spyder because "the selected profile is not a legal RGB display profile".

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Adobe Gamma...that could well be your problem right there. See, the calibrator's LUT loader and Adobe Gamma are mutually exclusive, if they're both active at startup. If Adobe Gamma kicks in after the LUT loader, that's the profile that will load.

Open the "Run" box in your start menu and type "msconfig" (ex the quotes). Click the Startup tab. If Adobe Gamma is checked, uncheck it and restart.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

That's not the case. Actually neither Adobe Gamma nor my calibration software is active on startup. I always load my profile manually. But thanks for helping.

[contact_me_via_my_website]

Mark,

I have a Flexscan as well and with a colorimetre and a BasicICColor or a ColorEye or even the software that comes with the colorimetre, the profiles are very good (I have tried the three, by the way and I bought the first one thought ColorEyes is almost as good as well and much easier to install).

I would not mess around with the monitor's profile, truly. Ask in the color management forum. Over there, Lou Dina has a PDF on basic calibration for his clients that explains this matters and their 'whys' and 'hows' very well, for instance.

You'll reach a rather satisfying point with no doubt, just don't get lost in this editing-profile track, if I may say it so.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for telling us your experience Gustavo. I know about your caveats, may I again underline that I was looking for a temporary fix only for a week or so.

Going back to Photoshop's capabilities:

Color.org says that Photoshop can both create AND edit profiles !! :

<http://www.color.org/profilingtools.xalter>

.... your reactions, guys ?

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

"Color.org says that Photoshop can both create AND edit profiles !! : "

What they fail to mention is the extremely limited fashion that Ps can do this. The only profiles that Ps can create or modify on its own are the "icc" compliant profiles generated from the Custom CMYK control panel. When you generate and save these settings as profiles, Ps does see them as such, but they're not the same in the sense that they're based off of custom measurements.

The only way I know of to modify or edit true icc profiles in Photoshop is with Kodak's Custom Color Edit module, which operates as a Photoshop plugin and uses Photoshop's color and tone controls to do the editing. ColorVision's edit module may also work in a similar fashion.

[Ho]

There is an app, now discontinued I think, called Doctor Pro. If memory serves, it is&#8212;or was&#8212;a Photoshop plugin. It allowed you to adjust your image with Photoshop's controls, saving the steps as an Action. Once you had the result you wanted, you could tell DP to read the action and edit the targeted color profile. How well it accomplished the job is anyone's guess.

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

@Peter: Thanks for the insights. Can you edit all sorts of profiles with Kodak's plugin or only CMYK profiles?
And as for ColorVision's edit module .... I have Colorvision's Spyder3pro and don't think there is an edit module. Perhaps you need Spyder3elite for that?

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

@Ho: Is that what you mean (or at least something similar?) :

<http://www.antelligent.com/pages/ps_plugins.html>

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

"Can you edit all sorts of profiles with Kodak's plugin or only CMYK profiles? "

I have a copy of it, but I haven't used it in some time. I believe it will edit both input and output profiles, RGB and CMYK. Not as robust as Profilemaker, but not bad for $500. I'm pretty sure that DoctorPro was the ColorVision product I remembered. I don't have any experience with that, just the two others I've mentioned.

[Ho]

Mark, that looks like it might work in a similar fashion. Quickly skimming through the text reminded me that there were certain profiles that couldn't be edited properly if at all, and that seems to be the case with this product as well. Might be worth a try, although you won't know how effective it is until you've bought it (trial version doesn't save your edits).

[Mark_J_...@adobeforums.com]

OK, I think I've enough information now to temporarily fix the issue before buying another calibration device.

And I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone here! There were so many different people helping me out here and I've learned quite a bit. Thanks folks.