ICC profiles, etc

[lirbank]

I started to think about calibrating my monitor to make sure my productions turn out as nice as possible on other machines etc.
I found that there seems to be two aspects of this. Partly just making sure your monitor displays the right colors, brightnes etc (by playing with the buttons on the monitor itself). And then ICC profiles.

As I understand it ICC profiles is nothing you can see on your screen, they merely make sure your colors are correct for collaboration.
Is that correct?

Since Windows (the OS itself) support ICC profiles, does that mean that Maya does too (on behalf of windows settings)? Or are there a separate function for this in Maya?

On the other hand I read in a book about rendering/Lightning (not Maya specific) that all typs of Gamma correction, etc handled by the system should be turned off to ensure that you get what you see (and only make "Hardware" adjustments to the monitor, using some image displaying different grayscales, colors etc as a guide)... ???

On top of this Adobe includes a tool with PhotoShop called "Adobe Gamma" (found in Control Panel) that helps you make a ICC profile. This little tool allows you to adjust Gamma (which is reflected instantly on the monitor). Is Gamma included in the ICC profile or does the Adobe program make adjustments to the monitor or graphics card hardware-wise/driver too?

This is very confusing.

[deke-kincaid]

The icc profiles in windows are mainly for calibrating between your monitor and scanning/printing/digital still camera. So what you see on your monitor is what prints out. I don't believe icc does anything with color correcting for any video output. So the maya render would only match what you print out, not what you use for video.

[joojaa]

Yes it does the ICC consortiom has been very forward thinking about the sytem and has profiles for theese things too. Only most prductions work so tight that its easier to just do the old way thats why its not very widely used in the industry! There are generic icc profiles for pal, ntsc... for example.

Icc profiles are more used in the prnt industry tough! But theres no reason why not to use it in film etc either...

But for using ICC profiles you realy need a calibration software like adobe gamma (there are better softs). but a good resource for this can be found at http://www.aim-dtp.net/http://www.aim-dtp.net/. Alos using ICC stuff isnt as traighforward as it seems some of the things are done backwards.

There nothing that is more horrid than a misused ICC conversion.