Color Management - broken on my machine. Does it ever work? Windows 10 pro 1709

Hi jrsubs,

Please see our answers below:

Does anyone understand Windows Calibration (I see others completely frustrated with it) and know how to get it to perform correctly? 

- Display monitors and screen configuration coincide with each other. To get what exactly what we need to achieve, what is the exact screen display that you want that will suit to your preference? Using any display monitors are already “plug and play” on a computer and will display its standard settings (brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, etc.).

Does anyone even know which display is which?  Is assigning a profile via desktop/right click/Display setting/Color Profile the same as doing it via Control Panel/Color Management? 

- There’s no need to re-configure or over-complicate things in terms on display monitor, they are ready to use and gives users enough “What you see is what you get” output. This means changing its settings will only make difficult to revert changes if you didn’t like the result.

It seems the latter is overriden by the former when they are open at the same time.  How can I fix my system so it can be correctly calibrated/profiled?

- There are more options about brightness and contrast in terms of display calibration. You will only need to navigate through your display settings. To do this, follow the steps below to calibrate your monitor’s display:

1. Press Windows + S to open Search Box.

2. Type Calibrate display color.

3. Click Next on Welcome to Display Color Calibration screen.

4. To continue, click Next again.

5. Move the slider to adjust the brightness and contrast of your monitor.

6. Click Next again, so you will move to the brightness and contrast adjustment screen.

7. To continue, click Next until you get to the Red, Green and Blue sliders.

8. For optimal settings, max the Red, Green and Blue sliders. Click Next when finished.

9. Click Current Calibration if you want to save your settings, then click Finish.

In addition, you can visit this link: Change screen brightness for more information on how you can navigate these settings.

Let us know if the above method can generate your desired display calibration.

Thanks for the help but probably I have not communicated clearly my situation.  Shorter response - see questions at the bottom. 

Long answer -  I am comfortable understanding color calibration and setting brightness and so on.  The screens I have (BenQ2700 and Dell U2415) are both capable of being accurately calibrated and profiled.  I want to profile them better than available from straight out of the box (they both come calibrated as I said, which mainly goes to prove that they are capable of being accurately profiled and have a reasonable color gamut).  Certainly I'm looking for better than the settings from Windows "Color Calibration".  (Note when I follow your suggested means of 'calibrating', Windows says quite rightly "This display uses a wide-gamut color profile. The Display Color Calibration will create a color profile with a conventional gamut, which may be a poor fit for this display and result in distorted color appearance.  Do you want to continue anyway?".  Answer, no.)

Before I tried the i1Display Pro calibrator, things were OK, fair enough, though the two screens were not fantastically well matched for color and display to print calibration/profiling was not so good.  But at least colors were close enough for rough work, and at least all apps showed the same color appearance.

I do want to establish proper profiles for both monitors to address the above.  The Xrite i1 Display Pro is well reviewed and better than my old calibrator and is (should be) capable of doing what I want.  But results are disastrous, unlike the previous times in Windows 7 when I was able to profile predictably and accurately with less capable calibrator. XRite say it is a Windows problem, which is why I am here.

I do know how to change brightness and all other screen adjustments including color and gamma on both displays, this is not the point and not what I am trying to do.  I am trying to get use of the extended colour spaces and match screen to print and to each other. 

Windows is renowned for being difficult to understand the screen calibration/profiling workflow and how to apply profiles correctly.   

My specific questions and observations:

1) Why is Windows Color Management unable to identify my monitors properly, calling them both only Generic PnP monitors?  I ask because I think this may be at the heart of the problem - there is some difficulty with communication between ICM and the machine and the displays.  The XRite software has no problem getting this information.

2) Why does Windows Color Management identify screen 1 and 2 oppositely from Desktop/rt click/Display Settings  ... AT TIMES?  Why does this only happen at some times and not others?  I ask because I think this has something to do with the problem, there is confusion in 'which screen is which' that is evident at several points in the calibration process.  Likely/possible that profiles are being applied in the wrong places, or profiles are being generated based on incorrect information).

3) Are there any profiles applied by Windows separately or in different places from profiles applied by calibration software?

4) There is some mention on the net of difficulties with color mgmt in recent versions of Win 10.  Are some recent Windows versions broken so that they do not deal with Color Management correctly?  If so which versions?

5) Now that my system is thoroughly broken re ICM (nothing displays as it should, no matter what profiles I select or deselect, apps now display differently from each other and from before and in an ugly way, no matter what profiles I select or deselect) --  how do I reset the entire color management on this machine and then what workflow should I follow to get ICM to work correctly?

Thanks

Julian

This issue is quite unclear too broad for us to distinguish the main reason why you are having challenges/concerns with calibration settings.

• To what end do you want exactly to happen on your display?
• What are we trying to achieve here? This means what are the exact difficulties you are having while using a display monitor?
• Can you summarize the issue to where we can address exactly what to resolve here?
• Can you disable the X-rite screen calibrator for a while so that it will not override the basic configuration of Windows?
• Are you using a third-party program to modify your screen or display settings? If yes, then what is it?

To wrap things up, you can have the answers to your questions here: How to find the right color profile for your monitor using Windows 10.

Moving forward, you can read and follow our forum guidelines here: Suggestions for asking a question on help forums.

Read the section -

"Collect information relevant to your question"

You want to design your question effectively. The question has to catch the attention of the best person for the answer, and it should be short and to the point so that you don't overwhelm the people reviewing your post.

Right.  Answers to your dot point questions:

1) I want to calibrate my fairly high quality displays so that they correctly show my images.  The two screens should then match in appearance.  They don't.  I want color managed software to correctly display my images.  They don't.  I want my screen appearance to closely match calibrated and profiled printer output.  It doesn't.

2) I am unable to use my colour calibration software and hardware to calibrate these displays.  It says it works but the results are wrong - displays don't match, images appear differently on each display and differently in different software.

3) Summarise - get display calibration using Xrite software and hardware to work.  Get windows to correctly identify which screen is which.  Get windows to correctly assign color profiles.  Get displays to show images correctly. Get Windows to talk properly to Xrite software.

4)  I can, but then I can't profile/calibrate my displays.

5) Yes, Xrite software is supposed to apply a the cleverly determined color profile to each monitor.

Does that help?

This issue is quite unclear too broad for us to distinguish the main reason why you are having challenges/concerns with calibration settings.

• To what end do you want exactly to happen on your display?
• What are we trying to achieve here? This means what are the exact difficulties you are having while using a display monitor?
• Can you summarize the issue to where we can address exactly what to resolve here?
• Can you disable the X-rite screen calibrator for a while so that it will not override the basic configuration of Windows?
• Are you using a third-party program to modify your screen or display settings? If yes, then what is it?

To wrap things up, you can have the answers to your questions here: How to find the right color profile for your monitor using Windows 10.

No - no resolution as yet.  I had given up with Microsoft support in all areas, but prompted by you have tried again. See above.  In the meantime I've reset my displays to use the manufacturers' profiles, though I not sure the right one is actually being applied to the right screen.  The two displays show completely different colours and one of them is obviously wrong in some software, much too dark.  It was not like that before I tried calibrating and profiling.

If I open the same test image in Photoshop, Windows 10 Photos, and Windows Photo Viewer on the same screen, they all look different. Having just found the insert image button here, I'll have a go at doing that to demonstrate.

One thing I discovered which Microsoft could have usefully told me instead of telling me my issue was too long for them to read, is that the reason the names of my displays are not showing in WIndows Display settings (generic PnP) is a reflection of the fact I was using generic drivers.  This was a result of advice that the manufacturer's drivers are not necessary and introduce other issues that may complicate setup.  Now that I've installed manufacturer's drivers Windows picks up correct display names.  This doesn't explain why XRite software out of the box was able to pick up the model numbers, and it hasn't helped other problems.

To wrap things up, you can have the answers to your questions here: How to find the right color profile for your monitor using Windows 10.

To make absolutely sure, let me say that everything in your link I know and understand completely.  That does not help me one bit.

Wow, that is a huge difference. I'm curious if you assigned a profile (sRGB, Adobe RGB?) to this photo when exported it from the PS or is it untagged? I need to do the same test to see the difference on my end. 
Right now, I'm trying to understand how come when switching between different profiles in Color Management app I don't see any changes in color... I tried it on my laptop that has a clean Windows 10 and the same thing - no changes.