[Openicc] Questions about color pickers and graphics libraries under LINUX

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 11, 2008, at 5:15 PM, Hal V. Engel wrote:
> Actually this is one of those chicken and egg things.  Why would  
> the OS (in
> the general sense since with X11 systems we are really talking  
> about the
> windowing system and video drivers and not the OS - kernel - for  
> the most
> part) be upgraded to handle hardware that does not exist?

Well, I'm asking for solutions for existing hardware. The fact that  
the hardware needs to get better does not mean it's OK to wait for  
system wide display compensation. We need that too.

I'm currently using an NEC LCD2180 WG LED which has a gamut larger  
than that of Adobe RGB (1998). There is no system wide display  
compensation even on Mac OS X. Right now the ars technica banner is  
an insane neon red in Safari, WebKit, FireFox 2 and FireFox 3 (by  
default). I can optionally turn it on in FireFox 3 and then magic  
happens.

This is using an 8bpc DVI connection. It's been shipping from NEC for  
almost a year. There are other LED displays coming out left and right  
and they too have considerable deviations from sRGB.


> I am not so sure that the "mental gymnastics" involved in  
> integrating color
> management into an app are really "major".  There clearly is a  
> learning curve
> but this is typical anytime an application uses a new technology.   
> But I
> think you are right that handling basic transforms from general  
> purpose
> applications to the display device should be a given that is  
> handled by the
> windowing system and that non-color critical apps should not have  
> to deal
> with this directly.

I think with better integration of metadata into the an ICC format  
embedded within the image, we can also intelligently apply things  
like rendering intents on a per image basis, so that we can handle  
HDR images being displays on LDR displays, or vice versa.

I do mean to distinguish window server from the rest of the OS, but  
on Windows and Mac OS they are in effect considered "the OS", so  
that's my excuse for sloppy terminology.


Chris Murphy