HOW THE F*** DOES SCREEN CALIBRATION WORK? - Tutorial

This is mostly a tutorial, but I do have some questions! Please discuss them here: / d42kd6
EXPAND FOR NAVIGATION:
1:48 Laying a solid foundation for understanding logical/physical pixel color differences
Vocabulary can be found under "Defining our terms," here: docs.google.com/document/d/1P...
10:47 Explaining how guide layers work (in After Effects)
13:09 The color picker does NOT ignore guide layers
14:02 Monitor color profiles can be thought of as a type of guide layer!
14:59 And now to introduce an orange .ICM file:
github.com/TaranVH/2nd-keyboa...
15:46 THIS IS WHERE ALL OF YOUR .ICM FILES ARE LOCATED:
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color
16:23 IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH MONITOR COLOR MANAGEMENT AT ALL:
Go to (Windows key) → "Color Management" and see if you have a color profile installed. If you do, but you didn't put it there, you should add "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" and make that one the default instead. (Or better yet, use a profile that says "Uncalibrated")
16:52 How to set a specific color profile as your default, in Windows
Notice how the colors in Photoshop will now change as soon as you click into it.
21:08 KEY LESSON: Do not take screenshots or screencapture of applications that are color managed!
HOW TO ENABLE COLOR MANAGEMENT in various applications:
18:52 Photoshop (It happens automatically)
23:11 After Effects
QUESTION 1: In After Effects, why does choosing "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" use my default color profile (in this case, 3008WFP_DVI) instead?
24:26 Premiere
26:07 QUESTION 2: I have no idea why the color management results in Premiere are quite different from PS and AE. Any ideas??
QUESTION 3: (Not shown) How do you enable color management in Davinci Resolve??
26:30 Explaining why color management is important -- most monitor are oversaturated!
29:00 Getting ready to calibrate the monitor (With CalMAN)
Your monitor's menu settings are SEPARATE from what the calibration is going to do! It is only part 1/3 of the calibration!
Also, make sure you are using an uncalibrated color profile before you start calibrating!!
32:55 And now to calibrate the monitor! (It does not go well)
34:06 Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to use the calibration software (CalMAN client.) If you need help with that, you'll have to find some other tutorial...
QUESTION 4: Do you know of a good video tutorial for CalMAN client calibration?
34:23 Calibration produces and applies a 1D LUT to the screen that only changes the physical pixels. Super important! This is part 2/3 of the calibration. The .ICM file (which alters the logical values) is part 3/3
37:20 So, now we have a proper monitor color profile, which you should get working in all your applications, as I've already shown at 24:00 and 25:21
37:36 THE SCREEN RECORDING PARADOX
You have to turn off calibration before you create a Photoshop/Premiere/After Effects/etc tutorial. This way, the audience's colors will be accurate, even though yours will not.
39:36 HOW TO DISABLE COLOR MANAGEMENT in various applications:
In Chrome:
In the address bar, go to chrome://flags/#force-color-profile and set it to "sRGB"
Further reading:
/ set_force_color_profil...
In Firefox:
Type "about:config" into the address bar and press ENTER.
search for:
gfx.color_management.mode
And set it to "2." (Or 0 might work as well, IDK.)
Further reading:
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/d...
41:12 QUESTION 5: How exactly do reference monitors work?
Video response! • Video response to Tara...
41:54 Multi-monitor stuff, idk.
45:41 Premiere's color picker has issues.
46:20 QUESTION 6: My concerns about 24-bit color space not being granular enough
47:56 QUESTION 7: How to fix other troublesome Photoshop color problems
49:46 How color profiles work ON IMAGES (maybe)
QUESTION 7: Am I right? If not, plz explain.
52:54 Jeffrey's color blog regex.info/blog/photo-tech/col...
53:44 Your GPU might be showing you partial or "limited" colors (resulting in posterization.)
You can change that in the Nvidia Control Panel under "Adjust video color settings" → Advanced → Full (0-255)
QUESTION 9: What exactly does that setting do??
-54:10- Here's my tutorial about "partial" and full video: • BIG TUTORIAL - How to ...
EXTRA - QUESTION 10:
16:30 What's the difference between monitor calibration and monitor profiling?

[@chaquator]

youre like a monk at LMG spending years and years studying tedious things to make detailed rant videos

[@raawesome3851]

A monk rants?

[@daehxxiD]

Ra awesome this one does

[@nootnoot7396]

I'm watching this on my phone with the blue light filter on and you can't stop me

[@Deastrow]

This post was made by the BLF Gang

[@viruzaum]

I just remembered that I was with reading mode on when I saw this

[@TheAechBomb]

watching on my phone in red/cyan mode you can't stop me *but you can try*

[@yowhat3745]

why is this so accurate

[@TheTeresu]

I've had my blue light filter on my pc since.... 2013? Or something like that, and never turn it off. At this point everything looks uglier to me without it.

[@supremeoverlordetna]

I don't even own any color calibration tools but here I am watching this at 3 in the morning.

[@jovand6606]

Literally me

[@phenomanII]

I'm partially colourblind... It's just entertaining to watch.

[@LetsPlay4Free]

Exactly 3 am here in germany atm. Well ... XD

[@CaveyMoth]

Calibrate your shizz, BOIS!

[@CloudZephyr]

As much as I want to try this I can't justify spending £100 on something I'm going to use once. Plus my monitor is factory calibrated so maybe it wouldn't make a huge difference?

[@GENIRYODAN]

30 seconds for the short answer and 1 hour for the full answer. That's some serious compression.

[@daltonriser1125]

Tartans good like that

[@LtdJorge]

@@daltonriser1125 we thought .tar.gz meant Tape Archive GZipped and it was TARans GloriousZipping all this time.

[@MetroidChild]

1/120

[@Iamveryconfusedabout]

ogg vorbis levels of compression right there

[@Lena-qg8bd]

7-zip please leave ahahah Actually 7-zip does an awesome job btw

[@AlphaCore_]

The part I love is the title will be exactly what people will type on search when they're frustrated, lol. "HOW TF DOES THIS WORK"

[@bobo-cc1xw]

but this will cause "viewers" and "subscribers"

[@zombiedude347]

And then you unintentionally get pr0n results because you forgot to turn safesearch off and search engines don't understand context.

[@MrRedinator_]

Alt. title: "taran getting slightly mad for almost an hour straight"

[@daanwilmer]

That's the subtitle of his entire channel, though.

[@SkeleCrafteronYT]

"slightly" More like "moderately aggravated"

[@AlexPotvin]

He's been investigating this for months and this isn't an understatement.

[@ToffeFender]

Are you speaking of an logical hour or physical hour? Because there is some kind of editing layer between the logical hour and the physical hour that I can't fully understand the extent of.

[@AlexLog314]

Poor Taran.. he’s one lab accident away from becoming a super villain. We love him though, as we loved Thanos. Go Taranos! 🔥

[@DevoidVessel]

A properly (but not actually) color calibrated villain

[@JamEngulfer]

More like one L*A*B accident

[@MirdjanHyle]

In today's episode, Taran will fight with the concept of justified true belief and epistemological responsibility.

[@djdjukic]

Let me give you a way back to sanity: 1a. If you have the money, buy the reference monitor or 1b. If you don't, buy a reasonably good monitor that has good colors from the factory and twiddle the knobs in the OSD if it looks a bit off 2. Force-set everything to sRGB (Windows sometimes applies an insane color profile to certain monitors. Don't know why.) 3. Give the calibrator to someone who does print. They need it. 4. Forget about software calibration.

[@MajoraZ]

Hey, I do some amateur photography and scanning images from old books, and I'm trying to get a basic idea of how color correction works and what sort of hardware i'd need to do it since i'm also buying a new laptop (and eventually will be building a desktop) and i'm trying to figure out if I should try to get a laptop with a color accurate display or not worry about that yet, or what even is considered "color accurate" and how calibration works. Would you be willing to answer some questions?

[@djdjukic]

@@MajoraZ Sure, but I have to tell you, I changed my mind. I have regular access to an i1 spectrophotometer now and I calibrate everything. For laptops, get at least an IPS display, your budget is your upper limit. If you can get one with a built in display calibrator, like a ThinkPad P70, that's great, but not strictly necessary, especially not for an amateur.

[@djdjukic]

@@MajoraZ When calibrating, you will want to use DisplayCal and the Office and Web (D65) preset. There are other calibration targets like 5800K but you don't really need to worry about that. My spectrophotometer is an EFI ES-1000 which is really a rebranded i1 Pro. These are old, but cheap and good. Better than a new colorimeter which is a simpler device.

[@MajoraZ]

@@djdjukic Sorry i'm getting back to this late, are you around to answer more questions about color calibration stuff? If so, reply to me on the comment I left on your video upload (KZbin sometimes auto-removes comments mentioning contact methods if you're not the uploader, so it's safer for you to tell me how to reach you there)

[@ihatethesehandles]

RE: the cursor thing: There is such a thing as a "hardware cursor" where the GPU draws the cursor directly for increased responsiveness. I could imagine that the issue you're seeing is that Nvidia doesn't handle night light correctly, while the Intel iGPU in the laptop does. Or perhaps the hardware cursor isn't enabled on the notebook to begin with. Windows actually hides the hardware cursor when you're dragging Windows (so the window doesn't lag behind the cursor), once you hold a title bar it should become orange as well.

[@Michael-OBrien]

Check these settings for the cursor issue winaero.com/blog/apply-night-light-mouse-cursor-windows-10/

[@muizzsiddique]

I'm never going to unsee the delay when dragging anymore.

[@lolerie]

@@muizzsiddique the delay also comes from the screen input lag.

[@Deses]

Plot twist: Taran has been colorblind all this time.

[@VitusSoska]

And to answer the question how to get accurate colors: you need video-out card like the blackmagic mini monitor or similar to output the video signal without the OS, Drivers and Profiles intefering the image outputed to the monitor. just plain hardware or 3D-Lut calibrated monitors will get you to accurate colors down the whole video pipeline. Accordingly to you question what a reference monitor is : it's a monitor which has the highest possible accuracy in the color space you're working in (for web it's sRGB, for video: REC709, for cinema it's DCI-P3, for print it's Adobe or Profoto RGB, for HDR Rec2020). And this Display should bypass all Inteference of the OS by sending the signal through a dedicated video-card output (NOT graphics-card). Question 9: May check for Video and Data Levels for further explanation ( but as I already saw, you got a response on this for question 5 :) ) Question 10: Calibration is usualy refered to the adjustment of the monitor settings by a 3D-Lut or dedicated controls on the monitor to adjust brightness, contrast, blackpoint, whitepoint, rgb, etc. Profiling is the creation of a, in your case ICC Profile for calibrating you monitor softwarewise.

[@MajoraZ]

Hey, I do some amateur photography and scanning images from old books, and I'm trying to get a basic idea of how color correction works and what sort of hardware i'd need to do it since i'm also buying a new laptop (and eventually will be building a desktop) and i'm trying to figure out if I should try to get a laptop with a color accurate display or not worry about that yet, or what even is considered "color accurate" and how calibration works. Would you be willing to answer some questions?

[@VitusSoska]

@@MajoraZ hey. sure. in general you have to consider first what you want to do with your scans. do you want to reprint those or will they living just as digital data? Because if you need accurate colors for printing you maybe have to consider another monitor the when you just need color accuracy in the digital realm. Calibration is a necessary, but maybe you dont have to buy a calibration device yourself, maybe a friend has one or you can rent it somewhere. Good advice is to calibrate you monitors every few months when working in a professional manner, but if it's just for you, calibrate it once and you're good to go. You can check color accuracy for different colorspaces for the monitor you want to buy online. usually sRGB (or Rec709) is what you're looking. the value should be in the high 90s, like 99%. sRGB is what most displays work in and it's the most common colorspace in the consumer world.

[@VitusSoska]

Finding a notebook with a color-accurate display for under $1000 can be a bit more challenging, as color accuracy is not always a priority for manufacturers in this price range. However, there are some options that may be suitable for your needs: Dell XPS 13: Dell's XPS 13 line of laptops features a color-accurate display and a lightweight design that makes it well-suited for travel. The latest model (9320/9310) are the most suitable for photographers as they have 4K UHD display, but they come at a higher price point. MacBook Air (M1, 2020): Apple's MacBook Air, which features a Retina display with P3 wide color gamut, and is known for its color accuracy. It also has a great build quality and performance, but it's above 1000$ Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga: Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga is a business-class laptop that features a color-accurate display and a durable design. HP Spectre x360: HP's Spectre x360 line of laptops feature color-accurate displays and flexible designs that allow you to use them in a variety of configurations. Asus ProArt StudioBook Pro X: This is a high-end mobile workstation, specifically designed for professional users such as graphic designers and photographers. It comes with a high-quality 4K UHD display, however it's also above 1000$ It's important to note that, similar to monitors, to ensure accurate color representation, a proper calibration of the display should be performed using a calibrated colorimeter. You may also want to take a look at other brands such as LG, Acer, or MSI they may have some laptops with color accurate displays but not above $1000.

[@todayonthebench]

This video nicely outlines the big issues with color calibration. But in short: Color calibration in general is fairly poorly implemented. Since most implementations lets the application of these color corrections wander about and muck outside the field where it is actually needed. Since what do we want to calibrate when we talk about color calibrating a monitor? What we want to calibrate isn't the color-space in software, since the logical pixel values are perfect already. And changing logical pixel values with "calibration" can lead to recursive "over calibration", so one will move from calibrated, to less calibrated, to even less calibrated, etc. If we want to display a certain sRGB/Adobe-RGB/SWOP-CMYK/etc color, then it has a defined value that it should have when viewed on a PERFECT screen. (some of these color standards are relative, and not absolute. But that is a topic for another day) We only want to calibrate the display's representation of those logical values. Since we want to correct the non-linearity and absolute values (if applicable) of the physical pixels on the monitor, as to ensure that it displays the correct colors in accordance to our color-space. Ie, our display is far from perfect. We shouldn't calibrate out our manufacturing tolerances and imperfections of our monitor by denting our color space on the logical pixel level. What we should do is add correction values to the logical pixel values giving us our physical pixel values that we send off to the display, while leaving our logical pixel values unaltered. Screenshots should also just use the untouched logical pixel values. Since with a screenshot we aren't interested in showing how much calibration your monitor needed, but rather take a picture of what is currently on screen. The only thing color calibration should do is apply the needed correction to the physical pixel values to ensure that the display shows the correct color in accordance to the color-space. Also, there is at no point any need for any software to ever use physical pixel values. (there might be edge cases that can be exempt from this rule. Like checking manufacturing tolerances of monitors, to check in on production quality etc. (not that it would be done in such a fashion regardless)) Translating color-spaces between each other is though a thing that makes color calibration harder, but very indirectly. But as long as one goes from a smaller color-space to a larger one, this isn't a major issue. (Also, going from relative color-spaces to absolute ones and vice versa is though complicating these matters.) But translating color spaces has almost nothing to do with color calibration, unless your OS/system color-space (what is used to send the color data to the monitor) is relative. (then you need to add an absolute calibration to the relative color-space, so that one can send absolute color-spaces through the relative one and still display them correctly.) Now I do need to add, if this above seems logical, then you too will hate how current color calibration implementations are made, since they rarely if ever even follow anything of what is mentioned above. Since some color calibration is happening on the logical pixel level, even if it shouldn't. Some applications works pre calibration, other post, some jumps back and forth. And other's outright doesn't support it.... In the end, color calibrating monitors, and translating color-spaces between each other and display it correctly on a monitor is something that frankly has been implemented extremely poorly in practice. And we are all to suffer from it.

[@PanoWorks]

"in short" lol. You're right, though, and we can thank both Microsoft and Adobe for this. Maybe graphics card companies as well, considering the graphics driver is the perfect place to be applying a LUT, but good luck with that. There is a place for software-based color profiles, but that's mostly to transform from one to another in order to go "hey, if somebody with a [wonky display] watched this, what would THEY see?" which can be toggled on the fly, like authoring for a specific display type while working on your own display - i.e. you're not trying to calibrate for your monitor, you'd actually be deliberately throwing it off-calibration in order to see what someone with the target device might see. Which.. let's face it.. unless you're working in a few specific industries, is probably not something you have to worry about. Even VFX studios working together largely calibrate only their own monitors and whoever integrates shots together, does grading, etc. will be tasked with making sure that once things are cut together the shots from house A aren't tonally way out of whack with those from house B. Which leaves the more casual user, even if it's a prosumer. Their best bet is also to only calibrate for their device, don't touch any of the color management stuff, and just hope for the best because at the end of the day the devices displaying their work are either very similar (e.g. TVs, monitors, etc.) and are also going to be calibrated for themselves (and so should tonally match), or are completely different and/or not calibrated at all. No amount of calibration is going to change the fact that someone watching on an OLED panel is going to have a different picture from someone with a TN panel which is going to be different from a phone with night mode on which is going to be different from the entry level digital theater projector your local arthouse might be using. Obsessing over getting the same result everywhere and trying to use color management profiles to achieve such is an exercise in frustrating futility.

[@todayonthebench]

@@PanoWorks "Obsessing over getting the same result everywhere and trying to use color management profiles to achieve such is an exercise in frustrating futility." is something I have to agree with. But dang if it would have been easier to actually color calibrate stuff if the system were implemented correctly to start with. Instead of the jumbled mess we have today where color calibration is practically done a little everywhere throughout totally different layers of software. Would have been nice if it were only applied as the last thing before hitting the screen. Since it is only there that it makes sense. And it would also fix the issue of dragging a window out over more then one monitor, since the part left on monitor A would go through calibration for monitor A, while the part on monitor B would use the calibration for B. And the application wouldn't even know that it gets calibrated, since as far as the application goes, it lives in the world of perfect color values.

[@JackPorter]

@@PanoWorks it really should be centralized to the kernel. so yeah, it's definitely microsofts fault, it's their platform and it's their responsibility that everything works as harmoniously as possible, instead of every single company having to re-invent the bowl

[@SergioParrella]

Taran, you're overthinking this; I'm a photographer and videographer and I investigated and searched and tried A LOT. Here's the thing: you only need to enable the color profile that the color calibration tool gives you on Windows Color Management. In my case, it does it automatically (I mean, it sets the profile as default after I run the calibration) and loads it every time I start Windows. That effectively puts the "filter" between the "logical pixels" and the "physical pixels" so you can see the correct calibrated colors with your eyes on the monitor (which is the purpose of color calibrating, to compensate for the physical properties of the monitor that are "not as perfect" because of manufacturing problems or monitor ageing or whatever). DO NOT TOUCH color management on Photoshop, or Premiere or After Effects. That changes the "logical pixels" on the software, and you don't want that. Why is there a menu to do that? I don't know. All I know is for us simple mortals, color management on everything should be on sRGB unless you know what you're doing. That way you know you are working in sRGB on the "logical" level and, if you calibrated your monitor, you know you are "seeing" sRGB with your eyes as close as your monitor can show it to you. It works for me. I'm on two monitors right now, each with it's profile; they look (almost) the same and I export and print things and everything looks great. Do your tests of course but trust me, it shouldn't be more complicated than that. Hope it makes sense. And, by the way, thank you for that 4 hour Premiere tutorial of yours. It's great and I learned a lot from it.

[@lolerie]

All iPhone photos are not sRGB. They are P3-D65 with sRGB curve. What is known Display P3.

[@MajoraZ]

If this is the case, why do so many other comments insist that color calibration is a per software/program thing on windows? Is there a way to calibirate things on the actual hardware/display without going through the OS at all?

[@SergioParrella]

@@MajoraZ Hi! I currently use an X-Rite ColorMunki Display colorimeter, which, during the calibration process, reads color patches directly from the (uncalibrated) screen to create a profile. That profile is stored in a file, and that file is loaded and applied by software. So, what I'm seeing on my screen is a per software correction of the physical flaws of my screen detected by the colorimeter.

[@pietroalessandrini]

but he clearly showed that outside programs with color management nothing changed when he applied the color profile, meaning that no, there is no filter between logica lpixels and physical pixels

[@St0RM33]

There is no *perfect calibration*. You calibrate for a specific Illuminant; usually D65 which corresponds to the specific distribution of humanly visible black body radiation, aka roughly to the average midday light in Western Europe (comprising both direct sunlight and the light diffused by a clear sky). This means if you get an object and measure its colour under those light conditions using a 100% accurate spectrocolorimeter and convert that to an RGB value an display it at a 100% calibrated and capable monitor, you should be able to see the exact same colour as if you were to see it in real life. This is because what we see as colour is essentially "fake". If you see an object at dusk will have different colour than in the morning. If we shine a street lamp on it will have a different colour again. There is no colour, it is our mind's construct (and if we get into how light cones in our eyes work and what we preserve as colour it gets even more complicated). Due to technical limitations and other shenanigans we decided to use SRGB as a restricted limit/range of what we should be able to achieve and "agreed" that we all go by that standard. HDR supposes to let us free of that limit and dynamically adjust the effective illuminant so we can get a more realistic image. Tech has still not advanced enough to be able to make us preserve reality, and might well never be able to unless we plug our optic nerves and send signals directly, effectively bypassing the sensor which is our retina. What calibration is good for is so that you can match as closely as possible to a reference which should be in your case the most popular display devices used to watch your content. This way everyone and all their monitors work as closely to each other so everyone sees the same result. It's a essentially the same thing that what we do with audio reference monitors, but for displays and it is more complicated because at least in audio we all pretty much hear music in air of approx the same composition, density, temp, pressure. With photo/video we have this pesky sun changing shit all day and night so we need to deal with it differently. In the end, calibration is relative unless you are doing scientific work, and you should only think of what you are personally trying to achieve with it. ps. i'm not expert in this science but trust me, i'm an engineer

[@blaowy]

sorry to disappoint but there’s a lot more to this and it gets even more confusing. especially when you try to work with more than sRGB - wide color gammut for example.. my advice is to leave your monitors uncalibrated and don’t mess with color profiles in software - just try to calibrate them in hardware (monitor settings). Then your life will get easier and you’ll have to resolve only the color profile stuff of images, videos etc. - and that’s a whole another topic....

[@neoqueto]

Buuuut... Only professional monitors support REAL calibration. Sorry, setting RGB values in the OSD of your Dell or LG is NOT calibration. Hardware calibration requires a monitor to support flashing of custom 10-bit internal LUTs, which is done via software.

[@SweBeach2023]

@@neoqueto I wonder why so few monitors are pre-calibrated. If done during manufacturing I assume it would be rather inexpensive. Like a dollar or two. Would it be sufficient for professional use - no. But it would still be a major improvement for most consumers compared with todays situation.

[@neoqueto]

​@@SweBeach2023 actually, quite a few are. My Dell P2715Q came with a factory calibration report despite there being no way for the user to perform hardware calibration, as far as I know.

[@FinnJaeger1337]

@@neoqueto Ive had all kinds if "factory calibrated" screens... they never match anything, that said I found OSD to be pretty much fine for General improvement, if you are picky you buy something with LUT support .. or add a Lut box and get a really explensive probe :p

[@neoqueto]

@@FinnJaeger1337 or stick to software and end up in a mental ward, because you're not Taran ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@BunnyHelp]

5:30 Taran, on that dark green splotch photoshop says the blue value is 28, but the circle says 38!

[@mitchells7747]

I saw the same thing!!!

[@TDG2654]

The color connection file changes the logical pixel values, but the color picker in Photoshop doesn't look at the logical pixel values. It just looks at the data from the file that is loaded into Photoshop. When you take a screenshot, whatever software you are using to make it, does use the logical pixel values.

[@lolerie]

Info panel color picker does though. Sigh.

[@mr2octavio]

We don't deserve you Taran. YOU KEEP GIVING ME TUTORIALS ON THINGS I GAVE UP LONG AGO, I love you man. Thank you

[@Bunjamin27]

Your videos, sense of humor, and ability to convey info-dense material always makes me smile and learn. Thanks, TVH! Also, please host something.. cuz goddam, your sense of humor is great - new Rad bike reviews? Somethin!

[@frostpixel7930]

Watching this on my potato TN panel with like 10% color accuracy

[@popgirl8studios]

Same, got mine before 144 ips was a thing lol

[@rkan2]

@@popgirl8studios 144 TN is still the fastest (after CRTs of course) :P

[@johnsmith1077]

Listening Taran ranting on stuff on a Friday morning is a great start of the day (and I'm not even working on video/image editing)

[@kevinfontanari]

One thing is certain, Taran will have color-picker related nightmares for the rest of his days.

[@Veriflon88]

10 minutes in and I already feel like I have learned more than I should have

[@dejf7488]

53:54 "If you're using AMD, get rekt, I don't know how to help you." This video is mindbogglingly fascinating.

[@riveteye93]

God bless you taran, as a digital artist I've almost given up on proper color manager, instead just refusing to look at my work on anything but the screen I made it on.

[@COEBY]

One of the best videos I’ve seen in a long time. My mind is the same i will think of something so obvious but when i test it I’m right.

[@felone]

I've been struggling with this for years... Thanks for the details and showing I'm not alone :D

[@tohothewriter8002]

This video has single-handedly given me a new appreciation and somewhat better understanding of monitor reviews and why an accurate color gamut matters in the first place. The first 30 minutes(before the displaycal rant) is essential to actually make sense of what is going on behind the scene during a screen calibration. I don't use any, but that doesn't mean I can't learn about it in the off chance someone I know needs help. Fun story, my best friend recently calibrated her laptop monitor and now she has a pink mouse cursor with the calibration on, and normal colored when uncalibrated. The weird thing about it though is that when we screen shared her desktop, the cursor was showing as white in the "preview" window while still a "calibrated" pink on her monitor. So I tried helping her out with fixing the issue as best I could using this video as reference/guideline until we came to the conclusion that the calibration is likely inaccurate because of the keyboard's red light reflecting on the screen while calibrating it, and that she should watch the video herself to make sense of it for herself instead. I get the general concepts that are explained, I just suck at passing them on to someone else because I don't have the actual knowledge to explain it and make sense at the same time. "Obviously" really isn't applicable in any sense of the word. It isn't obvious in the least, and anyone saying that "color calibration is obvious" doesn't know how technicality heavy it really is or understands anything about the process.

[@Manifoldrecording]

Video response to QUESTION 5 is here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIKslXqppMytoc0

[@TekedixXx]

Thank you for your quick explanation of the video, I ended up knowing what you were talking about and didn't need to watch the hour long video. Really appreciate it.

[@TaranVH]

Glad to hear it! I've learned that on KZbin, you must construct the video in order of people's ATTENTION. With ALL videos, the longer it goes, the more that people will click away. I have also noticed myself frustratedly clicking through long tutorials, searching for the one key piece of information that I actually need. However, for topics where I am not very familiar, I find that many tutorials or articles will skip over steps, both large and small, often without realizing it, which are nevertheless essential. The worst is when a vital software setting has been moved or changed in recent updates... not having a video of someone actually getting to that setting, even in an old version of the software, means that it canbe much, much harder to find. Anyway, putting these things together, I settled on the hybrid approach of summarizing and showing everything major at the very start for the more knowledgeable "students," and then giving a fully comprehensive explanation for everyone else... with timestamps so that they can skip things they already know, and easily come back to sections later that they have not fully absorbed. One of my inspirations was this guy, check it out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n57OhJeil711lbc

[@Astrnauted]

i love your take on learning man keep it up! ive been video editing and photo editing for about 6-8 years now and haven't really progressed greatly until recently. i have a neurological hindrance considerable related to "Autism Spectrum Disorder" where sometimes the "trivial" stuff doesn't add up or confuses me. Its like walking down a long dark hall with a flashlight and never turning on the light so you forget which way you started if i could make an analogy. Anyways especially when my anxiety threshold raises i couldn't learn anything. it took meeting someone that externally motivated me and would explain stuff and learn with me and we could bounce stuff back in forth with each other that certain things trivial to "CAD" artists only then made "sense " to me.

[@Manifoldrecording]

Here's an updated answer to Question 5, this time with 300% more RED: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hWelo5Z-bdNqndk

[@stickoutofthemud]

OMG Taran I had no idea you (1) ran your own channel or (2) were such a great teacher. Now I gonna larn somethin'!

[@Glenners]

lmao I love this rabbit hole stuff. Especially when it comes to "references" and trying to standardize something. It will drive you crazy and that's why I love these videos lol.

[@SnareGG]

"if i put this orange gel over the laptop..." "NO, GOD DAMNIT TARAN DONT TURN THIS INTO A SHITPOST"

[@LolJolk]

thanks taran always wanted to know this in my life

[@diogoalmeidavisuals]

This very subject has taken months worth of sleep from me and has forced me to do so much research into color science that I only get frustrated with manufacturers and standards organizations. And then you start thinking of other color spaces and varying HDR standards and consistency of reproduction of you content inside your own machine and getting different results from inside your color grading software and you video player, and I can't take it anymore, someone just make a stupid people monitor/software/camera/player/GPU/calibrator that just can't be messed with!!!!!!

[@AJUKking]

16:40 "obviously". Taran I thought we talked about this.

[@TaranVH]

Aha! Wait for the video where I talk about this. I said don't use it as a RESPONSE!

[@SiimKuusik]

I LOVE that the color calibration in each scene is different in this video 🎛

[@NicolasHanna]

I have no reason, in my whole entire life to watch this, but I will.

[@TomGreen99]

_1am time for sleep..._ *_Taran posts 1hr video_*

[@allansh828]

How can I calibrate gamma curve for HDR?

[@TaranVH]

OH MAN I HAVE NO FREAKIN IDEA AND I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO FIND OUT AAAAAGH that's what started this whole mess. HDR.

[@m1lkweed]

Taran Van Hemert That is the best response from the creator to a comment. Thanks for the laugh

[@allansh828]

@@TaranVH same struggle here. Now I got an Atomos Ninja and assume it's color and luminance is correct.

[@edwardecl]

Is this why almost all HDR implementations are garbage?

[@gudenau]

So color management stuff is only done by individual apps and not the system? Windows is weird man. Edit: The Firefox thing is saying that only images that have some specific metadata are color managed. Edit 2: The cursors are often done in hardware, blame NVidia.

[@rkan2]

Of course... Because Microsoft always built Windows so that stuff from 20 years ago works today, it would've only been feasible to add support for new features in new SDKs, which the new applications would be based on. That's why only the newer applications, which use the said newer SDKs (which usually arrive with any new Windows version) work with newer features.

[@gudenau]

@@rkan2 Changing how programs render can be done in an API agnostic way. Only programs that need to know would need to use the APIs.

[@noidea91]

Now I understand even less. Thanks

[@samlcyo2]

I mean to me it's that I now understand how little I understand monitor color calibration.

[@GideonLesson]

You did it sound more complicated than it is, Taran. There is always a chain of "filters" of some kind. There is original image data, then filter layers and edits in program, color picker sees all that is seen from here. Next there is frame buffer where we render picture that goes to monitor. Color correction is applied to it, per device, monitor or printer. And screen capture as well as capture via hdmi or what else will be affected by correction, because we capture what would be sent to screen. There is another layer of filtration in monitor or printer itself. This is what color profile is compensating for. Our own perception differs with environment. Color picker works way way before that. It Is not obvious, it is in name itself, but many making mistake of treating screen capture as universal rendering tool, because we don't have one. And color correction should be applied on end point device itself, not way before. But it is what we have

[@dvl973]

"If you think you understand color profiles, you probably don't understand color profiles." - Me, 2019

[@Elca_Gaming]

This was more entertaining than it should be

[@New_Talent]

The only obvious thing here is that you are a real scientist and excellent communicator. Thanks for spilling your invaluable knowledge on us 💦

[@EmkoDelirdi]

LOL THE TITLE, LOVED IT!

[@noahgoldowitz]

Thank you for this !!

[@Alpha17x]

Every time you release a video I'm like 'Oh shit have I been doing it wrong?!' and this time I was safe. But this is great information regardless. Though I have been doing it right I still came out understanding the process more than I did.

[@Av-ks8uc]

taran that difficulty curve is the one showing the equivalent volume for a titration and you know it. I know that high school chemestry is far away for us but you cannot legally bring up nightmares like that this early in your video. UNSUBSCRIABLEF

[@gunar4x]

taran thank you very much, please make more tutorial videos! Also what is your new setup, can you make a video about it?

[@LaughingOrange]

34:59 If you can't figure it out us mere mortals don't stand a chance.

[@DerOllie]

@5:31 the green one is now 39/65/28 and not like the picture says 39/65/38 !!!!11!!! it changed !!! ;)

[@rkan2]

wtf

[@samlcyo2]

@@pcoverthink Taran made that picture, and I think you're right. Cause that's the only one that's off at all.

[@georgf9279]

Please do a follow up with the stuff you learn from the reddit discussion. Tanks in advance!

[@Marijuanajoseph]

the multi monitor stuff actually solved a mystery for me that i couldn't figure out for years. Turns out it was windows being dumb as usual

[@Andrew90046zero]

LOGICAL PIXELS! THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE CALLED!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH It is excruciatingly difficult talking about pixel art when there are 2 different types of "pixels" you may be referring to. Also, from a programmer point of view, there is probably just 2 separate buffers in your graphics card for the display pixel colors. One that is before any effects are applied to it, and one after the effects are applied, the buffer that is ultimately read by the monitor, if that sounds correct. And screenshots/recordings just record the pre-effect buffer.

[@ged4]

This is hilarious, love your videos

[@florianhoch4149]

I replied to some of the questions on the linked reddit thread because it makes for nicer discussion: www.reddit.com/r/TaranVH/comments/d42kd6/how_the_fk_does_screen_calibration_work_tutorial/f1e0o3e/

[@bostafani8037]

Chief, he's not confessing to the crime... TAKE A SCREENSHOT!

[@stekolni]

You just need to calibrate you DISPLAY not color profiles in OS/SOFTWARE!!! I use old sony klv-bx300 and calibrate that screen without anything. Just use your eye, make a white grid and black grid 0-255 and make contrast test on eye and + with changing viewing angel, this will change color perception by eye too! My point is that we need desaturated displays everywhere cus manufacturers oversatured them for eyecandy effect when you buy it, you just need desatured and using b/w contrast gird and color contrast grid to calibrate directly screen to your working environment in os.

[@SuggStudio]

I spent the last 14 years teaching myself about monitor and printer calibration since I worked for a large school photography company and I was the only person there who knew anything about it. It's nice to know someone else knows my pain. I pretty much went through everything Taran did making this video, but add trying to figure out profiling quarter-million-dollar printers and digital presses on top of all of the monitors. Oh, and Taran, although not perfect you should try X-Rite's i1Pro 2 and i1Profiler hardware and software. I've been using the i1 series since before X-Rite bought out GretagMacbeth and I found it to be very solid. Don't negate to send your device off to be re-certified on a yearly basis btw. Also, Windows has ALWAYS sucked when it comes to color calibration. With every release of Windows since XP I have been praying for them to fix their crap and I am beginning to think they just don't care.

[@MajoraZ]

Hey, I do some amateur photography and scanning images from old books, and I'm trying to get a basic idea of how color correction works and what sort of hardware i'd need to do it since i'm also buying a new laptop (and eventually will be building a desktop) and i'm trying to figure out if I should try to get a laptop with a color accurate display or not worry about that yet, or what even is considered "color accurate" and how calibration works. Would you be willing to answer some questions?

[@MajoraZ]

I'm still trying to figure out color/monitor calibration, if you happen to see this and are willing to answer questions!

[@soplokill]

literally if Taran says that the Earth is flat I would buy it no questions asked.

[@oddstuff123]

I spent the first 13 minutes of this video thinking "where the fuck is this going" and the rest thinking "this man's genius is unparalleled"

[@DrewryPope]

This is the video I didn't know I needed.

[@Jeffrey_Wong]

11/10 intro, please keep

[@LtdJorge]

Dad uploaded another tutorial, yay!

[@francoismenard6704]

So, I'm watching this video because I bought a new monitor and the colors are all wrong (of course! so I'm gonna take it back to the store tomorrow). I spent hours trying to get it right with multiple different ways of doing it and it's always off. 22:51 "So at this point" I realized that Taran looks like he has way to many things on his mind. I mean, at that point in the video he has the mad scientist vibe that has the worst possible case of OCD. You are great Taran, but we need you to keep giving us these helpful videos. So please take care of yourself... 😉

[@devtank]

Very helpful!

[@MrSofazocker]

26:43 no no no, checking it will distort the underlying pixel values. You don't want it using your color-profile. That't why you get even more wrong colors when color picking. It's now a mix of both. You are now dealing with 2 levels of color on top of the original color. The base color, gets your color-profile on-top, which you then *view* with your color-profile. You've successfully doubled oranged your footage! *I think that's because unlike photoshop, premier uses your monitors colors for the color-picker, im not sure. But if you manually add the rgb values together it comes close to what you are seeing.

[@ducktapewallet48]

On this episode of Taran's Decent Into Madness... Color Profiles!

[@ಥ﹏ಥ]

I've been looking into color management for far too long and am left feeling more confused the longer I look. Great video, by the way.

[@Archels]

I like seeing this since amusingly, or rather incredibly mind-bogingly, I just got my first color management monitor about 2 weeks ago, been trough the same incredibly tedious process of understanding it all ! I thought it was gonna be simpler, but oh boy was I wrong ! Notwithstanding the fact that on online forums, some people indeed seemed to act like the process is "obvious" so much so that it was sometimes frustrating to read, the color management "community" seems quite elitist, like if they were scared that we would ruin the process or something !

[@lolerie]

There is no way to really color manage a desktop on windows. You can use special plugin of course...

[@massimoconcimedia612]

OMG thank you! the 1DLUt think was driving me insane. I would boot my PC then it would do this colour shift. I was like WTF, is the colour right now or is it wrong! you are a god

[@jakelunniss1399]

This is _brilliant_

[@2181425]

Doing the Lord's work Taran

[@uttiya10]

Put some ads on this video so I can support you!!

[@ZsoltVajda]

Great video Taran! quick note: with indexed colors in PS you only have 256 colors (8bit) and 1 bit transparency so that's the reason why you cant create layers or have them semi-transparent.

[@jasio77mega]

Hey Taran, that white cursor at 45:00 (or something) is a hardware accelerated cursor. It doesn't have it's colors shifted, because it's (literally the cursor) applied on the GPU (which doesn't know anything about the color mumbo jumbo). It's purpose it's so that the GPU doesn't have to render out a completely new frame because the cursor's position has changed; instead it will just overlay the cursor image in another place on the screen using the same frame.

[@matheuswohl]

can we take a moment to appreciate this epic intro?

[@MadJackVideos]

I clicked this video knowing full well that no matter how long it goes on for i will watch it all.

[@Williwillwixxen]

here is what i learned. as a casual media consumer i will never ever think about color calibrating my monitors

[@DigitalNegative]

Thanks Taran

[@why_though]

This will save you some headaches: Windows color management is actually broken. Sometimes when you click to apply a profile it just does nothing. So i would recommend this simple program from xrite, that can be used to reliably switch between profiles. I think it is called DisplayProfile, use that instead.

[@565paolo]

I think I might help explain that part at 50:25 about how color profiles are interpreted on the web and about the "most websites strip it away [the 4 kb of color profile data] because it's too much, it can't handle another 4 kb" thing: UPDATE: I started writing a long answer about my understanding of images and color profiles, and then I discovered that the Jeffrey Blog you linked to has 7 pages, and the third page seems to explain most of the things I was going to write, but I decided to simply edit the original answer I was going to send because he does not seem to go over a very important bit. Not only you have to make sure the software you are going to use to display the image supports color profiles, but also make sure that the software that is compressing the image you posted on the internet can handle color profiles, here's why: The problem here is that, using terms from Jeffrey's blog post, most programs are "Color Stubborn", meaning that they always assume the image to be sRGB even when the image profile metadata says otherwise. This not only applies to browsers, but also to image compression software who's running on most photo sharing websites. Most of the times the programs doing the compression are "Color Stubborn" or sometimes even "Color Stupid", meaning that if you upload an image that is for example Adobe RGB, the compression program will instead always assume the image to be sRGB. The image compressor will then do it's job and spit out an sRGB image. It's important to note here that the image compressor did not convert color profiles to make the new sRGB image look right, it's more like simply changing the label and saying that now the image is sRGB instead of of saying what it really was. After the image gets compressed some user is then going to open that compressed image through his browser, and the browser is going to think "oh, this image is sRGB, I would also know how to display these other color profiles, but the image metadata says this is sRGB (or there's no color profile metadata at all so it will assume it to be sRGB, since it's the most popular color profile), let's use the sRGB color profile!". It's the image compression software that screwed things up, not the browser. The browser did his job right by using the color profile it was told to use or assuming the color profile to be sRGB in case the color profile wasn't specified! Since there are multiple versions of image decoding, processing and encoding libraries, I don't think this issue will ever get fixed. From my testing even Instagram doesn't get this right, ruining all of the images I uploaded since a few months ago because it assumed them to be sRGB and not what they really were: Adobe RGB. TLDR: Based on all of the above, if you are going to export an image who's going to be sent through the internet at some point (having it posted on a website, social media, sent via an instant messaging app ecc.), the safest thing is to always export it as sRGB.

[@QualityDoggo]

The cursor doesn't change color if it's running on the GPU. This happens with F.lux too but they have an option to force software-cursor when it's active.

[@matthewbilker3401]

I think you are correct. That laptop is probably using NVIDIA Optimus and I saw in the video that it was using an Intel Graphics UHD device so the Intel driver is colorizing the cursor while the NVIDIA driver isn't.

[@carlosIC]

I'm a noob at color calibration and also a noob in Adobe Illustrator. I had to export an image to print it on a large scale. Boy I was scared of not using the correct colors and the correct scale. Anyway, I just saw 15 minutes and this is very useful (and entertaining). I will this watch later.

[@rat1444]

dear sir i think you just saved my life.

[@Andrew90046zero]

Also, you can use "indexed colors" to make cool looking retro effects by turning down the color count to like 8, and you can even pick your colors and it basically limits your image to a certain palette of colors.

[@lcarsos]

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the super exaggerated examples. I'm color blind and been dipping my toes into video production, and I've been noticing some of these things and couldn't tell if I was insane, or if it was the color blindness. And I didn't know how to use the tools to figure it out (yet. I'm learning). As for what is "indexed" color: That's how old computer palettes worked. I don't particularly understand the underlying technology, but essentially you're allowed only a certain number of colors, and you can redefine which colors are in which spaces. This video is hugely fascinating for learning about indexed color: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l37Ge2SAq9mYnJI

[@TeuPrimou]

This video is just to show how amazing nerdy people are, simply love it

[@23bcx]

Indexed color in photo shop is mostly intended to keep the size down on images that use limited colors. Not all image formats do anything with it, and alot that do are being phased out because keeping size down isn't in anymore. It can also have some cool artistic effects.

[@metallurgico]

that's why linus loves taran

[@CoryFloodwayPrintCo]

I am patiently awaiting the video about "obvious" is not a welcome word in a learning environment! Have you talked about that anywhere else yet?

[@TheKaboomification]

You see Taran? Rabbit holes are educational and fun (well, fun only after 10 years looking back on it but still)

[@ged4]

Tagged images are photographies with sRGB or AdobeRGB colour profile embedded, most graphics on the internet don't have an embedded colour profile

[@LucasJodokast]

i went through this hell when trying to calibrate my TV through my PC, after coming to the conclusion windows colour profile just does what it wants when it wants i removed all the profiles & have none selected, was the only way i could get good results across the board as far as games & videos went (Full & Limited colour as required), then i realized Disney Plus only does HDR through the TV app & just started using that just a heads up with that last setting you changed, it works on certain video players but not all of them, which is another head F&*% all in itself, which is why i deleted my colour profiles & choose Nvidia to manage my colour rather than windows, this also allowed me to choose Limited or Full Dynamic colour manually rather than relying on it (maybe) switching automatically, not sure how viable that is for editing but for gaming its awesome

[@gavinspammed]

Watching this because you are in my top two hosts at LMG. By the way, the list off the top of my head is something like: 1&2) Linus/Taran 3) Brandon 4) Anthony 5) Jake 6) Luke 7) Riley

[@ZacDonald]

1/2) Taran/Anthony 3/4) Brandon/Alex ... 9) Everyone else .... 17) Linus

[@christianhemingway2807]

Where can I get myself a Taran