[WinMac] Re: Darker PC graphics than Mac graphics?
Walter W. Knapp(wwknapp[at]mindspring.com)
Sat, 27 Feb 1999 01:09:52 -0500
Dan Schwartz wrote:
> Walter:
>
> I doubt that many users today are still stuck on 16 colors (VGA palette).
> 256 colors is a different story, especially in the target audience of
> college students. Yes, they may have the latest VooDoo 8 megabyte AGP video
> card in their brand new 450 mHz Gagway computer in their dorm room with an
> ethernet Internet connection; but when they play Quake II the color palette
> is dropped from 32 bits down to 8 bits... And it just may get left there.
You obviously have not poked around in the corners of the US government.
My wife manages a research group at CDC. They are just getting around to
upgrading to Windows 95. And just buying the machines to do that as most
were still using 282's & 386's. And all were using the web. As recently
as last year, her group contained only one Windows machine that could do
better than 256 colors, that's what started the odyssey down color depth
& gamma lane, when those windows people did not like her photos and were
sure it was because they came from a mac. My wife just finally took the
Lisa she started with out of service, she's using a 8500 & a G3
Powerbook, but the Lisa was last being used for data entry in one of the
labs less than a year ago. That's the sort of thing that tight money in
government really means.
And, the stuff she put up is for federal and state labs. The state labs
are even worse.
I'm working on a survey of amphibians and reptiles in Georgia as a
volunteer. Since I take all the specimen photos with a digital camera, I
asked about just e-mailing them to the state agency that's running the
survey. They did not even have e-mail then, although they have finally
gotten that this year. I have not asked about graphics since then,
although in talking to the head of the program last week, he would be
able to view some web pages I'm putting together on Georgia's frogs &
toads. They have had to farm out their web pages to one of the state
universities due to their poor computer capability.
While the kids playing games may have super computers, a lot of real
workplaces are pretty limited. Although I agree, it's time to laugh at
anyone viewing color work with 16 colors, or even 256. When I get
comments on a image, I still find out what they are using. You never know.
>
> I've used the Light Source ColorTron II 32 band spectrophotometer color
> measurement tool and monitor calibrator for about 2 years now. Problem is,
> Light Source went under, but its assets were bought out by X-Rite
> <http://www.x-rite.com> in Michigan. In addition to new v2.52 MacOS
> (G3/8.5.1 compatible) software, they introduced Windows software that also
> supports the ColorTron II. They also changed/added to the ADB interface to
> include a combo RS-232/RS-422 (Mac & PC) cable set that snaps in.
>
> I highly recommend the ColorTron spectrophotometer and the related
> ColorShop software.
Luckily, so far, my requirements have not been that exacting. I get by
with some calibrated scanner targets and colorsync and visual
calibration. That even works for the digital camera.
Just wait 'til you try to color calibrate a Powerbook display to a Apple
monitor. Definitely different color space. I also use a 3400 powerbook
with the digital, and tried that. I can get it real close, except in
some shades of blue. Blue on one, purple on the other. Unfortunately,
that area is sky colors. As a result, I only do preliminary editing on
the digital camera images on the Powerbook and use only the calibrated
monitor for final work.
Walt
wwknapp@mindspring.com
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