DDM, feature request, #1

Question

Ability of associating an ICC profile to a preset and automatically switch

I have a Dell U3014 and I love this monitor. I also love the DIsplay Manager software that allows me to quickly change monitor presets without messing with the OSD or doing it completely automatically based on the application I am using. The Problem: Many people, particularly the one using higher end monitors need accurate colors rendition and for this reason they calibrate/profile their monitors. Each preset need to be profiled independently and has an associated ICC profile. Particularly in windows there is the necessity to use a sRGB based preset for non color managed applications, whereas a larger gamut preset such as Adobe RGB is used on color managed applications such as photoshop, lightroom etc. Dell display manager offer an elegant and quick solution to switch presets, either by selecting from a quick menu or by automatically associating a preset to a given application (i.e. photoshop is on, switch to Adobe RGB). This works great, however the selection of the appropriate profile has to be done manually and it is quite tedious (Open the screen resolution change applet, click on advanced setting, open the color management applet, select the appropriate monitor and finally load the appropriate ICC profile). This is time consuming and a pain that could be completely and painlessly automated by DDM The solution: A small improvement to DDM maybe in the form of a Color Management tab where an existing ICC profile could be associated to a given preset. If a preset has an associated ICC profile, DDM will load the appropriate corresponding ICC profile when it switches preset. Windows has API's to load ICC profiles that are easy to use. I even tried to write my own software. Switching profiles is not complicated. What is difficult is to use DDC/DI to change presets on the monitor. There are no free libraries to do that that I could find. The company that make the Display Manager software for Dell, EnTech sells libraries that do DDC/DI but are more expensive than I can afford. I do believe to add such a feature to DDM would be an overall very minor effort on EnTech part, but the benefits for the users would be great. If such a feature would be useful to you, or if you have other suggestion please post here. Hopefully if there is a substantial need for it, Dell may ask EnTech to add it in a future release of DDM. Thanks.

ClaudioG · Accepted Answer

Thank you very much. It worked! Now on the display manager I have a small ICM button where I can link an ICM profile to a preset. It works wonders. As a small suggestion it would be nicer to display on the ICM selection menu the profile name from its metadata rather than the file name of the profile itself as many color profiling application place the profile human readable name in the metadata and use a hexadecimal hash for the file name, forcing the user to open the color correction applet to match which is which. Also the list is populated by the name of old profiles which have already been deleted. Where is the list coming from? Those files are not in my windows/system32/spool/driver/color directory anymore, neither are in the registry and also don't show up in the color correction applet.

Would be very glad to beta test new upgrades and report.

Thanks again for adding this feature. It is very useful

yumichan · Answer

AFAIK this question is no related to DDC/DI since the combo box from DDM preset is hardcoded like monitor model and such things (so DDM does not work with othr brand monitors), so it will be easy to Dell to give us the functionality you decribed. Very good upgrade indeed!

"There are no free libraries to do that that I could find"
There are, look for DispaclGUI/ArgyllCMS, it's better than windows even. Your CAL1/CAL2 icm contain a linear lut for GPU (inpu=output) to clear any GPU calibration. Your "Custom OSD mode" needs to be GPU calibrated in GPU "LUT1D" (VCGT data) but windows loads a "rounded down" version of 16bit VCGT data stored in such GPU calibration profiles. So if you want smooth gradients in custom OSD mode (coming from CAL1 OSD fr example) you should first activate the profile, then open and close DispcalGUI with " " preset to load the 16bit VCGT to whatever LUT resolution your GPU has.

@Anonymous : This is a nice feature request, and there is free software code that will teach you how to to it properly and better than windows.

+1 to ClaudioG request

ClaudioG · Answer

@yumichan: the DDC/DI part is related to me trying to write my own utility to talk to the monitor and switch preset. This is very difficult to do as different video card behaves differently.

You have a great point that using Argyll routines to load the GPU LUT is superior than using Windows API. what you propose would be the best solution, however to start with I would even be content with the windows API solution which should be a very quick fix.

yumichan · Answer

My fault, I thought that you were asking Dell to have this feature.
For Dell (or contractor) having source code of actual DDM it is esay to do this without dealing with DDC/CI. It can be done before sending comand DDCI/CI and after user changes OSD preset in UI combobox.
That's what I meant, for Dell there is no need to deal with DDC/CI comands to acomplish this, its is done in "upper level" code.

@Anonymous, this would be a nice feature. (And more native gamma measurements in DCCS would be nice too)

swamped1 · Answer

If you are comfortable editing the registry, try adding the value "LinkICM" to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\EnTech\DDM and setting it to 1 (dword).

(You will need to have the latest DDM release: hold the Shift key down while right-clicking the DDM system tray icon, and select "Check for a new version" from the popup menu.)

swamped1 · Answer

...the list is populated by the name of old profiles which have already been deleted.

It sounds like some of your profiles may have been simply deleted from the color folder, rather than removed from association with the monitor inside Color Management. To clean up, do a search thru the registry for the value "ICMProfile" and remove any deleted filenames from the data.

But, yeah, a check for errors like that should be added. Send an email to dell.support at EnTech with a link to this thread.

Monitors

DDM, feature request, #1

Was this post helpful?