8 ms·

This all sounds interesting but I have 0 clue about what the author is talking about. Can somebody explain what is being talked about, what color calibration is

This all sounds interesting but I have 0 clue about what the author is talking about. Can somebody explain what is being talked about, what color calibration is and all? Not a designer, but a systems programmer. I do understand rgb, hsv colors but that's it.

gsich 9y ago
The author cries about being not able to boot from the USB stick and that his ColorHug2 might be broken.
- frabbit 9y ago
  Also that only GNOME appears to have color management. XFCE and KDE seem to be lacking in that regard.
  - giovannicarruba 9y ago
    It appears that KDE could do much better without any actual effort. Just merge the existing code into the base packages like GNOME did, don't make it optional.
    - frabbit 9y ago
      That would be one positive thing that could come out of this criticism.
- Accacin 9y ago
  He wrote a pretty detailed blog article explaining his issues and how he got around them, this is all very useful information to someone who is looking to do something similar. Spending €100 also isn't an insignificant amount, and for that price I would expect what I'm buying to work properly.
  - seba_dos1 9y ago
    I don't understand that attitude, that's a pretty low price for a niche open hardware device.
    - giovannicarruba 9y ago
      What attitude? Paying for something and then expecting it to actually work?
      - serf 9y ago
        The attitude that the cost gap between products in the same category will not be accounted for elsewhere in the user experience or product quality. tl;dr : you get what you pay for.
        Filligree 9y ago
        Cost gap? You mean, the ColorHug being more expensive than the other alternatives which work better? Ok, but I'm not sure how that explains it. You'll need to go into more detail.
        seba_dos1 9y ago
        As with most Open Hardware projects, you pay extra for the mere fact of the device's existence. Without paying extra, it wouldn't exist, because producing stuff in small amounts is way more expensive per device than producing them in high volumes.
    - hedora 9y ago
      Many people would like to see open hardware succeed, so they get annoyed when they watch yet another open hardware company sell a broken product, which inevitably leads to bankruptcy, and then starts the “Linux will never work out of the box” cycle anew. We’ve seen this play out dozens of times since the ‘90s, and the startups keep making the same mistakes. They should at least read their predecessors retrospectives, and strive to make different mistakes.
- giovannicarruba 9y ago
  ...which is just how the whole clusterfuck begins. At the end we know that hardly anything in the whole stack works as expected.
GuiA 9y ago
If you do any professional color work, you want a color calibrated display. This ensures that the colors you see on your screen will be the same as the ones on your designer colleague’s screen, and the same as the ones that come out of the printer’s factory, for instance. Higher end displays are already pretty decently calibrated out of the factory, but if you want to be exact you will need to buy an external piece of hardware that will measure your display’s colors and tell you how off they might be. The author bought a piece of color calibrating hardware that was meant to be open in design and work with Linux, as presumably he wants to support these efforts. But he encountered a bevy of problems, ranging from packages not updated in a while to things that just plain don’t work as documented, and got frustrated. Understandable, since on macOS or Windows with proprietary hardware, this would have been a 5 minute process. The author is sad and frustrated that the open source alternatives aren’t there.
- _trampeltier 9y ago
  I could understand you have to calibrate a display if the connection between PC and display would be analog. I don't understand it in the digital age.
  - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    I also have this question. I mean, the ones and zeros that get sent over your DisplayPort/whatnot cable for some specific color in your favorite color space should be identical for all computers everywhere. Why don't we then just calibrate the monitors themselves, rather than the whole OS?
    - dljsjr 9y ago
      Monitors aren't often calibrated from the factory or they are calibrated to be "subjectively" nicer looking, e.g. high contrast and slightly cool white balance to account for show-room floors. In addition to that the built-in options for configuration are often very simplified and have a coupling. Low resolution control plus simplified options means that you often can't dial in perfect color reproduction. Hence ICC profiles.
detaro 9y ago
If you display the same RGB value on different screens (or other outputs like prints) it'll be a different actual color being displayed. Color calibration measures the actual color created and creates correction information that software can use to make the color conform to a standard, so you have better control over the output.

gsich 9y ago

The author cries about being not able to boot from the USB stick and that his ColorHug2 might be broken.

frabbit 9y ago
Also that only GNOME appears to have color management. XFCE and KDE seem to be lacking in that regard.
- giovannicarruba 9y ago
  It appears that KDE could do much better without any actual effort. Just merge the existing code into the base packages like GNOME did, don't make it optional.
  - frabbit 9y ago
    That would be one positive thing that could come out of this criticism.
Accacin 9y ago
He wrote a pretty detailed blog article explaining his issues and how he got around them, this is all very useful information to someone who is looking to do something similar. Spending €100 also isn't an insignificant amount, and for that price I would expect what I'm buying to work properly.
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  I don't understand that attitude, that's a pretty low price for a niche open hardware device.
  - giovannicarruba 9y ago
    What attitude? Paying for something and then expecting it to actually work?
    - serf 9y ago
      The attitude that the cost gap between products in the same category will not be accounted for elsewhere in the user experience or product quality. tl;dr : you get what you pay for.
      - Filligree 9y ago
        Cost gap? You mean, the ColorHug being more expensive than the other alternatives which work better? Ok, but I'm not sure how that explains it. You'll need to go into more detail.
        seba_dos1 9y ago
        As with most Open Hardware projects, you pay extra for the mere fact of the device's existence. Without paying extra, it wouldn't exist, because producing stuff in small amounts is way more expensive per device than producing them in high volumes.
  - hedora 9y ago
    Many people would like to see open hardware succeed, so they get annoyed when they watch yet another open hardware company sell a broken product, which inevitably leads to bankruptcy, and then starts the “Linux will never work out of the box” cycle anew. We’ve seen this play out dozens of times since the ‘90s, and the startups keep making the same mistakes. They should at least read their predecessors retrospectives, and strive to make different mistakes.
giovannicarruba 9y ago
...which is just how the whole clusterfuck begins. At the end we know that hardly anything in the whole stack works as expected.

GuiA 9y ago

If you do any professional color work, you want a color calibrated display. This ensures that the colors you see on your screen will be the same as the ones on your designer colleague’s screen, and the same as the ones that come out of the printer’s factory, for instance. Higher end displays are already pretty decently calibrated out of the factory, but if you want to be exact you will need to buy an external piece of hardware that will measure your display’s colors and tell you how off they might be. The author bought a piece of color calibrating hardware that was meant to be open in design and work with Linux, as presumably he wants to support these efforts. But he encountered a bevy of problems, ranging from packages not updated in a while to things that just plain don’t work as documented, and got frustrated. Understandable, since on macOS or Windows with proprietary hardware, this would have been a 5 minute process. The author is sad and frustrated that the open source alternatives aren’t there.

_trampeltier 9y ago
I could understand you have to calibrate a display if the connection between PC and display would be analog. I don't understand it in the digital age.
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  I also have this question. I mean, the ones and zeros that get sent over your DisplayPort/whatnot cable for some specific color in your favorite color space should be identical for all computers everywhere. Why don't we then just calibrate the monitors themselves, rather than the whole OS?
  - dljsjr 9y ago
    Monitors aren't often calibrated from the factory or they are calibrated to be "subjectively" nicer looking, e.g. high contrast and slightly cool white balance to account for show-room floors. In addition to that the built-in options for configuration are often very simplified and have a coupling. Low resolution control plus simplified options means that you often can't dial in perfect color reproduction. Hence ICC profiles.

detaro 9y ago

If you display the same RGB value on different screens (or other outputs like prints) it'll be a different actual color being displayed. Color calibration measures the actual color created and creates correction information that software can use to make the color conform to a standard, so you have better control over the output.