Premiere displays correct colors, but not the rest of the computer...

[Admir]

Hi!

I am starting to get a bit worried about what's going on with my computer. I recently invested in a Dell U2711 IPS monitor, a great monitor that really does the job for me. While editing in Premiere all the colors look great on the video. As soon as I export a frame in any format the image gets really dull colors and a green cast over them.
The image looks the same in Photoshop, Paint, and any other image viewing software...

All other images on the computer also has the same problems, but if I upload any of the images to let's say to my homepage and view it with IE or Firefox it looks as it should. I have tried to reinstall my Nvidia drivers, tried to install the dell ICC profile, and tried to reset the monitor. I use the sRGB preset on the monitor, and I have tried all the other settings and I get the same result.

Before this monitor I had a Samsung 22" and it worked as it should.

So why on earth does Premiere show the correct colors but not the rest of my computer?! Videofiles are playing correctly on the computer as far as my eye can see, this happens only with still images and that makes me even more confused rogar-Shock(DBG):

 

[keylight]

I'm guessing that you haven't calibrated the monitor.

The Dell U2711 (That's what I have and am using right at this moment) is a wide color gamut monitor (very wide in fact). By setting the Preset Mode to sRGB, you're dramatically lowering the color gamut that it displays. The Dell ICC profile isn't going help. It's a generic profile for that model, not specific for your monitor.

You probably got a gamut test report they ran on your monitor. All that report shows is the wide gamut your monitor is capable of. It doesn't mean it's actually been properly calibrated.

If you don't have one, you should invest in a good calibration device (I use a Spyder) and set your monitor's Preset Mode to Custom. Then calibrate. That will create a profile which your computer will use (and all color managed applications will use). You should then get consistent colors across applications.

Keep in mind that web browsers will display colors in different ways. The default color space for most browsers (all browsers?) is sRGB. But some, like Firefox, are color space aware/enabled. In otherwords, it'll look at an image's embedded color profile (assuming it has one) and render the image based on what it finds. (So in Photoshop, when you Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S to save for web, you can choose to Embed the color profile. You can also convert the image sRGB.)

Let me know if this helps. Oh, and here's a link to a page that might help clarify the issue (or not). Color is a tricky subject.

http://diglloyd.com/articles/guides-howto/howto-color-rendition.html

 

[Admir]

I'm guessing that you haven't calibrated the monitor.

The Dell U2711 (That's what I have and am using right at this moment) is a wide color gamut monitor (very wide in fact). By setting the Preset Mode to sRGB, you're dramatically lowering the color gamut that it displays. The Dell ICC profile isn't going help. It's a generic profile for that model, not specific for your monitor.

You probably got a gamut test report they ran on your monitor. All that report shows is the wide gamut your monitor is capable of. It doesn't mean it's actually been properly calibrated.

If you don't have one, you should invest in a good calibration device (I use a Spyder) and set your monitor's Preset Mode to Custom. Then calibrate. That will create a profile which your computer will use (and all color managed applications will use). You should then get consistent colors across applications.

Keep in mind that web browsers will display colors in different ways. The default color space for most browsers (all browsers?) is sRGB. But some, like Firefox, are color space aware/enabled. In otherwords, it'll look at an image's embedded color profile (assuming it has one) and render the image based on what it finds. (So in Photoshop, when you Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S to save for web, you can choose to Embed the color profile. You can also convert the image sRGB.)

Let me know if this helps. Oh, and here's a link to a page that might help clarify the issue (or not). Color is a tricky subject.

http://diglloyd.com/articles/guides-howto/howto-color-rendition.html

Thank you so much for taking your time to answer!

You're right I haven't calibrated the monitor, the monitor isn't new so I don't have a single paper on the monitor. I don't understand how to colors appear to be correct in premiere but not in lets say Photoshop then? I mean if the monitor isn't calibrated, then Premiere should display the same ugly colors too, right?

 

[Stab]

Adobe seems to use a different 'player' than for instance VLC player or Media Player. I usually also see a difference in the footage in Premiere or 'other players'... I dont know which player is more accurate, but there is clearly a difference in terms of colors / brightness.

 

[Admir]

Adobe seems to use a different 'player' than for instance VLC player or Media Player. I usually also see a difference in the footage in Premiere or 'other players'... I dont know which player is more accurate, but there is clearly a difference in terms of colors / brightness.

Yes I have also noticed a difference, but this problem isn't about video, video works and looks as it should, this is only still images such as single frame dumps exported out from premiere or any other still image (format dosent matter, always looks the same) that's what confuses me so much. I would have understood it if everything was wrong, the video and still images, but video looks great.

 

[Bruce Watson]

Yes I have also noticed a difference, but this problem isn't about video, video works and looks as it should, this is only still images such as single frame dumps exported out from premiere or any other still image (format dosent matter, always looks the same) that's what confuses me so much. I would have understood it if everything was wrong, the video and still images, but video looks great.

This is because you don't have a color managed workflow. First thing you have to do, is calibrate and profile that monitor. There's plenty on the 'net about color managed workflows.

EDIT: What a color managed workflow is about, is making the colors the same across applications (both software and hardware). All a digital color is, is a number. Yes? Say you're looking at a big block of a single color, say its RGB value is 128, 128, 128. You can tell mathmatically that it's a solid gray, no tint. Yes?

The reason you calibrate a monitor is to create a lookup table (LUT) so that the software doing the displaying of your underlying image can translate your image to what the monitor has to display so that it looks like, in this example, a solid untinted gray. The 128, 128, 128 in your image may need to be displayed as 120, 245, 112... to get it to look like the solid gray you're expecting. That translation is done on the fly by the software.... if it's "color managed" software and knows it's supposed to, and can find the right LUT.

Without calibrating the monitor, how's the software know how to translate for you? It doesn't. In the absence of a LUT, the software just displays the raw numbers without translations. So you get what you get.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I'm guessing that you haven't calibrated the monitor.

The Dell U2711 (That's what I have and am using right at this moment) is a wide color gamut monitor (very wide in fact). By setting the Preset Mode to sRGB, you're dramatically lowering the color gamut that it displays. The Dell ICC profile isn't going help. It's a generic profile for that model, not specific for your monitor.

You probably got a gamut test report they ran on your monitor. All that report shows is the wide gamut your monitor is capable of. It doesn't mean it's actually been properly calibrated.

If you don't have one, you should invest in a good calibration device (I use a Spyder) and set your monitor's Preset Mode to Custom. Then calibrate. That will create a profile which your computer will use (and all color managed applications will use). You should then get consistent colors across applications.

Keep in mind that web browsers will display colors in different ways. The default color space for most browsers (all browsers?) is sRGB. But some, like Firefox, are color space aware/enabled. In otherwords, it'll look at an image's embedded color profile (assuming it has one) and render the image based on what it finds. (So in Photoshop, when you Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S to save for web, you can choose to Embed the color profile. You can also convert the image sRGB.)

Let me know if this helps. Oh, and here's a link to a page that might help clarify the issue (or not). Color is a tricky subject.

http://diglloyd.com/articles/guides-howto/howto-color-rendition.html

What has never been really clear to me is how Rec. 709, the HD color space, maps into 1) what you see in your NLE, Premiere in this case, vs. 2) what QT/VLC/WindowsMediaMuck/whatever player that is used by the unwashed masses.

This doesn't have much to do with 'calibrated monitors', which is another vector in varying color rendition... but what the various players do with the alleged standard for video, and most likely the standard used by most low end video/DLSR cameras. (I've selected sRGB for my GH-1 for a long time, but it is still not clear if that is 'really' sRGB, or that only covers the still mode.. and the video is Rec 709-ish...).

My old LCD 17" was calibrated, but I think it is showing its age... For many clips they always appear 'dark' on the screen, so I no longer make judgements about color/levels/contrast based on viewing on the old machine.

The new machine is a MBP with the Retina display, and I have yet to 'calibrate it'... I don't know if my old Spyder will do or do I need to 'upgrade' that as well... (when will this red ink ever stop and I can actually make a movie with reasonably new equipment and no additional cost...).

One thing I did about 6 months ago for my digital TV display, was to turn down the back light significantly. This seemed to work great for many films relative to color/contrast. The Wife would complain that the colors were different form seeing on the big screen. While of course there is the issue of 'memory' involved... by turning down the backlight, adjusting the colors down a bit as well, seemed to bring the TV into better match with 'what was remembered'...

I have no idea how to 'calibrate' a standard consumer TV and keep the 'calibration' with any external device, other than by the 'visual method' and futzing with the limited controls of the TV setup feature.... and no I don't have $5K laying around for a broadcast quality big screen...

 

[keylight]

The new machine is a MBP with the Retina display, and I have yet to 'calibrate it'... I don't know if my old Spyder will do or do I need to 'upgrade' that as well... (when will this red ink ever stop and I can actually make a movie with reasonably new equipment and no additional cost...).

I feel your pain!

Is it that you're thinking the target image might be too small given the increased pixel density? It'll probably be big enough. On the U2711 the Sypere software gives a target that's probably 8 times the actual sensor area on the Spyder 2, and the pixel density is about 1/2 that of the the retina displays.

 

[Admir]

This is because you don't have a color managed workflow. First thing you have to do, is calibrate and profile that monitor. There's plenty on the 'net about color managed workflows.

EDIT: What a color managed workflow is about, is making the colors the same across applications (both software and hardware). All a digital color is, is a number. Yes? Say you're looking at a big block of a single color, say its RGB value is 128, 128, 128. You can tell mathmatically that it's a solid gray, no tint. Yes?

The reason you calibrate a monitor is to create a lookup table (LUT) so that the software doing the displaying of your underlying image can translate your image to what the monitor has to display so that it looks like, in this example, a solid untinted gray. The 128, 128, 128 in your image may need to be displayed as 120, 245, 112... to get it to look like the solid gray you're expecting. That translation is done on the fly by the software.... if it's "color managed" software and knows it's supposed to, and can find the right LUT.

Without calibrating the monitor, how's the software know how to translate for you? It doesn't. In the absence of a LUT, the software just displays the raw numbers without translations. So you get what you get.

Oh boy I was hoping that with this display things would get easier but it got more complicated right now (not that it's the monitors fault...). Somehow I was thinking that if I chooe the sRGB setting on the monitor it will display the most accurate colors and that that would do for my needs with no more calibration needed.

 

[keylight]

Oh boy I was hoping that with this display things would get easier but it got more complicated right now (not that it's the monitors fault...). Somehow I was thinking that if I chooe the sRGB setting on the monitor it will display the most accurate colors and that that would do for my needs with no more calibration needed.

Bruce's explanation is a really very helpful way to understanding color and calibration. I think it can also help you better understand why your old monitor seemed to give more consistent results. Your OS probably loaded a "generic" profile for your old Samsung monitor that Samsung provided. That profile was fairly "generic" in that it was designed to work well with the millions of that model monitor they sold. And because the Samsung probably didn't have a very wide color gamut (maybe it could only display colors within sRGB's range) the variation between those millions of monitors was probably fairly limited, making the Samsung provided profile good enough for most people (who don't worry about such silly things as color).

But the U2711 has a very wide gamut (which is what makes it so nice). Like Samsung, Dell supplies a "generic" profile to tell the OS how to display colors on the monitor (as Bruce has so well explained). Again, that's fine for a lot of people who don't care or need to worry about color. But you (and most everyone here) do care! Since the U2711 has a much larger gamut than your old monitor, the variation between any two U2711 monitors can be much greater than the variation between any two of your old Samsung. So that "generic" profile doesn't really do what you need it to do - which is to get accurate colors out of the specific monitor sitting in front of you. That's why calibrating it is so important.

Once you've properly calibrated, you'll never want to use an uncalibrated monitor again.

 

[Admir]

Bruce's explanation is a really very helpful way to understanding color and calibration. I think it can also help you better understand why your old monitor seemed to give more consistent results. Your OS probably loaded a "generic" profile for your old Samsung monitor that Samsung provided. That profile was fairly "generic" in that it was designed to work well with the millions of that model monitor they sold. And because the Samsung probably didn't have a very wide color gamut (maybe it could only display colors within sRGB's range) the variation between those millions of monitors was probably fairly limited, making the Samsung provided profile good enough for most people (who don't worry about such silly things as color).

But the U2711 has a very wide gamut (which is what makes it so nice). Like Samsung, Dell supplies a "generic" profile to tell the OS how to display colors on the monitor (as Bruce has so well explained). Again, that's fine for a lot of people who don't care or need to worry about color. But you (and most everyone here) do care! Since the U2711 has a much larger gamut than your old monitor, the variation between any two U2711 monitors can be much greater than the variation between any two of your old Samsung. So that "generic" profile doesn't really do what you need it to do - which is to get accurate colors out of the specific monitor sitting in front of you. That's why calibrating it is so important.

Once you've properly calibrated, you'll never want to use an uncalibrated monitor again.

I am really glad that there are so many nice people here that want to help =)! I am getting the Spyder 4 Express and hoping that it will solve this issue for me!