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I have a color management problem on my system – which is .icc calibrated for my professional use of Photoshop and Capture One Pro.
For DaVinci Resolve I had someone turn my .icc file into a 3Dlut cube file and installed it in the lut folder and in project settings loaded it into the 3D viewer.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. The screen appearance between “use mac display color profiles for viewer” (no LUT selected in project settings) and when I only use the 3Dlut (and mac settings off in preferences) are pretty much the same.
The colors are fine, but the brightness is much lower than when I output to Quicktime. I have create an adjustment luminance curve to get the output the same as what I see when color correcting in DaVinci.
I have to improve this, and would be glad if you could help me with that:
It looks like I have to get a second monitor just for the viewer window.
The question:
For DaVinci I would need to do a calibration with a 3Dlut file.
I read that any .icc file on a system would mess up the calibration for DaVinci Resolve.
Would a 3Dlut file also work for Photoshop and Capture One Pro ? My livelihood depends on this, so I can’t risk it.
And if yes, how do I make sure there is no .icc file anywhere to mess up the system, e.g. in the graphics card.
I hope it is clear enough what the problem is: to avoid a cold war between .icc and 3Dcube color management files and create a color management that works for both Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve 15.
thank you!
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. The screen appearance between “use mac display color profiles for viewer” (no LUT selected in project settings) and when I only use the 3Dlut (and mac settings off in preferences) are pretty much the same.
This seems to indicate the opposite, it works just fine.
The colors are fine, but the brightness is much lower than when I output to Quicktime. I have create an adjustment luminance curve to get the output the same as what I see when color correcting in DaVinci.
Note that QuickTime player is not suitable for accurate preview because it seems to always default to a (roughly) gamma 1.9 curve (too bright). For video production, you likely want BT.1886 or gamma 2.2 (legacy).
It looks like I have to get a second monitor just for the viewer window.
A dedicated video monitor with (e.g.) better black level than what typical computer monitors can provide certainly has its benefits.
I read that any .icc file on a system would mess up the calibration for DaVinci Resolve.
No, profiles on the system won’t affect the calibration of a dedicated video monitor at all. Even if you’re using the GUI monitor for previewing, as long as you follow the guide in the Wiki, you should be fine.
Would a 3Dlut file also work for Photoshop and Capture One Pro ? My livelihood depends on this, so I can’t risk it.
In Photoshop, it will (I don’t know if you can apply 3D LUTs in Capture One). The process is as follows:
- Open image in PS.
- Open menu “Layer” -> “Adjustment layer” and choose “Color lookup”.
- Choose your 3D LUT (*.cube) in the properties panel.
- Open menu “View” -> “Proof Setup” and choose “Monitor RGB”.
Probably a good idea to record and save these steps as a custom action.
There’s an alternative to using the 3D LUT which should give almost identical results in arbitrary ICC color managed software:
- Open DisplayCAL’s standalone synthetic ICC profile creator.
- Drag & drop your display profile into the application window. This will fill all fields with values from the profile, but we are only(!) interested in white and black level (don’t change those).
- Select the same color space under preset that was used as source color space when creating the 3D LUT.
- Under tone curve, use the same settings as when creating the 3D LUT.
- Create and save the profile.
- Assign (do not convert or apply) this profile to any images opened in color managed applications.
Thank you, Florian.
Yes, it seems that the identity of the view of “use monitor profile” and the 3DLUT created from the .icc file that is the base of the monitor profile shows it works (I only found out yesterday that “use monitor profile” doesn’t use a generic mac profile, but the calibration)
There’s one thing that puzzles me: I never heard that a calibration was referring to a color space .
But I have come across it repeatedly in the last days when researching this problem. When I create a .icc file for e.g. Photoshop – which color space does it use? I’m on a NEC PA271 wide gamut monitor that displays 98% of Adobe RGB (so is Adobe RGB the color space on which the calibration is based upon?)
And it’s Quicktime’s fault if everything looks too bright because of it’s gamma of 1,9? But this is then also the standard of web video, isn’t it? There’s no real way around, is there?
At them moment I’m creating an adjusting curve that darkens the whole movie via the new shared node feature in DVR.
I discovered also a color shift – probably through the darkening – and I had to add some red in the mid-range.
So, thanks again, for you great feedback. There are some really interesting conversations about the GUI viewer and the problematic brightening of exports. Here are the links:
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=46464&p=269809#p269839
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=46464&p=269809#p269962
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=46065
But I have come across it repeatedly in the last days when researching this problem. When I create a .icc file for e.g. Photoshop – which color space does it use?
A single ICC profile describes a color space, either synthetic or an actual measured device characterisation. Display profiles are the latter, so they describe the monitor colorspace.
And it’s Quicktime’s fault if everything looks too bright because of it’s gamma of 1,9? But this is then also the standard of web video, isn’t it? There’s no real way around, is there?
In Safari under macOS, perhaps. In other browsers, and definitely under other OS (which usually are not color managed), I wouldn’t count on it.
