better mac icc profiles for asus mb169b+ monitor

[cmdillon]

hi!

there seems to be a need for better icc color profiles for mac. i'm using asus mb169b+ portable monitor and the colors are not very good. there is a real problem with the subtile greys, they are not getting displayed.

hopefully there will be something done about this.

[stfm]

I have tried to make colour profiles for the MB169+, but it's hard. It seems the response curve is fixed, or not passed to the monitor. It's possible to adjust colours and gamma (in a fashion), but it's very unpredictable and you can't see any changes as you make them. I'm going to try a hardware calibrator when I get to my office, but I don't think it will work.

I have settled on a profile with Gamma 1.9, which keeps a bit of highlight, while not darkening the shadows too much.

Does anyone know if the limitation of adjustments is a monitor issue, or a thing that could possibly be fixed in Displaylink? It seems to be Displaylink that makes calibration impossible.

[stfm]

Here are two icc-profiles. The one named 1,9 in the end is the one I use, and there's one for better highlights called "y"

EDIT: Use this link instead of the attached file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13589645/mb169profile.zip

EDIT2: Go here to download the new, improved, profile.
http://displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=64630

[icatalina]

For some reason I can't download from the forum, can someone post a link or send me the icc.zip file? kind regards

[stfm]

For some reason I can't download from the forum, can someone post a link or send me the icc.zip file? kind regards

Maybe you need to be an admin to download? I can't either. Either way I'm not at home, so I can't provide a link now. I'm going to try to make a better profile, then I'll update with links to download.

[stfm]

Here is a hardware profile for *my* Asus mb169+ monitor. Sample variation may result in the profile not working as well for you, but it's probably better than the default. I got much better definition in highlights. It's not perfect, but it's the best I can do. And it's on par with a lot of mainstream monitors, which the default profile is not.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13589645/mb169profile.zip

EDIT: If you try it, please report back with your own findings.

[icatalina]

Hey! Thanks a lot! It looks better than the original one...

[cmdillon]

hey, stfm! thanks a lot! that really makes a difference, now i can see some subtle greys again. still have some issue with finder, but i think it maybe another issue altogether. see image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkvz92ntyqi95pu/2016-07-11_10-09-21.png?dl=0

[stfm]

hey, stfm! thanks a lot! that really makes a difference, now i can see some subtle greys again. still have some issue with finder, but i think it maybe another issue altogether. see image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jkvz92ntyqi95pu/2016-07-11_10-09-21.png?dl=0

Yes, there is still some missing highlights. I don't think I can do much about that without direct controls to the hardware. Asus probably punched up the curve so it would look brighter. I'll look into it more later, but I think this is good enough for now.

[cmdillon]

Yes, there is still some missing highlights. I don't think I can do much about that without direct controls to the hardware. Asus probably punched up the curve so it would look brighter. I'll look into it more later, but I think this is good enough for now.

yeah, i think you are right. the white balance is crazy high. well thanx again for all your efforts and i look forward to any updates that you might provide.

[stfm]

yeah, i think you are right. the white balance is crazy high. well thanx again for all your efforts and i look forward to any updates that you might provide.

This monitor has a pretty small gamut (colour intensity), and the original profile isn't tuned to that. As a result it clips to white way too soon. I'm going to make another run at it, and will report back tomorrow if it bears fruit. It's never going to be a monitor for colour critical work, but I'm confident it will be a lot better when I compress the coulour space more.

[unsyn]

Thanks stfm, the profile you posted is a nice improvement already. Even with it, though, light grays still don't come out too well, like the mouseover background colour for result items here, pretty much invisible: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mb169b%2B+ this is not only a problem for colour critical work, but also for subtle color hints when editing text or code. Would it make sense to have multiple profiles, each optimized for a different kind of task (say text editing vs. working with photos)?

[stfm]

Thanks stfm, the profile you posted is a nice improvement already. Even with it, though, light grays still don't come out too well, like the mouseover background colour for result items here, pretty much invisible: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mb169b%2B+ this is not only a problem for colour critical work, but also for subtle color hints when editing text or code. Would it make sense to have multiple profiles, each optimized for a different kind of task (say text editing vs. working with photos)?

I don't think that will be necessary, I'll report back here as soon as I have a new profile done. It takes a very long time to do (about two hour for one run).

The problem is that I have no way of turning the profile off, so I have to try different profiles to use as starting points. Usually the profiling software disables the profile, to measure the device as it really is, but the Displaylink software prevents this.

[stfm]

Download the new profile here, and let this thread die.

http://displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?p=80603#post80603

[kiril_nedev]

I had exactly the same problem and managed to fix it.
I installed the software from Asus website and it turned out that CONTRAST is set to 53% .. which causes some colors to disappear.
Putting it to 50% showed all the colors properly