Color Profile Problem

MagnetiC · Post by **MagnetiC** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:34 pm

Hello everyone, first of all a thank you for such a great emulator.

I've got a question regarding color profiles. Recently I replaced my CRT monitor with a TFT. The first thing I noticed was how awful the colors were compared to my CRT. So I bought a Spyder 2 to calibrate my monitor. The monitor itself doesn't get calibrated though, it just makes a profile with adjusted color temperatures and such. This profile gets loaded everytime I start windows, but I noticed games just ignored the profile (so do my ATI drivers) and colors/gamma/brightness etc. were still wrong.

I then found this handy little program that sorta forces a particular profile of your choice: Monitor Calibration Wizard. Whenever a game or program decides to ignore the set profile, MCW will force it back. This only happens when starting the game or when adjusting video settings ingame.

However, this doesn't seem to work for Zsnes or SNES9x (I haven't found any other programs/games for which it didn't work). MCW has an option called "Apply fix to override driver level color correction" which uses some more processor power, but that did the trick for SNES9x. It still didn't work for Zsnes though. The only way that does work is playing Zsnes in a window, but when I go fullscreen it's back to awful colors etc.

Anybody have any idea for a workaround or why it doesn't work with Zsnes? Sorry for the long boring story.

Thanks in advance.

Post by **Agozer** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:52 pm

You must have bought a pretty bad TFT if the colors were so "awful". Mine came with a color profile file that I just installed, although I really didn't notice much difference either way.

As for your problem, what exactly do you mean by awful colors? Maybe I'm just stupid, but...

It actually looks better in a window?

-_pentium5.1_- · Post by **-_pentium5.1_-** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:58 pm

I assume that in the calibration process, you're trying to adjust the monitor's gamma and white point to fit a particular profile?

I know that the Adobe Gamma monitor-calibration utility supplied with Photoshop has no problem with emulators such as ZSNES, but the shortcomings are:

There's no cheap and legal way to get Photoshop
It requires you to do the calibration by eye
I'm not sure if there's any way to put it on a system that doesn't have Photoshop
I'm not sure if Photoshop Elements has Adobe Gamma

This isn't a major shortcoming, but Adobe Gamma works because, instead of doing driver-level adjustment, it writes to the "color look-up table" (or whatever passes for a look-up table at True Color - is this what MCW does with the "...override driver-level correction" option on?)

I'm not sure what alternative there is... GIMP ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) is the major free alternative to Photoshop, but it doesn't come with any monitor-calibration utility IIRC, so forget about that option.

Maybe the solution requires the developers to change ZSNES?

For my information, where can I download Monitor Calibration Wizard?

MagnetiC · Post by **MagnetiC** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:13 am

-_pentium5.1_- wrote:I assume that in the calibration process, you're trying to adjust the monitor's gamma and white point to fit a particular profile?

I know that the Adobe Gamma monitor-calibration utility supplied with Photoshop has no problem with emulators such as ZSNES, but the shortcomings are:
There's no cheap and legal way to get Photoshop

It requires you to do the calibration by eye

I'm not sure if there's any way to put it on a system that doesn't have Photoshop

I'm not sure if Photoshop Elements has Adobe Gamma
This isn't a major shortcoming, but Adobe Gamma works because, instead of doing driver-level adjustment, it writes to the "color look-up table" (or whatever passes for a look-up table at True Color - is this what MCW does with the "...override driver-level correction" option on?)

I'm not sure what alternative there is... GIMP ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) is the major free alternative to Photoshop, but it doesn't come with any monitor-calibration utility IIRC, so forget about that option.

Maybe the solution requires the developers to change ZSNES?

For my information, where can I download Monitor Calibration Wizard?

Yes to your first question

Since my old CRT didn't have any major flaws (6500K and then adjusted gamma/brightness etc. by eye) it never really was a problem. But this TFT just screamed for a calibration.

I've used Adobe Gamma before but gave up after a few days messing around with it. It's almost impossible for me to calibrate it by the eye as good as Spyper2 does (I bought it after trying with Adobe Gamma). Spyder2 is just a matter of starting the program, putting the device on your monitor and waiting 15 min. It looks very nice when it's done and the colors etc. are near perfect for me.

I used the following device to make the profile: Spyder2
And MCW can be downloaded here: MCW

I'm not sure how MCW does things compared to Adobe Gamma. You can also make a profile with MCW, but I just loaded the profile I made with the Spypder2 since MCW calibration is also by the eye.