Windows 7 Enterprise 6.1 (Build 7600) 64-bit

whatever version of Photo Viewer is built in to Windows (file "PhotoViewer.dll" dated 14/07/09)

Adobe CS4

ATI Radeon HD 5850

- Peter

OS: Windows 7 x64. Windows Photo Viewer is a dll component of Windows (found in the Program Files Directory for those wondering)  rather than a fully standalone program, so its version number is the same as the build number of Windows (In this case 6.1.7600.16385)

DooDah_pl, Spriggz, gavcam, PeterClovelly, Gecks, P.A.K, What operating system and version number of Windows Photo Viewer?

Windows Vista Ultimate, 32-bit, SP2, fully updated

My PhotoViewer.dll file gives the following version number: 6.0.6002.18005

Thanks again Chris M for follow-up.

Engineering tested the picture on the following:
Vista/Win 7 + Windows Photo Viewer + Windows Default icm: Shows patchy black on the button /collar area
Vista/Win 7 + Adobe Photoshop CS4 + Windows Default icm: Shows no patch, but picture rendered showed black appearing slightly lighter gray

Vista/Win 7 + Windows Photo Viewer + U2410 Beta icm: Shows patchy black on the button /collar area
Vista/Win 7 + Adobe Photoshop CS4 + U2410 Beta icm: Shows no patch, but picture rendered showed black appearing slightly lighter gray

Vista/Win 7 + Windows Photo Viewer +  HP2480 icm: Shows patchy black on the button /collar area essentially similar behavior to the Dell U2410 icm Beta behavior
Vista/Win 7 + Adobe Photoshop CS4 + HP2480 icm: Shows no patch, but picture rendered showed black appearing slightly lighter gray

In conclusion, either on the default windows icm, HP2480 icm, or the U2410 beta icm, images on Adobe Photoshop appear better than Windows Photo Viewer. It can be attributed to the fact that the Windows Photo Viewer does not do a substantial amount of rendering or color processing versus Adobe Photoshop. This results in the consistent behavior in whatever icm file was chosen. I do not think we have a bug issue with the U2410 Beta icm except for the profile name which will be fixed.

In conclusion, either on the default windows icm, HP2480 icm, or the U2410 beta icm, images on Adobe Photoshop appear better than Windows Photo Viewer. It can be attributed to the fact that the Windows Photo Viewer does not do a substantial amount of rendering or color processing versus Adobe Photoshop. This results in the consistent behavior in whatever icm file was chosen. I do not think we have a bug issue with the U2410 Beta icm except for the profile name which will be fixed.

Chris,

I did some more digging into this issue and it appears that many other monitors (Samsung especially) have issues with this particular aspect of Windows Vista/7.  It appears that Windows Photo Gallery is one of the only areas of Windows that is color managed.  Hence the image will look fine when viewed in say, Internet Explorer, but Photo Gallery attemps color management of the image and this is where the problem occurs.

I'm guessing that Dell is correct in so far as Photo Gallery is not color managing/processing properly - or at least not in a compatible way with current ICM profiles.  I tried a variety of profiles with my U2410 and all gave the same results as you have described.

I also tested Dell's beta ICM in Firefox 3.5 which IS color managed as well.  The image looks perfect there. 

Since the profile works properly in non-color managed Windows software, as well as in color managed third party software like Adobe and Firefox, it does appear to be a Windows Photo Gallery-specific issue. 

Theya re still working on a fix for the problem as far as I know.

Hi Chris,

For Photoshop, use the beta ICM.

I have not tryed yet.

I have the Original ICC prophile that came with the monitor still as my ICC prophile but in photoshop CS2 it is set to a sRGB prophile and it seems to work but I am sure I must be missing somthing if I am not using the Dell prophile in PS/CS2, what do you think ??

I have now reproduced the Windows PhotoViewer issue with Firefox too, and feel there IS an issue with the current Dell ICM file, rather than with Windows PhotoViewer. Gecks wrote this..

I did some more digging into this issue and it appears that many other monitors (Samsung especially) have issues with this particular aspect of Windows Vista/7.  It appears that Windows Photo Gallery is one of the only areas of Windows that is color managed.  Hence the image will look fine when viewed in say, Internet Explorer, but Photo Gallery attemps color management of the image and this is where the problem occurs. I'm guessing that Dell is correct in so far as Photo Gallery is not color managing/processing properly - or at least not in a compatible way with current ICM profiles.  I tried a variety of profiles with my U2410 and all gave the same results as you have described. I also tested Dell's beta ICM in Firefox 3.5 which IS color managed as well.  The image looks perfect there. Since the profile works properly in non-color managed Windows software, as well as in color managed third party software like Adobe and Firefox, it does appear to be a Windows Photo Gallery-specific issue.

However, I've now tested Firefox 3.6 and can say that Gecks probably got his settings wrong. Firefox shows exactly the same problems as Microsoft PhotoViewer. This is significant because Firefox uses its own colour management, independent of the Windows settings. Unfortunately I don't know enough about colour profiles to know for sure what's going on, thus you're going to have to bear with me. However I'll show people how they can reproduce the same problem in Firefox, and how you can actually FIX the issue in Windows PhotoViewer, which proves it's not Windows Photo Viewer, but rather the information the U2410 ICM is feeding it, and relates to how it's translating images to sRGB. So please bear with me..

First I'm going to list 3 files. One is the original untouched image. The second is the same image saved out at highest quality in Photoshop and tagged as an sRGB image. The last is the same, except I have tagged it using the U2410 ICM directly!

ORIGINAL UNTOUCHED IMAGE http://chictrib.image2.trb.com/chinews/media/photo/2009-06/47313973.jpg
SAME IMAGE TAGGED AS sRGB: http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/2690/47313973srgbtagged.jpg
SAME IMAGE TAGGED as U2410: http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/5558/47313973u2410tagged.jpg


First we're going to reproduce the Windows PhotoViewer issue in Firefox. To set Firefox to use the beta ICM go to about:config and set the value gfx.color_management.display_profile to point to the beta ICM profile path. Your path is probably something like C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\U2410_Beta.ICM. Wherever the ICM is saved, point this setting to the correct path.

Now, under gfx.color_management.mode, set the value to 1. This enables color management for ALL rendered graphics. The default setting on Firefox is "2". This is probably what Gecks was using, and was why he didn't notice any issue.. because at that setting NO untagged images are actually using the Dell U2410 ICM profile! A setting of 2 means ONLY tagged images are colour managed and, since almost no images on the internet are tagged, it's a bit of a waste of time since you only avoid wide gamut issues on tagged images.

A setting of 1 is the same as the setting 2, except it will also ASSUME untagged images are sRGB and will render them as such. Since the vast majority of web images aren't tagged, but are meant for usage on normal gamut sRGB displays, that's usually a wise assumption. So setting 1 will render ALL images as colour managed. Untagged are rendered as sRGB, and tagged are rendered correctly using whatever they're tagged as. This is what you actually want on a Wide Gamut screen!

Ok, so now that you've set Firefox to be fully colour managed using the setting gfx.color_management.mode 1, restart Firefox to see the changes. Now, open the original untagged image
( http://chictrib.image2.trb.com/chinews/media/photo/2009-06/47313973.jpg )

As you can see, Firefox will now display exactly the same sorts of issues as Windows Photoviewer. Firefox is now fully colour managed and is using the information supplied by the U2410 beta ICM to convert the untagged image to sRGB.. and is producing extremely poor results due to the information supplied by the ICM file.

Now, go back into Firefox and set Firefox back to its default gfx.color_management.mode 2 and restart. Firefox is now only going to colour manage files TAGGED with specific colour information. Now, when you open the original untagged image the problem is gone. That's because the image is NOT being colour managed. But open the (now tagged) sRGB version of the image you'll see the problem is still there. Again, the untagged image is not using the U2410 ICM, but the tagged version is.

Now, finally, load the image tagged as U2410 into either Firefox (using either setting 1 or 2, it doesn't matter) OR Windows PhotoViewer. As you can see, the problem is gone when directly tagging an image with the U2410 ICM profile.


CONCLUSION

The reason Photoshop doesn't show these issues is that it's ICM handling is different. I am guessing Windows Photoviewer appears to convert untagged images to sRGB, using the information provided by the U2410 beta ICM as the basis to perform the conversion. This is GOOD behaviour - you want this to happen. It's just that, whatever information is being pulled from the U2410 ICM file, it is producing VERY poor image quality results when it uses the Dell ICM to convert untagged images to sRGB. Likewise, the image directly tagged as sRGB will provide poor results in Windows Photoviewer.

Firefox has the EXACT same issue with the U2410 ICM profile if you set its color management to mode 1, which also converts untagged images to sRGB. If you use the default mode 2 then it doesn't show the issue unless you tag the image as sRGB, and then it shows itself again. This confirms that the issue is being caused by the way some colour managed applications use the U2410's ICM as a basis to convert images to formats like sRGB. You can confirm this by changing the tag directly to the U2410 tag and it solves the issue In both Windows PhotoViewer and Firefox.

Now WHY it's doing this is what I'm not sure about. It could be that Dell are generating an ICM which is not entirely compatible with Windows PhotoViewer and Firefox, in which case I would suggest that it'd be desirable for them to figure out a way to generate a more compatible ICM file which will allow these programs to make a better job of viewing sRGB images, and untagged images (which they convert to sRGB). It could also be that the base information provided within the ICM is responsible for producing poor results when these applications convert to sRGB. Either way, unless there's a limitation in all this I'm missing, the current ICM is producing extremely poor quality results. If the problem is because of the ICM format then please figure out a way to produce better results in programs like Firefox and Windows Photo Viewer.

For those of you wondering what the issue looks like, here are 2 final examples. ( Note the forum limits the width and makes them smaller, see the higher quality PNG links beneath if you want to see the image fully). The first shows Firefox using the Dell profile on the left, and IE8 (which doesn't use colour management) viewing the same photo on the right. As you can see, with results like this, people are simply better off NOT using the ICM file right now.

The Second example shows Firefox at gfx.color_management.mode 2. The image on the left is untagged and not using the Dell ICM. The image on the right is tagged and is. You can see the same issue.

Full quality versions available
Here: http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/3025/firefoxvsie8u2410betaic.png and

Here: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/9461/firefoxu2410betaicmtagg.png


My recommendation is, unless you're using only Photoshop do not use the Dell Beta ICM in its current form - It is reducing your image quality.

 * David Cheney nods @ Gecks... thank you P.A.K!

And thanks to all the rest of the community who have kept the data and feedback flowing to Dell.  While I'm also thankful for Chris' engagement, I would like to see Dell be much more active and transparent in ensuring that their flagship monitor does not sink.  Pending the correction of the profile, my reviews remain "2 stars out of 5."

We duplicated the issue. Will hold off on the WHQL certification until we find a root cause and fix for this.

Thanks for the update, Chris! I know we have been choming at the bit waiting for this, but I also know that these things take time. Thanks for checking into the problem and thanks to the engineers for their hard work as well.

Where does that leave us now?

What the best option to work with for thr time being ?

Frank