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Open Source Color Management Is Broken

lieberbiber.de

121–129 of 129 posts

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#121
post #12

If you write the calibration info to the video LUT, why does software also need to know about it? Isn't your monitor displaying perfectly calibrated sRGB at that point?

I know just from writing graphics hacks that you get significantly better results if you do the correction in the HDR color space before you produce the 24-bit, 8-bits-per-component pixels shipped to the GPU.

If by "video LUT" you mean something at the CRTC or even after it on some external device, if the software producing the visuals has already reduced the pixels down to 8-bits-per-component before they hit the LUT, then you've lost accuracy particularly in the small values.

This is why it's desirable to do one of the following:

1. inform the software of the LUT and let it perform the transform before it packs the pixels for display

2. change the entire system to have more bits per color component all the way down to the framebuffer, then the per-component LUTs at the CRTC can profitably contain > 256 entries.

I'm not an expert in this field at all, just play with graphics hacks. But this is what I've come to understand is the nature of the issue.

edit:

To clarify, the reality implied by the need for correction is that some areas of the 0-256 range of values are more significant than others. When you do a naive linear conversion of whatever precision color the application is operating in down to the 24-bit rgb frame buffer, you've lost the increased accuracy in the regions that happen to actually be more significant on a given display. So you'd much rather do the conversion before throwing away the extra precision, assuming the application was working in greater than 24-bit pixels.

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#122
post #84
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you by any chance have some links where I can read more about Linux as a front-end system in the film/graphics industry? This is field of work in which I would never have guessed Linux to be strong.

It’s mainly in large facilities that run huge jobs with massive amounts of data. Maya, Nuke, Houdini, Flame, Baselight, many in-house VFX software all run perfectly well Linux. And of course the cornucopia of renderers running on their server farms, as might be more expected. The lineage is from SGI, where many of these applications were born, but as the company faltered and consumer graphics hardware took off thanks…

All true, windows is kept around for Zbrush and Adobe suite. I'd put it at around 5% of artist workstation count.

(I've worked at a few of the larger VFX studios mentioned throughout the thread)

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#123
post #112
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a colorist This sounds pretty interesting. What do you actually do, in layperson-y terms?

Sit in darkened rooms, spin 3 trackballs, and turn a few knobs to make pictures look pretty, mostly. DaVinci Resolve[1] and Baselight[2] are quite popular, take a look at the websites to give yourself an idea of what it looks like. 1. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/ 2. https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/baselight/overview_bl....

Hah, thanks! I should have been a little bit clearer - not an ELI5-layperson, a layperson who has some vague handwavey idea of how video/film is made and once read a popular article about orange/teal contrast.

It's more stuff like 'what is it about this process that makes a dedicated colour specialist necessary?', 'what are the things things they're supposed to accomplish?', 'what are their technical and creative constraints/inputs/deliverables?', etc.

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#125
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChromeOS and Android.

I have yet to see an Android desktop.

Easy, get a Chromebook.

https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/chro...

Or if you prefer to jump on Apple's bandwagon about how regular computers are outdated, a detachable keyboard and mouse for an Android 10"/12" tablet.

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#126
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want to convert to sRGB, you want to convert to the display device color space (which in professional displays is often larger than sRGB). Most desktop environments and applications assume that the source is sRGB, unless specifically tagged (in image metadata). So you have two points: source (image, video) and reproduction device (display, printer etc). And you convert colors from the former to the later. s…

Does the software know how to bypass the LUT, or do you in effect get a double conversion?

which LUT?

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#127
post #76

The complaints in this article appear to be regarding OS-controlled lut adjustments, i.e. via special X11 features. I've used color calibrated monitors on linux in color-sensitive industries with hundreds or even thousands of artist seats (including film, animation, vfx, real-time, etc.) and the monitor has always been calibrated via the physical menus/buttons on the bezel and not a software/OS monitor-specific lut a…

i don't know color management, but it sounds like the situation is analogous to complaining that VLC on linux doesn't have volume controls (for example; of course it does in reality...) when the solution is to reach over and twist your hardware volume knob.

it's good to know that you've found the controls sufficient on the systems you have adjusted!

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#128
post #123
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sit in darkened rooms, spin 3 trackballs, and turn a few knobs to make pictures look pretty, mostly. DaVinci Resolve[1] and Baselight[2] are quite popular, take a look at the websites to give yourself an idea of what it looks like. 1. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/ 2. https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/baselight/overview_bl....

Hah, thanks! I should have been a little bit clearer - not an ELI5-layperson, a layperson who has some vague handwavey idea of how video/film is made and once read a popular article about orange/teal contrast. It's more stuff like 'what is it about this process that makes a dedicated colour specialist necessary?', 'what are the things things they're supposed to accomplish?', 'what are their technical and creative con…

Check out this YouTube tutorial to see the kinds of things they're doing with those knobs and panels.

The inputs are roughly "An ordered sequence of footage clips" and the output is roughly "A final projection/broadcast/download-ready movie"

https://youtu.be/ojjfhCrjDus

Re: Open Source Color Management Is Broken

#129
I've been using the ColorHug 1, and found it worked quite nicely. The included Fedora CD (yes, this was some time ago) let me calibrate just fine. Once I wanted to do it straight from XCFE, I ran into a few challenges, but it wasn't unsurmountable: https://askubuntu.com/questions/427821/can-i-run-gcm-calibra... Basically, you have to run xiccd in the background, since XFCE doesn't have built-in colord support to set the X11 atom[1]. I've never used multiple monitors though, I don't know if that's possible with xiccd+xfce instead of Gnome.

[1] https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8559

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