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Hello,
With my laptop getting old and with interest in my pictures increasing, I thought it might be a good idea to calibrate the screen. Got a Colormunki Smile and running Ubuntu 16.04.1, downloaded Displaycal and followed the quick start. As one does when not all that interested in the technical side of things. The results were not good. For starters I could not find controls to set the white point as the software requests after taking an initial measurement. I did try the NVIDIA (GE 525 M with NVIDIA drivers 361.42) control panel but any change made just immediately reverted back to pre-change settings. (Not confirm new settings) So I just skipped to calibration and about halfway through the process the screen darkened and colors became much warmer. The Ubuntu default theme went from gray to a sort of sickly brown. When finished the software said it could not load the profile it had just created and loading it manually, as in settings / device color profiles / load profile, it loaded the darker/warmer profile. Leaving it in place I thought I might be able to correct it – the created profile – using the controls of the NVIDIA panel and interestingly as soon as I clicked the NVIDIA icon in the ‘search computer’ section, the screen brightened and reverted back to the cooler pre-calibration colors. Something was obviously wrong. A conflict? I tried using different settings in Displaycal – photo, sRGB and a few others but always with the same result even when I unchecked the measure/set white point or manually setting the color temperature to the 6.5K I wanted.
In the end and with heaps of pictures to process I just searched the HD for all the created profiles, deleted as many as I could find to stop them from loading and set everything – device color profiles and editing software – to sRGB and then grabbed a gray scale chart and adjusted the screen manually in the NVIDIA control panel which appears to work when the Munki is not connected and Displaycal is not running. Still I’d like to have some certainty that pictures will display elsewhere and print out as I created them so any thoughts and suggestions are most welcome. Many thanks in advance.Hi,
For starters I could not find controls to set the white point as the software requests after taking an initial measurement.
Laptop screens usually lack any sort of white balance controls and only allow adjusting brightness via the backlight.
So I just skipped to calibration
That’s the correct thing to do for a Laptop.
about halfway through the process the screen darkened and colors became much warmer. The Ubuntu default theme went from gray to a sort of sickly brown
That seems about right – the default Ubuntu theme isn’t gray, it’s a combination of dark umbra-like title bars, and cream white (slightly yellow/brownish hue) window backgrounds. It seems your Laptop screen was quite far off the mark (much too blue) in it’s default state, which isn’t uncommon.
using the controls of the NVIDIA panel and interestingly as soon as I clicked the NVIDIA icon in the ‘search computer’ section, the screen brightened and reverted back to the cooler pre-calibration colors
The nVidia control panel unfortunately doesn’t play nice with calibration and will reset it when used.
Many thanks for these clarifications. Well at least we have a starting point in that I know I can pull down just about every picture in my online portfolio. lol My next step aside from a friendly request for explanations to nvidia, will be to calibrate again and then send a test image to the printers and see what comes out.
I wouldn’t place any sort of confidence in the Colormunki Smile or any other low end consumer grade meters, they’ve all been bad for colour accuracy in my experience. imo the only thing they are useful for is calibrating gamma to a manually chosen white point.
Try rotating the meter 90 degrees sideways on the screen as that trick worked on one of my laptop screens which also has a crazy blue tint from factory and calibrated to a sickly brown colour at normal position.
Also it sounds like Nvidia control panel is stealing your calibration, in that case use the included DisplayCAL-apply-profiles to enforce the calibration.
I wouldn’t place any sort of confidence in the Colormunki Smile or any other low end consumer grade meters, they’ve all been bad for colour accuracy in my experience.
It really depends on how well the filters of any particular tri-stimulus colorimeter match the CIE 1931 standard observer. There’s been some speculation that the Smile, while based on the old i1D2 packaging, may use the same (or similar) filters that are also used in the i1D3, but I can neither confirm nor refute said speculation.
Try rotating the meter 90 degrees sideways on the screen as that trick worked on one of my laptop screens
I’m a bit suprised that worked – are you sure it wasn’t something else that changed (measurement mode, whitepoint target), and is it reproducible?
Also it sounds like Nvidia control panel is stealing your calibration
Yes definitely. It should be OK as long as the control panel isn’t launched.
Calibrite Display Pro HL on Amazon
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.Try rotating the meter 90 degrees sideways on the screen as that trick worked on one of my laptop screens
I’m a bit suprised that worked – are you sure it wasn’t something else that changed (measurement mode, whitepoint target), and is it reproducible?
I can take continuous readings in HCFR and rotate the meter and watch the colour go really bad.
I don’t know why rotating it works on that screen, as it has no effect on any of my other laptop screens which are also TN and have LED and CCFL backlights.
Still no good, attached is a screen shot of the result of my latest attempt. Not having any success I went as far as re-installing Ubuntu 16.04.01 and got the same result. Too warm when the calibration did not fail all together. Then and why not whilst at it… re-installed windows and calibrated with the colordonkey’s own software and got the sickly brown. Went online to look at black and white photos I am very familiar with and all displayed as near sepias. So calibration was wrong. The problem appeared to be hidden within the entrails of the computer itself. Decided on trying a different version of Ubuntu and installed Studio alongside windows thinking that maybe it comes with calibration tools vastly superior to those of the standard Ubuntu. Studio’s calibration tool simply will not launch – does not appear to recognise the presence of the Munki and attempts to install Displaycal via download and install with software installer did not work despite several attempts. In the end I installed synaptic and was able the install the afore-mentioned displaycal. Fired up the software and on the first attempt got an error message about halfway through the process informing me that profiling has not been finished. I had this same message a few times with 16.04 standard (not studio). Relaunched Displaycal and got the same result (not been finished) with the difference that this time I also had a Ubuntu has experienced bla, bla message. Running out of ideas other than wondering what is common to the three OS? nvidia?
Try putting the diffuse filter on the meter (assuming it came with one) and then compare white readings with and without it in HCFR or whatever software you have which can take real time readings. If the measurement is the same regardless of the filter then it probably means the meter is defective. Unless it works fine on other screens?
Speaking of sickly brown colours, the blue Dawn theme of this forum keeps bleaching my eyes making white look a sickly brown for a few minutes after 🙂
I’ve switched to the Spring theme but I yearn for a black background theme!
Relaunched Displaycal and got the same result (not been finished) with the difference that this time I also had a Ubuntu has experienced bla, bla message.
Attach a logs archive please (see the documentation or issue tracker for instructions how to create an archive containing all logs).
Running out of ideas other than wondering what is common to the three OS?
The hardware. Is the system stable otherwise?
I’ll look into that Florian and in the meantime attached are two gray scales I found on a photography website and which correspond near exactly to what I’m getting. The ‘typical grayscale’ is according to that site what you would get from an uncalibrated / not profiled screen and is exactly what I have been calling the ‘sickly brown’. If this is the case then the result of my attempts at calibration have been that there is no calibration. Too much red in the darker shades and too much blue in the lighter range. This would raise the question of whether Ubuntu is recognizing the presence of the Munki were it not for the fact Windows did after a minute or so load the drivers and still I got, if the excess red and blue grayscale is indicative of no color correction, a non-result. Confirming the colorimeter actually works would be a good start I suppose and any suggestions of how I might do that in Ubuntu would be welcome. I searched the Internet for a method of confirming that Ubuntu had hooked up with a plugged in piece of hardware but have as yet not found anything. With the Munki plugged in and going to the Additional Drivers panel I do see an ‘unrecognized device’ with ‘this device is not working’. I assume that could be the Munki? Maybe the solution is as simple as it’s the Munki itself that is defective? But how would you test it? Finally and just a thought – with Displaycal running, I plug in the Munki and then click that button that detects the colorimeter and in the box next to it and after a few seconds of searching, Munki appears but grayed out. Is that of any significance? I’ll see if I can get the logs you requested. Cheers, thanks and otherwise the system appears to be stable.
File uploaded would not accept more than 4 files so here’s the rest. The two calibration attempt crashes should be in there.
Cheers
OK – now the file type is ‘not allowed’ – is there somewhere else I can send them if you still want them?
