Comments on: New Microsoft Color Control Panel

By: Tim Grey

Tim Grey — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:48:58 +0000

The Color Control Panel for Windows XP is indeed a “PowerToy” created by the development division of the group I’m working on at Microsoft. It adds some great functionality for color management, with my favorite being the gamut viewer it includes. I’d be happy to field questions about this or any of the other efforts we’re making.

You can also e-mail prophoto@microsoft.com, which one of my staff monitors. While the PowerToys aren’t officially supported, we do want to do what we can to make sure you have a good experience with Windows.

Feel free to e-mail me directly as well at timgrey@microsoft.com if you have other suggestions for things Microsoft could do to make Windows a better platform for professional photographers.

Thanks,

Tim Grey
Group Program Manager
Rich Media Group
Microsoft Corporation
timgrey@microsoft.com

This post is provided “as is” and confers no rights.

By: Walter Willis

Walter Willis — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:29:59 +0000

James, After I posted my comment, I went out an looked at my archives of Tim's email Q&A and he mentions this in his Sept 14 issue. For anyone who wants to see some of the things Tim's team is doing, check out http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/default.mspx

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:27:58 +0000

Has anyone gotten this to work? The program appeared to download and install fine, adding a Control Panel item, but attempting to launch this results in a few seconds of an hourglass cursor but nothing more. I’ve tried on two XP SP2 machines – a desktop and a Tablet. Is there some trick to getting this to work?

By: Walter Willis

Walter Willis — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:23:55 +0000

I would still rely on hardware color calibration if you are doing serious work.

Tim Grey who publishes the “Digital Darkroom Q&A” email list (www.timgrey.com) has authored several books on this subject and now works at Microsoft.

I am wondering whether this is the effort of some of the folks on his team. I plan on emailing him to see what he thinks about relying on this for calibration. Thanks for the tip James.

By: Marc Orchant

Marc Orchant — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 08:51:30 +0000

James – Thanks for the pointer. As a veteran of more years than I care to admit in the prepress industry, let me caution you and your readers to have realistic expectations about color profiling. It will get you closer to a consistent display of color across devices but it will never be exact. There’s a lot of science involving transmissive vs. reflective light, the impact of ambient lighting on color perception, and the color space representation possible in both RGB (monitor and scanner) and CMYK (printing) to factor in. I used to teach a six-week class on creating a best-case color environment for printers and designers. And, back in the day when I was a service bureau owner/operator, I spent more than $50K creating a color accurate scanning and correction room – that was just the room and lighting, not the actual hardware!