Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

pullman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 11, 2008
881
155
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I need to verify which colour space OS X Lion assigns to my monitor. When I go to Sys Prefs > Displays > Color and open the currently-used profile it says (among other things):

Space: RGB
Platform Apple

Does this mean that the colour space currently in use is Apple RGB? I also don't find this info in System Information or Color Sync.

I wish to assign another colour space, ideally Adobe RGB or ProPhoto, to harmonise with my scanner and scanning software. How do I assign another profile?

Sorry if this is a dumb question...

TIA
Philip
 
Colour management is mostly black magic, but you don't want to have the same profile for different devices.
You want different profiles for different devices, in order to translate their capabilities to and from existing colour data.

You don't want your monitor to have an Adobe (or Apple) RGB space: you want it to have a colour profile that accurately translates RGB colour into the correct result on it.

Look at it this way: the monitor displays colour in a unique way. You want a unique profile that maps a colour document onto the screen. The same is true in reverse for a scanner.
 
Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. Sorry that I was a bit brief in the initial post.

I am using Vuescan with a Coolscan 9000. Vuescan allows setting the colour space for the scanner, printer, output (the image file) and monitor.

I wish is to set the monitor's colour space in Vuescan to what the monitor has assigned to it by the OS. Is there a way?

Cheers
Philip
 
I haven't used VueScan, so I don't know how it works. Does it want the same type of colour space, or the same colour profile?

The Display profile should have a name, like "iMac" or "LCD default", or "Pullman's custom monitor profile". That is the name of the profile.
If it wants to set the space, not the profile, then just set it all to sRGB. (Or "Off" if possible!)

I can't see why it would want to know all this stuff. The OS should handle the colour management for printing and the monitor.

My experience of colour management is that it's very easy to spend days mucking about with profiles and settings to little effect. As an old-school print production bloke, I'm used to working with CMYK values, regardless of what the screen says, and then tell the printer not to run up the magenta. Which he will do anyway. :D
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.