Here are the two pictures:
1.
http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/8872/picturemanagerao3.jpg (viewing
using Office Picture Manager.
2.
http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/5620/wpgzk3.jpg (using Windows Photo
Gallery)
Also, here are a couple of screen shots from my Color Management window
although frankly I don't know much about how color management works in Vista
and these profiles installed on their own during a clean Vista install.
First (Profiles)
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/6972/profilesjv3.jpg
Second (Advanced Screen)
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/6937/advancedcolormgtom8.jpg
This comes up a lot in other Microsoft groups that deal with video and
graphics as well as on countless forums and newsgroups not specific to
Microsoft.
Color Management deals with how color space is managed. This can get
to be a highly technical topic, but the good news is there is a wealth
of information on the web about it. Throughout this and similar
threads you often see ICC and color profiles pop up and I'll bet few
people know the orgins. ICC actually stands for INTERNATIONAL COLOR
CONSORTIUM which is a good starting point to learn more.
http://www.color.org/
Other good topics to Google range from color theory to how television
was developed, (important if your make videos or sideshows played of a
TV) advanced topics on video editing and general photography. Enough
stuff out there to keep you busy reading for months, much of it quite
good.
Adobe (creators of Photoshop) has many detailed sites on some of these
topics and if you have Photoshop or some other Adobe products they
cover it pretty well in their help systems too.
Basically what gets a lot of people confused in what's meant by color
space. Most web pages that discuss it quickly get into other terms
like Gamma, Color Temperature and setting black and white points and a
few dozen other things.
In a nutshell EACH device; your computer monitor, your television,
your digital camera, scanner, printer, actually nearly everything
electronic operates it it's own color space. This simply means how a
'device' handles color both in hue and how overall a image's intensity
(brightness) is governed by it's limitations. So any device's unique
color space, no surprise, won't match another device's color space
exactly for a host of reasons. The good news, is you can work around
these limitations. How much effort you put into it depends on how good
you demand your final results to be and what tools you choose to use.
It can vary due to something very basic like an advanced graphic
application like Photoshop displaying 'out of gamut' warnings which
means if you're attempting to create a file to send to some commercial
printer that's going to print a color catalog for you he'll use CMYK
color space since that's what the inks he'll use is based on. The
problem being some colors can't be produced accurately and will look
very different in your computer monitor's RGB color space. If you're
not aware of this, can be a very expensive lesson.
The same is true for video work, since if you intend to play that DVD
you just made on a set top DVD player and you foolishly color
corrected it looking at a computer monitor, sorry you messed it up and
it will never look the same as it did on your computer monitor. This
time it isn't so much a gamut problem, rather a color temperature
issue. This time hue gets shifted because when television was first
invented to accommodate color they cheated and on purpose shifted how
certain colors get treated differently. Ideally, a TV should be
configured to 6500 Kelvin while a computer monitor can range between
5000 Kelvin to 7500 or even higher. Obviously colors appear warmer or
cooler based on their perceived "temperature".
To further muddy the waters the more towards blue you go on any
intensity scale the "hotter" the light actually is, however the
opposite is true in human perception with people seeing yellows,
oranges and reds as warmer with blues and violets being cooler.
That is by no means the end of it. There are different set points in
the states as opposed to Europe as to what things should be set to and
there are differences between gamma levels in a Mac and in Windows
which means what looks like a correctly adjusted image on one platform
can look either too dark or washed out on the other.
What a color profile attempts to do is adjust TO the device it will be
seen on while working on something else. Since you'll usually work off
a computer monitor or a external monitor set to PAL or NTSC specs for
video work the goal would be to make what you see on those devices
match that destination's color space. Same if your intent is to print
out a image on your printer. Better graphic applications like
Photoshop let you pick a profile BEFORE you print it, thus assuring
the colors get produced in that device's color space not in the
default monitor's color space which usually is going to be very
different.
So all of what I said above boils down to Microsoft's Photo Galley
leading you down the garden path. Clearly it IS applying some color
management, but it doesn't say which method. The result of that
depends very much on the end use of your images. If they remain on
your computer, no real damage, adjust in your favorite graphics
application and be done with it and you should get reasonably good
results.
HOWEVER, if you want more professional results you need an application
that can TELL YOU what color management if any has been applied, allow
to you pick others keyed to the final destination ie your printer,
back to your camera, end up on a DVD, etc.. And of course you really
need to be able to adjust the things I mentioned, otherwise you'll
never get the optimal results you otherwise could have.
Today's color printers are capable of rivaling even surpassing the
quality of professional labs but only if you understand what's
required and begin to understand what color management is really all
about.
