Blank/black image preview--new monitor

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jczinn
Posts: 16
Joined: June 7th, 2009, 12:52 am

Blank/black image preview--new monitor

Post by jczinn »

I just got a new monitor (BENQSW2700PT) and am having a weird problem with PWP. Sometimes the preview window will open up blank/black. It doesn't seem to happen with any particular transformation (its happened with several different ones--sharpen, blur, saturation, etc.) If I close it and reopen it, usually it then displays as it should.

Also, once in a while (rarely) after performing a transformation, the main image window opens up black. In those cases, closing it and then repeating the transformation, it is okay.

This has never happened before and nothing has changed on the PC, so I can only attribute it to something with the new monitor and its profile. To be honest I never implemented color management before this monitor but with this monitor I had to, as things looked wonky without it. I'm now using settings as below, although I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the problem.

Image

Any thoughts? Its not a huge deal if I can't fix it, but its annoying :)
jsachs
Posts: 4203
Joined: January 22nd, 2009, 11:03 pm

Re: Blank/black image preview--new monitor

Post by jsachs »

Try switching to lcms for the Color Engine and changing On Startup to Ignore System Monitor Settings and then select the monitor profile manually. The monitor profile is either generated by your monitor calibrator if you have one or you should select the color space to which the monitor is set -- typically sRGB or AdobeRGB. For the 2700, if you don't have a monitor calibrator, you should probably set the monitor to AdobeRGB via its hardware controls and use AdobeRGB for your monitor profile.

Also it is a bad idea to set the working color space to the monitor color space -- better to use a standard color space such as AdobeRGB so you can exchange files with others who have different monitors or if the monitor settings change.
Jonathan Sachs
Digital Light & Color
Charles2
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Joined: November 24th, 2009, 2:00 am
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Re: Blank/black image preview--new monitor

Post by Charles2 »

For what it may be worth, below are the settings I use for a NEC PA series monitor. The monitor stores its calibrations in an internal lookup table rather than in the graphics card of the computer, so if the BenQ does the same, the settings are worth a try. I calibrate the monitor to Adobe RGB color space (for PWP work; I toggle to an sRGB calibration for Web surfing and ordinary office tasks).
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jczinn
Posts: 16
Joined: June 7th, 2009, 12:52 am

Re: Blank/black image preview--new monitor

Post by jczinn »

Thanks, as you can see I have little understanding about color management and in the past I've never had an issue...I rarely print and when I do, everything looked perfect so I never bothered with it. What I posted on the web looked great. But with this new monitor---which is a Wide Gamut monitor--I see I need to make some tweaks. (Maybe I shouldn't have bought this monitor, but it got great reviews and had the features I wanted--too late now!) The monitor is set to Adobe RGB, but things looked really off in PWP until I changed the setting to read the BENQ profile.

So I've already spent several days trying to get images to match between all the programs I use (PWP, Nikon View, Nikon NX-D, and then there's others I use for my Fuji like their RAW converter, and ancillary things like NIK software and TOPAZ) So I've finally got everything to look consistent, and what I've posted on the web looks good with different devices. My only issue seems to be this black preview box or sometimes PWP just opens a black file. I will continue to try and tweak. I've set the color engine to LMS (I'll make one change at a time) to see what happens.
jsachs
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Joined: January 22nd, 2009, 11:03 pm

Re: Blank/black image preview--new monitor

Post by jsachs »

Did you ever get this to work reliably?
Jonathan Sachs
Digital Light & Color
jczinn
Posts: 16
Joined: June 7th, 2009, 12:52 am

Re: Blank/black image preview--new monitor

Post by jczinn »

Yes...at least, it hasn't happened again. The only thing I actually changed was the color engine from Windows Default to LMS. I don't know if that really had anything to do with the issue, or if it was just one of those flukes. But so far, so good.

Thanks!
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