Lost in Windows 10 display settings

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tomczak
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Lost in Windows 10 display settings

Post by tomczak »

Hi,

It looks like I'm lost again in Windows 10 laptop display settings. I don't understand which settings affect or are combined with the others and where the monitor ICC profile fits in. I don't have a hardware calibrator.

There is the Intel HD Graphics Control Panel (for Intel HD 505) and also Windows/Keyboard brightness adjustments and then Windows Display Color Calibration (which can adjust gamma and colour shifts).

1) Are the brightness/contrast adjustments in Intel HD Graphics the base ones, on top of which all the others (like windows brightness slider) are added to? It doesn't look to me that the two are doing the same thing...

2) Is it the same with colour shifts in Intel HD Graphics and the Windows Display Colour Calibration - i.e. are the colour shifts in Intel combined with colour shifts in Windows Colour Calibration?

3) Once the Windows colour calibration is done, what happens - are the adjustments loaded automatically on each startup and does it produce an ICC profile that I can use (but in Windows Color Management and then in PWP colour management as well)?

I thought I understood it, but it doesn't look like it anymore... Help appreciated...
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Intel HD Control Panel v1.jpg
Intel HD Control Panel v1.jpg (31.01 KiB) Viewed 3061 times
Maciej Tomczak
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jsachs
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Joined: January 22nd, 2009, 11:03 pm

Re: Lost in Windows 10 display settings

Post by jsachs »

While I have never used the Intel HD Graphics Control Panel, it looks like something you would use when calibrating your laptop screen as a replacement for the brightness and color controls an external monitor normally has. If you have a separate monitor calibration device such as a Datacolor Spyder or X-Rite i1 Display, then during the initial part of the calibration process you are asked to set the display brightness and white point to get as close to target values as possible so the calibration curves will not have to do too much heavy lifting. I never use the Window Color Calibration tool. Using more than one of these tools at the same time does sound like a formula for chaos. My guess is that these software tools are aimed at users who want to tweak their display for games and movie viewing.
Jonathan Sachs
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mjdl
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Re: Lost in Windows 10 display settings

Post by mjdl »

My long answer:

I have one of these Intel built-in graphics processors on my notebook (linked to a separate Nvidia graphics processor in an "Optimus" design--when the Nvidia is doing the heavy graphics work, the Intel chip mostly just transfer the results into the notebooks graphics memory).

I also calibrate and profile my notebook's screen with a colorimeter (worth it, since the panel can display the full AdobeRGB gamut). The colour profile loader that starts up when I log in to my account on the notebook monitors the display chip's gamma table and ensures it is always loaded with the correct information, so that input greyscale RGB values of the image in your picture editor, e.g. RG(128, 128, 128), are in fact displayed as an actual neutral gray. And as for work in colour managed programs, such a profiled display gives a bit more certainty in the effects of image adjustments, and the gray/Red/Green/Blue ramps are nicely progressive.

The manual brightness and colour controls of the Intel interfere with the profile loader''s adjustments, thus I leave them exactly in their default positions.

When the calibration part of the profiling software is making measurements to create a profile, it initially loads a linear gamma table and then changes it by steps as it converges on an accurately displayed neutral grayscale (among other calculations). This calculated gamma ramp is then stored in the colour profile and loaded into the Intel display chip by the loader assistant utility program (every profiling software has its own version of that).

Altering the Intel controls before or after monitor profiling would defeat its purpose. Indeed, notebooks don't usually have the separate hardware panel brightness/contrast/colour controls that a stand-alone monitor has, and which are used to get the panel into a rough target brightness and colour balance before the profiling software does its work (profiling software usually has an option to help with such an initial seetup).

Before creating such a profile with the software, I also disable the following Intel colour processing options, so that as little data as possible is dynamically changed by the Intel graphics drivers, and I create a new Intel Graphics profiles, "Intel Defaults" before I adjust settings, and "Everything Off" after my adjustments, to easily apply these settings in the future (and return to the defaults if I want to):

1) Display-->Color Settings Disable "Color Accuracy"
2) On the other settings sheets, I always disable everything that offers an enable/disable choice, and I leave everything else set to "Use Application Defaults" (rather than "Driver Defaults" or "Custom")

There isn't a lot of information on what all these options do, so either I disable them, or leave their use to the application program. I could be quite wrong about them.

But none of all that applies to your situation, sorry to be so long-winded, but I thought a little context is necessary.

What I used to do before I had a calibration device is this:

0) Defeat all the options in the display driver that may alter adjustments during and after this process.

1) Download a test image that has neutral patches in the shadow and highlight RGB values. I have attached two, but I prefer the "Wer findet den einser" ("Who can find the 1"), since the objective is to find out how much of shadow and highlight values are being squeezed into pure black or white, and on a well-tuned monitor the "1" should be just barely distinguishable from the background black or white, and should appear as neutral as possible. (Even good profiling devices/software have trouble with the latter.)

2) Set PWP's colour management to sRGB working space.

3) Load the file, and see if you can find the "1" in both the black and the white half of the image. Using the Intel program, adjust brightnes/contrast until you can; then use the colour levels to achieve a decently neutral gray. You may have to fiddle back and forth several times to improve it.

In any case... I'm certainly no expert in all this colour stuff, but I hope this is more or less helpful and not misleading!
Attachments
wer_findet_den_einser_gross.jpg
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Shadow_Highlight_test_mask_2250px.jpg
Shadow_Highlight_test_mask_2250px.jpg (33.79 KiB) Viewed 3044 times
tomczak
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Re: Lost in Windows 10 display settings

Post by tomczak »

Cheers!

I think I figured out how to visually adjust the notebook screen without colorimeter semi-decently, despite Windows Colour Mgmt requiring a PhD in linguistics to follow their lingo...

Here is my recipe:
  1. Maximize the screen Brightness slider in Windows/Settings/Display and dim the ambient light a notch.
  2. In Intel HD Graphics Control Panel (a replacement of hardware knobs as Jonathan pointed out), adjust Brightness (black level or y-intercept of Screen Output vs. Signal calibration curve) slider while observing a Black Level test image e.g. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
  3. In Intel HD Graphics Control Panel adjust Contrast (a slope of Screen Output vs. Signal) slider while observing a White Saturation test image e.g. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php. The Brightness and Contrast sliders interact - readjust Brightness as low as possible and Contrast as high as necessary to see most of the squares in black and white test images. Don't make the screen appear too bright - there is gamma adjustment next.
  4. While observing gamma 2.2 test image, necessarily in 1:1 (e.g. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gamma_calibration.php )use Quick Gamma (https://quickgamma.de/indexen.html) to adjust gamma (Quick Gamma help explains it well). You could use Windows/Color Management/Advanced/Calibrate display instead. Both methods create ICC profile with vcgt tag holding LUT monitor correction curves which are used by Windows loader if set as default profiles in Windows Color Mgmt.
In my case Windows Calibration produces: CalibratedDisplayProfile-1.icc (ICC Profile Description: sRGB display profile with display hardware configuration derived from calibration).

Quick Gamma calibration produces: QuickGammaProfileYYYYMMDD.icc file (ICC Profile Description: Generic PnP Monitor)

Here are my other favorite images to check if monitor display stays about right (download and look at 1:1): Good articles on adjusting displays by Norman Koren (http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html and Sean T. McHugh (https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutor ... ration.htm).
Maciej Tomczak
Phototramp.com
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