Does Profile Mechanic work on Windows 7?

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craig

Does Profile Mechanic work on Windows 7?

Post by craig »

Has anyone successfully used Profile Mechanic - Monitor on Windows 7? I recently loaded Windows 7 on a machine that had previously had Windows XP. No changes to the hardware, and PM had worked fine under Win XP on the machine. Under Win 7, PM ran, but gave an error message related to white point calibration and took a veeeery long time to complete. The profile was very strange (a vertical section in one of the color curves!). The standard CLUT Loader would not run. The variation on the CLUT Loader that allows you to select among profiles runs and loads the profile, but the resulting display is nasty. I haven't played with any XP compatibility settings.

A related question: The PM calibration puck appears to be a MonacoOPTIX. That's an orphaned product, but Argyll CMS says it supports it. Has anyone tried to use the puck with Argyll and dispcalGUI under Windows 7 if they couldn't get PM to work right?

Maybe I should just give up and buy a current profiling product, but PM has served me well over the years. . .
randys
Posts: 13
Joined: April 27th, 2009, 6:27 pm

Re: Does Profile Mechanic work on Windows 7?

Post by randys »

I just installed it on a new win7 64bit laptop. Used the vista version. Worked fine with no issues.
Randy
craig

Re: Does Profile Mechanic work on Windows 7?

Post by craig »

It's interesting that you got Profile Mechanic to work on Win 7. I took Win 7 off my machine and reinstalled Win XP. Profile Mechanic worked fine under Win XP. Recently I reinstalled Win 7 again (32 bit version), and had the same experience as last time when I tried to use Profile Mechanic. This time I remembered to save the profile that I had created under Win XP, and that worked okay with Win 7. However, that's not a long term solution so I decided to figure out how to use Argyll CMS and see whether it works with the Profile Mechanic calibration puck. It does, and the profile that Argyll generates seems to the eye to be similar to the one generated by Profile Mechanic under Win XP, but perhaps does a little better job on my monitor separating dark tones.

Here are the setup instructions.

1. Install Argyll CMS (from http://www.argyllcms.com/) by unziping the installation zip file in the c: drive root directory. This will create an Argyll folder. Then install dispcalGUI (from http://hoech.net/dispcalGUI/). Do NOT run either of these programs. Note that you do NOT have to create a PATH entry for the Argyll files as specified in the Argyll installation instructions.

2. The USB driver installation instructions on the Argyll site did not work for me. Here's what did work: Plug in the calibration puck. Windows 7 will quickly give up on trying to install it. Cancel out the USB installation program, and browse to the Device Manager in the System tab of the Control Panel. There will be an obviously uninstalled entry there, which is the calibration puck. Right-click on it, and select the option to manually install the driver. When the directory browser window opens, browse to the Argyll subfolder labeled libusb1. Then click OK, and the device manager will install the correct driver after a delay. The previously uninstalled entry will now be installed and called "Argyll LibUSB-1.0A devices: MonacoOPTIX (Argyll)".

3. With the calibration puck still plugged in, start the dispcalGUI program. IMPORTANT: If you want dispcalGUI to set things up to automatically load the profile when Windows starts, you must run dispcalGUI as an Administrator. Once dispcalGUI starts, it will ask you to locate the executable files for Argyll. Browse to the bin subfolder in the Argyll folder.

4. Note that the "Instrument/Port" is shown as "i1 Display," rather than MonacoOPTIX, but it works okay. Set the Mode as appropriate (probably LCD for most people). If you want to see a report on the "raw" state of your display, select "Tools | Report on uncalibrated display device."

5. Leave all the other options at their defaults, and click on the "calibrate & profile" button. It will open a command windows, which will display a short menu with various options. If you want to manually calibrate your display using its controls before starting the profiling, this is where you select the option to do that. I didn't and just proceeded to starting the profiling.

6. It took about 10 minutes for the profiling to complete. Then the program asks if you want to install the profile, and if you say yes and you have run dispcalGUI as an Administrator it will install an entry in the Startup folder to automatically load the profile when Windows starts.

7. However, the profile loader in the Startup folder will not be able to actually load the profile until you set its Properties for it to always run as an Administrator. If you don't do that, then you will see a dispcalGUI icon on the Task Bar after Windows starts up, and when you click on it you will be told that the profile couldn't be loaded.

8. The Startup folder profile loader does not have an option to unload the profile. Looking at the actual script that is executed, it is using the Argyll dispwin program, so there is probably a way to use that program to unload the profile. I haven't explored that and the many other features of Argyll yet. Also, I know that Windows 7 has some built-in color management tools that I haven't explored. It is possible that you can set those to automatically load the profile without needing the Startup folder entry.
phototransformations
Posts: 9
Joined: April 25th, 2009, 10:19 am
Location: Beverly, MA
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Re: Does Profile Mechanic work on Windows 7?

Post by phototransformations »

Randy, how did you get Win7 64-bit to recognize the puck? When I tried to install the driver and pointed the hardware wizard to the driver installation folder, it listed only a bunch of Chroma*.inf and Gamma*.inf files, none of which allowed Profile Mechanic to connect with the device.

Thanks!
Dieter Mayr
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Joined: April 24th, 2009, 11:47 am
What is the make/model of your primary camera?: Nikon D700
Location: Salzburg / Austria

Re: Does Profile Mechanic work on Windows 7?

Post by Dieter Mayr »

Craig,

Thank you for your description for using the PMM-Puck with Argyll cms.
I have just upgraded to Win7 64-bit here and did try a lot of things to try to get the puck be recognized by Win7.
The drivers supplied with Argyll cms work very well with the puck, and i have got PMM running under Win7, but no chnage to get the puck recognized by PMM.
So I gave Argyll cms a try (in combination with dispcalGUI) and I have to say it produced a very good looking profile.
As i still have my old machine around I could make a direct comparison and it really looked good.
I have spent the last days with seting up and tweaking all the software I need for my work, but the weekend i will give it some more time to tweak with the settings on the cms and of my new laptop.
I did a just very rough profiling just to see how it works, it can surely be done better, but i had to get my other stuff running.

So, agian, Craig, thanks for the great tip, thats the way to go to keep that "old" puck alive :)
Dieter Mayr
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