Comments for Alexis Van Hurkman is Thinking Aloud

Comment on Digging in the Word Mine… by Manuel Lopez

Manuel Lopez — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:48:07 +0000

I can’t wait to read it.

Comment on Digging in the Word Mine… by Alexis

Alexis — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:57:18 +0000

They make great stocking stuffers!

Comment on Digging in the Word Mine… by Kent

Kent — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:25:15 +0000

I’m looking forward to your book, and certainly will buy it.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Cheers

Comment on Digging in the Word Mine… by Robbie Carman

Robbie Carman — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:29:45 +0000

I’ve pre ordered 12 copies

Comment on An Orbital Overview of Monitor LUT Calibration by Alexis

Alexis — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:23:48 +0000

Great news on new probe support. I look forward to checking out your software at IBC!

Comment on An Orbital Overview of Monitor LUT Calibration by Steve Shaw

Steve Shaw — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:56:43 +0000

Thanks for the positive comments )
As an update we have just release CS-200 (and other CS probe) support, and will have PR series support in a new version of LightSpace CMS to be released very soon…

Comment on New Mac Pros–Mixed Feelings and Baseless Speculation by Alexis

Alexis — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 05:21:13 +0000

The gamma issue is thorny, no doubt about it. This whole topic is one reason why I primarily focus on grading for video with a rigidly standards compliant monitor, all is known on v-out and the CPU display is just for UI. Also, web gigs usually don’t have budgets.

Can’t speak with authority about the panel quality of the new iMacs, I know at one time the 20″ panels had lower bit depth then the 24″ but it was disguised by dithering.

About the new Snow Leopard 2.2 gamma, sure you can recalibrate to 1.8, but the result won’t change that the fcd/color canvas won’t match system QT player display, and now you’re back to being incompatible with the windows world ( using 2.2.

There are no easy answers, but this is a research project I’ve been meaning to look into someday soon.

Comment on New Mac Pros–Mixed Feelings and Baseless Speculation by Chris

Chris — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:55:13 +0000

Thanks for the info Alexis.
What is your recommendation for color grading for the web on a mac?
Is there a way to turn off the “lower gamma in preview window” setting in FCP + Color?
Can I find a color correction filter setting online somewhere that will negate this effect?
Should I use after effects instead or something?

Thanks.

Comment on New Mac Pros–Mixed Feelings and Baseless Speculation by Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:35:16 +0000

Oops. Sorry, I misstated a few things in my previous comment…

I know that Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.x) auto-creates profiles for built-in or attached monitors (or uses a bundled profile) with a gamma of 2.2. Many people don’t realize that this is a option, not a hard-wired thing.

In the 5th paragraph, I mention the frustration of trying to get a good calibration of one’s computer monitors (not external, broadcast monitors), in order to get the best view of things in FCP. Of course, if the FCP gamma assumption is still true, then you’d want to do a high-quality HW calibration of your computer monitors with a target gamma of 1.8, not 2.2 as I mentioned.

Thanks again.

Comment on New Mac Pros–Mixed Feelings and Baseless Speculation by Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:27:02 +0000

Isn’t still true (as I recall from reading in one of your APTS books), that to get a proper display of content in FCP you need to calibrate your monitor with a profile having a 1.8 gamma, because FCP assumes that your monitor has such a setup?

So, whether using a hardware calibration device or the OS X Display Calibrator, you need to choose a target gamma of 1.8 for the “best” possible view of media in FCP. Right?

If the 1.8 gamma requirement for FCP is still true, then it is more tricky in Snow Leopard, as its default profile creation uses a gamma of 2.2. Right?

What a mess.

And, isn’t it true that most computer-oriented (rather than broadcast or film-oriented) calibration tools (SW and HW) don’t properly set things up (i.e., color space) for standards like Rec. 601 or Rec. 709 anyway? So, while you may use a hardware calibrator and a target gamma of 2.2 for a computer display (let’s say one of the last versions of the Apple Cinema Displays, not the glossy LED ones), you don’t end up with a profile that maps specifically to one of the broadcast or film color spaces…???

Sorry about the length of this post… this probably isn’t the best place for this kind of discussion, though this issue has been frustrating me for several years (I’ve got all of the APTS book, as well as others — and I have been reading a bunch of stuff at the Cine-Tal website).

A comment about the iMacs and the new LED displays from Apple… I can’t find hard evidence to support this, but I’ve heard that the displays in these devices aren’t up to the same standards as the last models of the Cinema Displays. With the Cinema Displays, Apple had info about the monitors meeting various SWOP and other color quality standards. From what I’ve heard, the gamut representation of the newer iMac displays and the new LED standalone monitors don’t have the same (or better) gamut coverage that the now discontinued monitors had. Apple doesn’t had any info (that I could find) about the quality and gamut coverage of the new displays (iMac and standalone), even though that info was geared towards pre-press use. As you mentioned, the Dreamcolor displays seem to be much more capable and can fully meet the color space requirements (or get damn close?) for pre-press and video work.

People get confused (including me, fairly often) about calibration issues and what’s really happening (is it something in the media, does ColorSync apply or not, etc.)…

I have yet to find a clear, definitive discussion of these issues.

You know something is a bit wanky when you open the same QT movie file in Compressor, FCP, Motion, QT Player (7 or 10), etc., and the brightness, contrast, color, and gamma don’t all match up…

Thanks for your books and posts…