Color management and display sharpening

[iCatch]

Hi,

what a great program iMatch 5 seems to be!

Two questions:

(1) In which way does iMatch work with colour profiles (like AdobeRGB or sRGB) and monitor profiles?
(2) Is it possible to adjust display sharpening during slideshows?

Thx for your assistance.

[Mario]

All features in IMatch which display images (Quick Preview Panel, Viewer, Slide Show, Batch Processor, ...) are fully color-managed. This cannot be disabled.

The only exception are thumbnails, for which color management causes a noticeable slow-down. Color management for thumbnails has to be explicitly enabled. You can control how IMatch renders and enhances thumbnails under Edit > Preferences > Application: User Interface.

Viewer and Slide Show apply a dynamic sharpen based on a the ratio between the original cache image size and the size in which the file is actually displayed (e.g. in fit-to-window mode). This is automatic and there are no options for the user to modify.

The Viewer is designed for culling purposes and thus does not apply sharpen when images are displayed at 100%. This ensures that you see the image as it is, without artificial modifications. (See also the Viewer help for details.

[iCatch]

All features in IMatch which display images (Quick Preview Panel, Viewer, Slide Show, Batch Processor, ...) are fully color-managed.

@Mario:

Does "fully color-manged" include working with monitor profiles? Sorry for asking but some programs only work with color profiles and neglect monitor profiles.

Is it possible to allocate specific monitor profiles?

[Mario]

Color-management is always a two phase conversion:

1. Convert the pixels in the image using the embedded color profile (or an assumed color profile like sRGB) into a intermediate form
2. Convert this intermediate form into the final pixels for display using the color profile of the target device.

IMatch 5 can even handle multi-monitor systems which use different display profiles for each monitor. The Quick View Panel / Viewer etc. use the display profile of the on which they are displayed. If you move the viewer from one monitor to another, the viewer releases cached data from memory and reload images from the cache to apply the correct display profile. Important for users who work with multiple monitors and are in the habit of dragging the viewer around. This feature works well as long as Windows plays along.

[iCatch]

Very well.

You described how things should work.

But there are some programs available with ridiculous "color management" behaviour. Some are ignoring any kind of device profile.

I should have known that you won´t make such mistakes. 

[afx]

IMatch 5 can even handle multi-monitor systems which use different display profiles for each monitor.

Yeah!!

That is rarely seen. Thanks for thinking of it.

cheers
afx

[Ferdinand]

And welcome to AFX!   

[Carl]

Very well.

You described how things should work.

But there are some programs available with ridiculous "color management" behaviour. Some are ignoring any kind of device profile.

I should have known that you won´t make such mistakes. 

And I had so much fun (?) with Windows 8 persuading my Spyder to calibrate each monitor separately and produce profiles so that both monitor displays matched! I eventually figured it out though.

Carl

[Menace]

Viewer and Slide Show apply a dynamic sharpen based on a the ratio between the original cache image size and the size in which the file is actually displayed (e.g. in fit-to-window mode). This is automatic and there are no options for the user to modify.

Can you reduce the dynamic sharpen a little bit. Currently when I check my pictures I already want to put them in the trash because of so much noise. Accidentally I zoom in and all this oversharpen structures and noise are gone. What think the other users?

[Gerd]

Hi Menace,

I do not know, what's exact your problem. In the screenshot you see above a 100% from Faststone and below the 100% from IM5-viewer ... the color-difference comes from Faststone, it does not support color-management.

I see nearly no difference .. maybe a very little one

Regards
Gerd

P.S. I saw now the sharpen-effect in not-100%-pics ... for me it is ok, but maybe that Mario can make this selectable in the Preferences ...

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[Menace]

In my monitor, the color difference is on my monitor huge. But with the color management I am really satisfied with IMatch 5. Just the sharpening-Level is (for me) a little bit high.

[cytochrome]

... the color-difference comes from Faststone, it does not support color-management.

Gerd

In Faststone, you may check CMS in Parameters...

Francis

[Gerd]

Hi Francis,

you will be surprised, if you use a calibrated monitor ... FAstStone does not support with its CMS monitor-profiles ...

Left is FasStone WITH CMS, right is IM5 with correct CMS, and so I see it also in LR and PS CS6.

Regards
Gerd

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[cytochrome]

Hi Gerd,

Thanks for the picture, my monitor is calibrated  and yes I am surprised... I havn't ued Faststone for a while, I prefer FastPictureViewer these days (also for the fine codec collection).

The setting in Faststone is quite primitive, I am not sure if it uses the image color space (if any).

Francis

[Gerd]

Hi Francis,

you will find some dicussions about this in the web.

... but on the other side ... FastStone is soo quick and has so nice features, I don't care about the colors, for this I use LR or PS CS6 ...

Regards
Gerd

[Mees Dekker]

This automatic display sharpening causes very course previews, when I send pictures to the viewer. To see and review pictures, I need to enlarge them to 100%, which causes the sharpening to end. Can anything be done to that.

In IMatch 3.6 display sharpening could be adjusted. Any specific reason why this is not the case in IMatch 5?

[Menace]

This automatic display sharpening causes very course previews, when I send pictures to the viewer. To see and review pictures, I need to enlarge them to 100%, which causes the sharpening to end. Can anything be done to that.

In IMatch 3.6 display sharpening could be adjusted. Any specific reason why this is not the case in IMatch 5?

See also: https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=1704.0 

[Mario]

Configurable display sharpen has been added for build 5.0.142.

[Mees Dekker]

Thanks Mario

As always very responsive. This will probably be a major improvement for the usability of IMatch in my workflow

[Menace]

Thank you Mario,

this are great news. No second software at the same time for watching (second software) and rating (IMatch).

[HaWo]

Mario, das freut mich, dass Du das eingebaut hast.

Leider habe ich mich vom Testen ausklinken müssen, da ab 136 mein PC wegen XP nicht mehr mitmacht und das Netbook allgemein nicht so richtig geeignet ist. Komme aber wieder.

[Menace]

Sharpness is much better, but I still have pixelartifacts (Klötzchen und Treppen). I'm not sure, if this isn't a issue of my computer (but, all other Application doesn't shown this artifacts).

[Mario]

At which zoom level? At 100% the Viewer does not sharpen at all.
If you use fit-to-window mode, the sharpen is applied. If you dial it down to level 1, it's nearly nothing. Just a minimal touch to reduce the softness introduced by down-sizing the cache file. If you se exaggerated noise or something in this mode, it's most likely in the image itself. Send me a sample.

[Menace]

Of a screenshot?

You can see the artifacts at the "Stromleitung". Sharpness at "1".

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[Mario]

I would need the original file, thank you.

This looks more like a problem in the graphic card driver, or some wrong configuration option. Such steps are not caused by sharpening but by down-sampling the file from 100% to whatever your display size in the Viewer is. IMatch relies on built-in Windows functions, which in turn may use built-in functions in your graphic card to do the actual downsampling work.

Do you have the same effect also in the slide show (which uses Direct 3D)?

[Mees Dekker]

I still have the same problem in build 142. Actually I see no difference in this field between build 140 and 142.

I turned display sharpening to the lowest level (1) before ingesting the files. In the viewer the Canon RAW file looks fine (no artefacts), but the jpg's that I created from that CR2 file (by Photoshop CS5) are awefull. When I use the slide show : no artefacts visible. Did a rescan: nothing changed: still awefull looking jpg's in the viewer, but the slide show is OK.

The same set of files was also ingested in IMatch 3.6 (Display sharpening = off; USM Sharen is on). All 4 pictures (both RAW and jpg) show no artefacts.

What could be I be doing wrong?

[Mario]

If you set sharpen to 1 this is, like, USM with a radius of 0.5 a strength of 50 and a threshold of 5. Almost invisible. Definitely not enough to exaggerate noise or JPEG artifacts.

Please send me the JPEG so I can have a look.
Also,
Which cache settings do you use?
JPEG files are by default not cached so IMatch only needs to load the original file and display it.
Please also send me a screen shot of the viewer so I can see which size IMatch has to downsample to.
Which graphic card and driver are you using?

[Mees Dekker]

Ho Mario

Please find attached some screenshots of my settings. I will send you the jpg separately.

I use a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240, all drivers are updated last week. I run a Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) system on Intel i7 @2.8 GHz and 8 Mb internal memory.

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[Mario]

This looks like a bad case of sensor noise, exaggerated by sharpening or compression.
I'll check the original file to see if I can repro this here, and where this noise is introduced.

[Mees Dekker]

Would it help if send you the original raw file?

[Mario]

I need the file that IMatch is displaying here. JPEG or RAW.

[Mees Dekker]

I send the jpg to you via the support mail. did you receive that?

[Mario]

I have received your sample file, thanks.

I immediately saw what the problem is. The JPEG image has a lot of sensor noise in all channels. The artifacts and edges you see in the Viewer are not caused by the sharpening but by the downsizing algorithm when you view the image at zoom levels < 100%. The noise pattern depends on the zoom level (aka ratio between original image size and the size the image is displayed on the screen, e.g. in fit-to-window mode).

The Viewer uses routines which are supported from Windows XP upwards. Since I have given up support for XP now, I can swap the Viewer to the render routines I use otherwise. This allows me to make the render use a much better down-sampling method which uses Bicubic resampling. This avoids the edges and artifacts you (and some other users) see entirely. The display performance may be a bit slower than before - if you notice that depends on your graphic card. Most likely not.

After IMatch 5 has been released I will work on the Viewer again because I have some new features planned for it. I will then switch the Viewer to use GPU rendering like the slide show, which also solves this problem and opens up some new venues I need in this feature area.

Left is 5.0.142, on the right is the result of the upcoming 5.0.144:



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[Menace]

Mario, this looks impressive. I haven't currently time to send you my files, but what I see it could also solve my problems. So I just wait, until 144 it's out, if this will work for you. Otherwise I'll send you my file at the weekend.

[Mario]

Try with the 5.0.144 first.

[Mees Dekker]

Mario

I fully agree with Menace: it looks impressive and would be an enormous improvement. It also is a major step in making IMatch the tool for handling everything, where as at the moment I use different tools for different jobs (such as Geosetter for geocoding, Bridge for viewing, IMatch for managing, Photoshop for editing, etc).

I think you should include this "one stop shopping" in your sales-pitch (How to sell IMatch aka Why will/would you buy IMatch).

Thank you for being so fast on resolving this item.

[sinus]

After IMatch 5 has been released I will work on the Viewer again because I have some new features planned for it.

This sounds cool. Inside a DAM, I think, the viewer, with possibilities to display images side by side, is an important tool. I am sure, you will come with some pretty good new things.