Submitted by “If you’re a Web designer, expect your CSS colors & your untagged/unmanaged images to look darker on Snow Leopard than on previous versions of the Mac OS. You’ll also see less of a visible color shift when going from Photoshop to Flash or other unmanaged environments (e.g. Internet Explorer). Why is that? Apple has switched to a default gamma of 2.2, which is what Windows has used for years. Colors that aren’t color-managed are going to look darker on the whole. Your whole display will now be closer to what Windows users see.”
I haven’t played with the new OS – the question that comes to my mind, is did they reprocess all the OS controls (or are they color managed), so they look the same under the new gamma setting? Or does the entire OS look darker as a result of this change?
Not color managed in 10.5 (or Vista for that matter) Does any flavor of Linux color manage that part of the OS?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=pl&source=hp&q=linux+gamma&btnG=Szu…
Linux can be adjusted to do pretty much everything under the sun, so it was quite obvious.
I imagine that a theme which uses images with embedded profiles will display correctly
I think that’s a mistake that many color management advocates make – it should not be just for images. Windows and OS X’s basic interface should be color managed as if they contained an sRGB profile (in fact, so should anything with no embedded profile), if that was the case then higher gamut monitors would actually look better in most cases (right now OS elements are far too bright in general, unless you adjust settings on the monitor, which the industry should ban outright, if they are serious about color management). Complex topic.
imagine working all day to refine a particular piece of artwork in photoshop then when its ready for slicing for use in flash/fireworks then the colours no longer match!
Luckily apple made it very easy to switch back to the old gamma, but unless you know about it, good luck finding this was the cause..
Why would it make them nuts – the setup will finally render a consistent experience between Windows, Mac and other platforms. I say this is a big plus because artists will no longer need to colour check on multiple platforms to ensure that what might appear great on Mac OS X looks horrid on Windows (or vice versa).
Probably a sign of time.
when designer would shift from print industry to webdesign/video production (recommended 2.6 for HD content) industry.
It will render consistently between windows and mac but not between 2 apps on the mac…
I personally would find that annoying (and I am VERY low end, art-wise)
When are we going to see the 2.2 Release Candidate? According to the article, Windows 2.2 has been at Gamma for years.
Interesting, though I had hoped the article would have mentioned that calibrating your screen using monitor calibration for more accurate Photoshop work would be even better. (Using Spyder2express myself.)
In some comments I read that people are surprised about this. Do know that Apple announced it months ago with the “Refinements and enhancements” of Snow Leopard: http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.ht…
As for those who wish to set their own screen profiles, I recommend setting several display profiles. For instance, I have set the following three:
“Color LCD” (= default 2.2 NativeK)
“Color LCD 1.8 NativeK”
“Color LCD 2.2 5000K”
You can set your own profiles like this:
1. Go to System Preferences > Displays
2. Select the tab “Color”
3. Click on “Calibrate…”
4. Repeat the steps for the color profiles you want.