AnKo

Since 3 months I am the proud owner of the NEC MultiSync LCD 2470WNX and I am very very happy with this screen. Perfect colors, good color controle and calibrating the screen is no problem with my Spyder2. The 24" (1920 x 1200) gives me so much workingspace when using Lightroom/PtE and other software, I love this LCD. HP, Dell and Mac screens have good reviews with 24" screens too. But beware for low budget LCD's because most of them have 6 bits panels which gives you no more then 8^6 = 262144 colors, while 8 bits does 8^8 = 16.777.216 colors!! André

Hi all, The problem is that the ATI + 7.12 drivers do NOT work with the older AGP cards, only PCI. There is a threat about this subject on this forum by Lin Evans. However, the AGP issue is solved within the Omega drivers. One can make his advantage of this. In my case the Gamma fix by Igor didn't work for reasons of AGP compatibility. Regards, André

Hello David & xahu34, I did some searching on forums to find answers to the problems with the X600. There are more people having the kind of problems you mentioned. But there could be a solution as well. Install the ATI 7.12 drivers first and after that, without uninstalling, install the Omega drivers on top of them. This helps in several cases. Omega does not rework all drivers/dll's form ATI, they even uses some older ATI drivers for best results. Give it a try, the gammafix is worth it. I hope your clubmenbers do have positif results with Omega. These are real good drivers! Maybe Igor can use this knowledge too for incorporating a permenent gammafix in PtE? Thanks for your reply on this matter. Regards, André

xahu34, Did you tried the Omega-drivers? They don't "tweak" every set of original ATI-drivers because most of them solve only gaming problems which is not interesting enough to tweak. And it seems to be a lot of work to rework them. However, the Omega-drivers I mentioned in this threat (based on the 7.12 ATI-drivers) DO solve the gamma problems mentioned severel times on this forum. I cannot believe nobody is trying this solution, waiting for ATI to do the same thing. As far as I know nothing has changed by ATI to solve "our" problems. Regards, André

Mike, As far as I know, RAW images do not have a colorprofile. The colorprofile that can be set on the camera (like you, I use aRGB) is only used when shooting JPG's (or TIFF) or the JPG's that are produced by the camera next to the RAW images. But when you convert the RAW image to an other format (JPG/TIFF) in PS/LR a colorprofile will be included (I don't know this for DNG). Using ProPhotoRGB provides us the largest colorspace to work in. Many people will tell us that this is of no use, because most printers (and monitors/websites) can only handle sRGB (or even less) which colorspace is again smaller. But, as long as you let PS/LR control the output to the printer, PS will shift the ProPhotoRGB colorspace as best as possible to the sRGB colorspace. That can solve gamut problems while we are able to control the colors even better in PS. So working this way when editting your images in PS has advantages. Don't forget to set LS and PS to the ProPhotoRGB colorspace and check on the 3 warnings! You can use the softproofing in PS to see the gamut changes in the output colorprofile. Complicated, but there is much to read about this in books and on the internet. For the best quality you should save your RAW images in the same bits as they were taken. If your camera produce 16 bits images, save them as 16 bit. In the end when you like to use the images in PtE I convert them to JPG, 100% quality, NO resolution changes and sRGB as colorprofile. Now, as Colin mentioned above, I bet your next problem will be a calibrated workspace which start with a calibrated monitor. The beginning of colormanagement. So there is a whole world to explore. Have fun. kind regards, André

Mike, To me, working with NEF's in Lightroom, has only 2 purposes: making good prints & making slideshows with Pte. Lightroom lets you print the NEF (RAW-file) directly, so no need for saving them as psd/dng/tiff. As said before, for use with PtE, Lightroom can convert the NEF's easy to JPG/TIFF. When I want to "rework" pictures in PS, depending of the final output source, I should choose DNG/TIFF for printing purposes (quality) and JPG for PtE use. DNG/TIFF because PSD is not as compatible as DNG or TIFF, and JPG for PtE because there is always some loss of quality when producing an .exe or DVD/AVI as final product and therefore I don't believe the difference between TIFF and JPG is visuel on screen (I just learned that PtE cannot use TIFF) (also TIFF files are much larger then JPG). All, Our hobby is more complicated than it looks. That makes it fun too! This discussion was started with questions about colormanagement within PtE. FMA38 mentioned the colorspaces HDTV and NTCS as "output" in PtE. What I do not understand is why we should convert a colorprofile for photo's (sRGB/aRGB,ProPhotoRGB,etc) to the colorspaces like HDTV or NTCS. Because I feel one should also "develop" these photo's in that same colorspace to get proper results and those colorspaces will be (much) smaller then aRGB or ProPhotoRGB. Can anyone explain this to me, please? Kind regards, André

Mike, Peter, Actualy, some time ago I prepared a .exe demo of PtE (with PZR) to be projected on a beamer (digital projecter?) just the way I always do. Except for changing the colorspace to sRGB for the jpg's I kept the original resolution of the D70: ~ 2000 x 3000, jpg quality at 100%. This projected with the beamer (native resolution 1024 x 768) gave, in my opinion, a perfect result. I believe the only reason for downsizing the resolution is to keep the presentation/exe small. But it could be different when playing a DVD prepared slideshow on a beamer. There are many discussions on this forum about the best resolution to use. I like the large resolution because of the advantages when zooming or panning in PtE. As Peter explained, you should keep in mind the final output device. Personaly I make mostly DVD's as final product, for which I keep the original resolution. Kind regards, André

I'd like to point all ATI users on the ATI gamma/profile solotion that is available on the internet right now. I mentioned it before, but it seems not been read. Look at this site: http://omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php. Beneath you can download "repaired" ATI drivers, based on the 7.12 drivers from ATI. They are very very good and solving the known AGP problems as well. Colormanagement is very difficult but it seems even more complicated then I thought. I created a colormanaged workflow working in Lightroom/Bridge/PS CS3 in which I use the ProPhotoRGB-colorspace. For PtE use I convert the photo's to sRGB colorspace in Lightroom (or PS). PtE isn't part of my colormanaged workflow because (as far as I know) it can't handle colorspaces the way PS does. But it would be great to make PtE part of my colormanaged workflow as output (like a printer)! I hope you understand wath I mean. Kind regards, André

I might be very wrong, but I believe there is no use for PtE using ICC-colorprifiles. That is because any sort of output from PtE is always displayed on monitors, (LCD) TV's and beamers which are only capable of working in sRGB, as Windows XP does. For that reason a picture with an other colorprofile then sRGB will display incorrect on screen in PtE. Using a different colorprofile on your photo's can be usefull in the developmant fase when working in a other (bigger) colorspace, searching for- and working on- the right colors and working on perfect prints as part of colormanagement. This has to do with gamuts, but I guess you already know. But as I said, I might be completely wrong. Regards, André

For cataloging my pictures I use Bridge (that comes with Photoshop) because of the easy tagging of photo's with keywords AND the doorway to Photoshop for special perposes. In Lightroom, which I use to develop my RAW photo's, tagging and keywording can be done too but the interface is not as friendly Bridge for this job. The export function is perfect to convert the RAW photo's and include them with the right colorprofile. It's this combination that I prefer above all other software that is on the market today. Sure, Capture NX (I have a Nikon D70) is perfectly converting the NEF's to the correct colors, ACR is not that good (jet), but it is hard to incorperate in an almost seamless workflow. So for me it's Adobe all the way. And as mentioned before, HD-space is very important. Recently LaCie has brought very nice USB-harddisks on the maket (here in Europe) up to 1 TB for fair prices. They are great for storing my NEF files, included with the xmp's produced by ACR. We might say that nowadays photografie as a hobby is more then then shooting pictures and proces them as we wanted them to look like. And altogether its great fun! regards, André

Good news for the ATI videocard users among us!! The people of Omegadrivers reworked the ATI driver 7.12 to work with AGP port and they maneged to fix the 3D gamma problem. At least it did to me with my ASUS ATI 9800 Pro card while working with a monitorprofile made with my Spider2!! And it is just great! Omegadrivers are tweaked ATI drivers on points of quality and speed. And now they fixed the AGP and 3D gamma problem on the 7.12 ATI drivers (until ATI fixes this problems, they say). You can find the drivers on this link: http://omegadrivers.net/ati_winxp.php I hope many of you give this a try and experience the beauty of PTE working on a colormanaged monitor. Regards, André

I have seen this effect before, on LCD-screens not set correctly on screen resolution. Could it be that you work on a LCD-screen? If so, is your LCD-screen able to project at least 8-bit (256 x 256 x 256 ~ 17.000.000 colors) photographs? I ask you this because many LCD-screens do have a 6-bits panel onboard which can "only" display ~ 220.000 (64 x 64 x 64) colors at a time. Could the answer lies somewhere in this? In my opninion it has to be something with the graphical part of Steve's PC and/or monitor. Refresh rate at 65? By the way, the Photo is a real beautifull shot! Wonderful moment captured there! Hope you solve this problem soon. You have the best advisers on this forum. Good luck. André

Hi Since yesterday I am the proud owner of a NEC 2470WNX lcd monitor. My CRT was just not giving me the quality I prefer anymore (see my earlier post). This lcd runs in 1920 x 1200 resolution (24") and one of the first things I run was PtE and one of my slideshows. Pictures look realy perfect and its a releaf the workingspace is almost doublled. I made all my shows in widescreenformat (DVD) working on a CRT resolution of 1280 x 960 to keep the 4:3 aspect ratio. My photo's are all as shot in 3000 x 2000 format. This worked very well with my Asus Redeon 9800 XP 256 Mb videocard and with the CTR. But now, working in this high resolution there are stutters when PRZ-effects are there during the time the previous slide is fading in and out. Even after resizing the pictures to 1920 x 1200 the problems are still there. Not very nice. So I ran the tests Lin made, and they all worked perfect. Which leads me to the conclusion that the performance of an G-card is also depending on the monitor and the resolution your are working with. When you consider buying a LCD monitor as I did, it is important to take notice of this. For me, I have to find myself a "new" AGP G-card that can handle this problem. Or buy a complete new system that can be used for the next 3 or 4 years. I thought it was usefull to share this experience with you all. Regards André

Hi Igor, Test works perfect here too with my Asus Radeon 9800 XT 256 Mb card. Can't wait for the next update of PtE!! Thanks for your very quick respons on this subject (as on all, by the way). André

Hi Igor, Yes! If you could make that work ....! And also I use ColorVision Spyder2 to calibrate my monitor (with ASUS Radeon 9800 XT 256 Mb graphics) card. And I sure would love to help you beta test too. André

Hello all, Following this discussion, I have seen remarkeble HD-performances on a Playstation 3. This machine is, I Believe, capabel to render normal DVD-format to HD-format. Then it has many other features like the ability to play HD-format and has therefore some HD-connections, BlueRay player, Harddisk, etc. Very interesting is the option to place the machine into your network, so you can stream from your PC to Playstation and you dont have to burn DVD/CD all the time. Worth looking into Playstation 3? André

Bruce, Brain, Thanks for correcting me Bruce. Sorry for mixing you up ! So, thank you Brain for the test, it was of use to me. And thanks to all that replied on my question. As I said, this is a great communitie! And good to have experts in here, because PtE is worth good background information to get to best out of PtE. Only a good workflow is getting the 100% quality PtE can offer us. As far as the values on my monitor: maybe I decide to get them a bit closer to 30-70, because contrast now is very high. Brain, my RGB-cables are connected to the Analog RGB/PC/Component port (with a special connector) on my LCD TV. There is also a HDMI connector, which my DVD-player doesn's support. It's an 'old' player as all equipment after 3 years today. But I'll check it out and change it if its possible the way you advised. By the way Brain, which is best of the 3: Scart, s-RGB, or componentcables connected to an Analog RGB/PC/Component port? Thanks, André

Hi you all, Today I did the test Bruce discribed And it solved my problems!!! It all was a matter of contrast and brightness, just like Bruce said. But ... the problem was part of my calibration with my spyder2pro. Let me explain. Using the software that comes with the Spider2pro I am able to set the luminance values for white and black. Since I read a dutch forum on colormanagement and standardisation of this issue I used the values they advised: 100 contrast and 0.2 for brightness. Using these values I am able to calibrate colors AND black and white (the grey's). Because of that my monitor had levels of 73 for contrast and 65 for brightness. Thats what caused my flat colors. The test learned me this and I started reading these values when setting contrast to 70 and brightness to 30. This gave me compleet different vallues! After some experimenting I used value 120 for contrast and 0.15 for white while calibrating. Now my monitor reads a contrast of 92 and brightness of 23!!! Quite a difference. When I looked at my fotographs with Lightroom they all looked flat and I had to rework them (in fact, there wasn't much to do, because the RAW images were quite alright) and convert them to Jpg again. Et voila, colors look much better now! I also know now my monitor is not that good anymore. And my LCD TV is not of great quality. These are bottlenecks in my workflow, but time will come. Bruce, you might still ask yourself why I am using my Spider2pro to calibrate the contrast and brightness. Well, I use this because it also calibrates the colors. But I did the contrast thing just wrong in the past. So thank you very much for your test, Bruce. I learned a lot from it. André

Ronnie, Thanks for your reply. I understand your question very well and I agree with you. But I shoot only in RAW, so the colorspace is not important as long as I work in RAW. My camara is set on aRGB, but just in case I decide to shoot Jpg. Much more colorspace in aRGB. After I reworked the RAW images with Lightroom 1.2, I convert them in Lightroom 1.2 to Jpg and sRGB. Brian, Thanks again for your clear explanation. I wil do the test as you discribed tomorow or/and sunday. Unfortunatly my work needs me a bit too much these days. It's give and take, I believe. Be back here soon. André

Thank you Bruce, I am shure this problem will be solved soon. Brian, thanks for your complete guide to attack this problem. You are right, when you said ....Images are washed out...no Cromonance nor Luminance data nor Highlights nor Shadow detail in the Images... This weekend I will perform your testing suggestions. But something confuses me here. I have calibrated my monitor (IIyama hm903DT A 19") so output to my printer is quite good and comparing fotographs with my monitor is satisfying as well. When changing contrast and/or brightness I mess up the calibrated monitor profile? Anyway, its very much worth performing your suggested test. I let you all know my results later on this weekend. Thank you all for trying to understand and solve my problem. Great to be part of this PtE community! André

Hi Nobeefstu, I am using Video Builder, not Nero!. Sorry, I was confused because before PtE de Luxe I used Nero. Yes, the the colors look normal on my monitor when played the DVD. In the past I made some DVD's (using PtE 5 beta (n) which I looked back last night. The colors look much better is these shows. Nevertheless, they are not as colorfull as when played on my PC. But I think that is normal. By the way, my LCD is a Sharp Aquos. André

Thanks for your fast reply bruce. I have concerted all pictures to sRGB. When I mean 'flat' colors, I mean the 'vibriance' of the colors is lost on lcd screen. Not when viewed on monitor. So I think it has to do with my LCD. But since all looks normal on normal DVD's and television broadcastings I thought maybe this could have something to do with the way PtE handels with the colors while burning them on DVD. So far I am a bit confuesed about this issue. It is quite frustrating to see normal looking pictures pixel sharp, but with loss of color. André

Hi there, I'm new to this forum, though read the postings here almost every day for over a year or so. Great software, great forum and great communitie here! Thanks for all the information you all gave to me so far. But now I have a odd problem on with I like your advise. Last week I burned a DVD with some 300 pictures I took on vacation after preparing this slideshow in PtE. When I played it back on my LCD TV the colors looked very "flat". All greens, reds and blue's look pale and even an bit grey. The pictures didn't sparkle anymore. As if summer looked like winter (if you know waht I mean). My workflow is calibrated. I shoot with my Nikon D70 only in RAW-format. After that I correct the NEF's in Lightroom 1.2 and then convert them in batch to JPG's in best quality. I don't make any changes in resolution. After this, and knowing the colormanagement problems of ATI (i have an 9800 XT 256 RAM videocard), I make the show in PtE. Previewing the show make the pictures look different because of my ATI-card, naturaly. I then burned the show from within PtE 5.03 the luxe (with Nero) on DVD, making DVD files. Now I thought this ATI colormanagement problem should be of no influence when burning the show on DVD. Was I wrong or is there something I did wrong? Could it be my LCD TV (connected to my Pioneer DVD-player with RGB-cables), while all normal DVD's and televisonprograms look just fine? Can you help me out, please? André