Monitor profile is defective

[Tafflad]

Every single time I power up CS5 I get an error :

"The monitor profile "Samsung - Natural Color Pro 1.0 ICM" appears to be defective. Please rerun your monitor calibration software.

No other application complain about this.

The monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 226CW

If I go .. Control Panels \ Color Management

I can see that there is a profile "Samsung Natural Color Pro 1.0 ICM (default) file SM226CWicm

It is the ONLY profile listed.

As per a previous post here ... I followed advice to delete the profile ..

I delete it ... I am then prompted to chose a new profile .....from the list shown there is the "Samsung Natural Color Pro 1.0 ICM"

I select that.

Then next time I start CS ... same error message again.

How do I fix this ?

[Hudechrome]

Actually, I'm trying to uncomplicate it by insisting on calibration first, and offering reasons why.

Look, I have long experience with calibration issues, from nuclear physics audio to primary instrumentation, even electron microscopes. One  gets into trouble, no matter your needs, if the devices are not calibrated and traceable.

Pierre's comment about Adobe Gamma hits it squarely. It is the reason I invested in hardware calibration in the first place. A few days pulling my hair out sent me to my supplier where I plunked down $250 (in around 2001) and never looked back.

[D Fosse]

Hudechrome wrote:

Actually, I'm trying to uncomplicate it by insisting on calibration first, and offering reasons why.

Yes, that's a good approach

This should put it all in perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy

Looking at the monitor you essentially have no context to judge color by, and that's when color constancy kicks in: a fresh green apple will look fresh green even under a strong overall color cast. Put that image on a white piece of paper, however, and the apple is suddenly not so tempting. Color constancy is broken with the context.

This is why we use calibrators. They don't suffer from color constancy. It doesn't really matter if they're not perfect, they still perform much better than the eye and brain do, even under the most favorable circumstances.

[D Fosse]

Incidentally, this is why camera calibration is a totally different meal than monitor calibration. The mechanism works in reverse.

[Lundberg02]

Hudechrome made this point (at length): You can't use a device independent color space profile as the profile of a device (for ******* 's sake). The whole purpose of profiles is to NOT DO THAT.

Read. Understand. See.

[Lundberg02]

colorwiki.com        Please go there before you post again, Tafflad.

[Noel Carboni]

Lundberg02, please try not to make this discussion of color-management confrontational, and understand that what you might feel is wrong in your world view (and given your needs) might not be wrong for everyone.  As I said before, there is no "wrong", there are only intelligent choices. 

I can easily cite reasons why using a document profile for a monitor can be useful and even preferable under some conditions, but I won't.  That's not the point.  It's unhelpful, in color-management discussions, to tell people what to go do, as though your way is the only way.  You have to understand that there is not just one right way to do things, which is why we have configuration options we can all change.

Color-management discussions, for some reason, are prone to degeneration into conflict.  Let's not have that happen here, okay?  It's a complex subject, when you factor in individuals' needs, and everyone has good things to contribute.

Understand that D Fosse could teach university courses on the subject.  He knows his stuff and his advice has been perfectly sound here.

-Noel

[Lundberg02]

I was not talking to D Fosse and he does know his stuff.  Tafflad needs to get the picture.  We go on at length here when an OP doesn't know color management basics.  Calibrate, calibrate, calibrate are the first three rules.

[Noel Carboni]

Rules?  LOL 

We agree encouraging understanding is best, but throwing out advice as "rules" is a bit strong.  You don't know Tafflad's color needs and you're already talking about rules.

Oh, and it does matter whose [Reply] button you push.

-Noel

[D Fosse]

OK, sorry if I took it the wrong way.

Still, sometimes you need to be politically uncorrect, for purely practical reasons.

[D Fosse]

Yeah, I know the practical side of it, how it behaves, but I have no clue about the rocket science behind it . That's more up your alley. Luckily, the functional concepts are beautifully simple and logical. Anyway, I'm flattered.

I still don't understand why color management discussions are so inflammable. They always tend to get the blood pressure up - yes, mine too, I'm no better. As witnessed above. I promise to behave

[Lundberg02]

Any thread that starts with "my monitor" or "color shift" etc, etc, is

always some OP who doesn't calibrate and doesn't know the difference

between device dependent and device independent color spaces. Then an

enormous thread develops trying to wise them up. I'm sick of it. It's

perfectly ok to beat on your system until produces what you want and

need, I do that, but at least I know why. I just don't try stupid color

tricks as if I was on Letterman. If you do dumb things you get results

that can't be repurposed.

[Hudechrome]

Ah! A stupid Letterman color trick. Damn, I wish I had thought of that!

[Tafflad]

I seem to have upset you.

I will admit I am an unknowledgeable poster.   That is why I came here for help.

Some of the posts above have been really useful. 

I have a PC, CS 5.5 and a Samsung SM226CW monitor ... I am trying to get the 3 of them to work together.      I do not have a hardware calibration device.

My use is to take my growing stock of digital pictures and adjust and tweak so that they are the best they can be ... for my need.

One of the key tasks is I am a 'hobby' underwater photographer, and use CS to adjust the color balance of the  ics ... which is difficult due to sometimes extremely low light, and almost all the Red being filtered out.

My photos are just for personal use & friends & family.

They do not go to publishing, they do not go to print other than the occasional 7x5 print, they do get viewed by most people on their PC's

So apologies if I have upset someone with my 'color 101 ' questions.

I will go read on some of the links posted ....

[Lundberg02]

You can't tweak if you aren't seeing the image as it actually is. You

have to calibrate. For your purposes, and if you have a good eye, you

could get SuperCal for 25 bucks.

[D Fosse]

Lundberg: Dont "for ******* 's sake" me.

And don't "Read. Understand. See" me.

I know perfectly well how this stuff works. I know perfectly well what happens when you use this type of profile for that and vice versa. It's so basic I didn't even comment on it.

I'm trying to be pragmatic in a situation where the OP does not have and is at present not able to get a calibrator. I'm just trying to keep him floating in the meantime.

[Ehemaliger_Kunde]

The canned monitor profile provided by Samsung may have been defective from the beginning, or the corresponding file may have become corrupted over time, or (less likely) some hardware component(s) may have broken down in the electronic circuitry of the monitor itself.  Can you use some kind of eyeball calibrator that may be available for Windows until you procure a hardware calibrator puck?

[PECourtejoie]

I've seen several similar threads on feedback. It seems that Windows pushes monitors profiles, and most of them are rejected by Photoshop/elements.

[Tafflad]

Guys ... I'm pretty new to all this side of things.

I don't have hardware color comparator.

I had swapped to using  sRGB Color Space Profile.icm      on the response above.

Following posts suggets using ADOBE RGB ... I just went and tooka look tahere are 2 ADOBE profiles

ADOBE RGB (1998)  and

ADOBE RGB (1998) D65 NP 2.2 gamma

Which of these should I swap to using. ?

The monitor was supplied with "Samsung Color Pro - Color Management system"  on a CD, but I have not used that.

[D Fosse]

Tafflad, in your situation I would try Calibrize, but make sure you start with Adobe RGB. Use the plain one, I've no idea where the other one comes from.

And also keep in mind what I wrote above: anything that is not color managed, like Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer, will be over-saturated and wrong on that monitor. But Photoshop will display correctly.

One alternative approach is to look for the monitor's sRGB preset in the OSD menus. This will effectively turn it into a standard gamut monitor, and will solve some of the more immediate problems, and will also allow you to use sRGB as the monitor profile.

[PECourtejoie]

Keep in mind that if Adobe Gamma was retired, it was because it could also create bad corrections, as our eyes "lie" a lot (they adapt to the surrounding conditions).

Make sure you have a very neutral lighting in the room, have a neutral grey surrounding for your image. Some use a hood, other create black cardboard frame around your monitor.

If you are on windows, use the old user interface (windows classic) with grey title bars. On a Mac, prefer the graphite theme.

A Hardware calibrator analyses only the pixels they see, and are not tricked as our eyes can be.

[Morstreng]

Thanks,  2nd link on google was this post.  To: ssprengel thanks, the warning is gone. 

My needs: Just a hobby web programmer with a profile that kept giving me the error. 

Future: Few more years untill I am done with my current job.  Picked up CS5.5 and an 800 Dollar entry Nikon camera (kit).  Next I will grab an entry level monitor and calibrator... for now just happy to have the error gone.

To the above debate/anger... many of us just want a fix for an issue... I (and I aussume others) learn from the posts and adapt as best as possible.

Thanks for the knowledge.

[Lundberg02]

Morspreng, you are in the wrong thread.

[Noel Carboni]

Lundberg02, you misspelled Morstreng's username, besides being wrong.  Considering you misspelled 1 of 7 words, that's a 114 percent failure rate! 

-Noel

[Lundberg02]

Yes, I misspelled a fictitious name. Oh shame, shame. 1 in 7 is 14 percent rounded off. I'd hate to see your tax returns.

[Hudechrome]

Math isn't his strong suit!