can't find Adobe Gamma

[dpnew]

Hi,

I just bought the Hidden Powers book, and I installed the Hidden Power tools, and although I've only used Curves so far, everything seems to be working fine. No problems.

However, I want to calibrate my monitor now, and the book says to look for Adobe Gamma in the Control Panel and if it's not there to find it on the CD. My operating system is win98 and I'm using PSE2, but I can't find Adobe Gamma in the Control Panel, and I looked through the whole cd, and I can't find Adobe Gamma on the cd. Where is it?

Also, I have a 3 year old Sony GDM-5402, 21" montior and the User Guide doesn't have the recommended temp, gamma, or phosphor settings, and I checked Sony's website and they don't have any info on that monitor. How can I find out the recommended settings?

Thanks

[BobJones]

The Adobe gamma utility doesn't seem to always get installed properly. Adobe gamma gets installed in the "C:\program files\common files\adobe\calibration" directory. Look for the file named "adobe gamma.cpl" and copy that into the proper system directory. For Windows98, it is "C:\windows\system". After that, you should be able to find adobe gamma in the control panel.

As for the monitor, you probably won't be able to get the phosphor info so don't set it in the adobe gamma utility, you should be ok with the defaults. I had to do that for a while and got acceptable results. However, Adobe gamma isn't all that precise. You may wish to look into a hardware colorimeter such as the Colorvision/Pantone Spyder. They directly measure the characteristics of your monitor and build a custom profile for it. I purchased the Spyder and now use that instead of adobe gamma and have been very satisfied with it.

[dpnew]

Hi,

Thanks or the response.

I'll look for Adobe Gamma on my computer when I return home from the holidays. I really appreciate your help.

[dpnew]

Thanks, I found Adobe Gamma here:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Calibration

I was able to adjust the brightness/contrast, but trying to adjust the gamma was impossible: I couldn't make the boxes disappear for the red, green, or blue. It seems to me the lines inside the boxes are finer than the lines of the surrounding pattern, so you'll never get them to disappear. So, I ended up just leaving the temperature and the gamma alone, and I didn't see any difference toggling on before and after at the end of the set up.

[Stephen_B]

Getting the Phosphor data on a Windows machine

I found a neat program that does give access to a monitors x, y coordinate data for the phosphors. It is called "MonInfo", a monitor asset manager, and works very well. It also allows you to save or print the data. I have version 2.0.1. It requires a Plug and Play monitor and runs in Win 9x, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP. I use Win 98SE.

You should be able to obtain it from Dariusz Zamlynski ([email protected]) at www.geocities.com/tvdarekz/ at least that's what the readme.txt file says. I can't remember exactly where I obtained it.

Another neat tool I found is a gamut comparison of various monitors. It is an Excel spread sheet called "monitor_gamut02.xls". Yet another interesting tool is "RGB_coords.xls". I dont remember just where I got these files, but they came in handy in my "Color and Digital Concepts" class. They probably have location information within the files, but I'm on a new machine and dont have MeSsy Office re-installed yet so I can't check.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Richard_Lynch]

Stephen_B, thanks for the helpful information.

DPNEW, Somehow I didn't see this message here. You may not see a huge difference in the toggling, if your monitor was already decently displaying information. The object isn't to see a huge change, but to see an accurate one. It troubles me that you suggest you can't see a mediation between the squares. The lines you see in the center square are actually monitor rows or scanlines. The lines in the outer box are actually in the image. The object is not to get them the same size, but to make the tone in each appear the same. You need to squint so as to blur your vision, or you might want to try using a sheet of tracing paper, or a thin semi-opaque plastic (like a single ply of 'clear' plastic grocery bag, or a strip of wax paper)—Put this over the square you are adjusting to affect the blur, then slide the slider to make the tones match.

Does that help?

[Stephen_B]

Incorrect Information...

Thanks, Richard. I try to help where I can.

On the other hand, I gave the wrong URL for MonInfo, the monitor asset manager. The URL given does have a monitor tester , montest.exe, on the site, but the Monitor Asset Manager 1.10 program you will want is located at http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm .

The RGB Color Space Visualizer, an Excel worksheet (spreadsheet). This is used to visualize and compare two color space gamuts using a standard CIEYxy diagram, and you can input the data from MonInfo into one of the rows and display your monitors color space in relation to, for instance, Adobe RGB or sRGB.

The third file, Monitor Gamut Comparison, is another Excel worksheet with a large number of monitors already in its data. I couldn't find any identifying information on it, but if you want it, please contact me and I will send it to you.

The monitor tester at http://www.geocities.com/tvdarekz/ can help you set the pin and trapezoid setting on your monitor and has some other nice features.

Cheers,

Stephen