T/W530 FHD Color Profile

Hi All,

A number of people in the W530 thread have found my .icm colour profile a big improvement over the factory provided profile so I thought I would make its own thread. I am told the T530 shares the same screen as the W530 so hopefully it will help T530 owners to.

This profile is for the Full HD display. I will provide you with a link to two different profiles, one of them is by notebookcheck and the other is my custom profile made using a Spyder 2 Pro. So far most people have preferred my profile to the notebookcheck profile which was a bit warm for me. Obviously if you already have a custom profile made for your particular screen then I doubt my profile will improve things, however if you are using the factory default profile or some other .icm from the net then feel free to give my profile a go.

Instructions are for Windows 7:

(HOW TO ENABLE COLOR MANAGEMENT in WINDOWS 7) for T/W530 FHD displays:

First you need to save the T/W530 profile from this link: My custom W530 profile

Alternative T/W530 profile: Notebookcheck W530 profile - Right click the link and select "Save link As" save the file as a *.icc file.

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Right Click your Desktop and select "Screen Resolution"

Click "Advanced Settings"

Select "Color Management" Tab

Click "Color Management" button

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This is where it can get a little confusing but I will try to make it clear.

Now that you are at the "Color Management" window, go to the "Advanced" Tab

Press "Change system defaults..." button

Another "Color Management" window will open that looks just like the window you were in before, the only difference is that this one is called "Color Management - System Defaults"

Now go to the "Advanced" Tab in this new Window.

Next to the "Calibrate display" button there is a little square tick box which says "Use Windows display calibration", normally this does not have a tick in the box. Please tick this box and then press "Close"
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You will now be back at the "Color Management" window, not the "Color Management - System Defaults" window.

In the "Color Management" window go to the "Devices" Tab

Place a tick next to the "Use my settings for this device" box.

Below go and press the "Add" button.

Browse to where you saved the .icc or .icm profile you want to apply and select it.

Now select your profile and press the "Set as Default Profile" button. If all has been done correctly you should notice a big difference on how colors are displayed. It should be for the better.

If you want to toggle between having your profile ON and OFF, just tick or untick the "Use my settings for this device" box.
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If you've been used to using your display with poorly calibrated colors, the new profile may come as a bit of a shock to your eyes but the colors should now be much closer to being correct than the default factory profile which is not even calibrated for the display.

If you are using the Windows 7 theme, you may notice that the greys around boxes are grey now, not a light bluish grey.

 

This was a big improvement and very helpful.

Thanks

 

I have a T530 with the FHD and looking to trying this profile. The colors seem very bright and saturated. Can you give some information as to what changes you've made to the default color profile?

Thank you so much for taking the time to post this.

 

I just created a custom profile using my Spyder 2 Pro. It seems like the factory profile being provided by Lenovo is not even custom calibrated to the FHD display. It's way off the mark.

My custom profile is warmer than the original, if I remember correctly the original was very cool, you only have to look at the greys and you can see they have a bluish tinge about them. The black point has also been adjusted, giving better contrast. I remember viewing some images I had edited on a colour calibrated desktop display and viewing them on my laptops FHD display, the shadow areas were blown out, what was meant to be a deep dark blue/black, turned into a washed out greyish blue, this is fixed by the adjusted black point and most shadows are now appropriately dark not grey.

Colours still look vibrant but at least they look more natural now, least on my display they do and most people that have tried it seem to share those findings.

Hope it helps.

 

Works wonderfully even on W510. Thanks!

 

Glad to hear it works well even on the W510. In the end it's free and takes little time to try it, so if your not happy with the colour reproduction or just curious give it a go.

 

Flickster,

I have the HD+ display on the 530 machine I'm using, with a FHD machine on the way, but I wanted to see if a lo-no-techster could follow your instructions in Windows 8. I can confirm that all the windows, tabs, buttons and boxes are just as you described them in W8, and I believe I successfully installed your color calibration.

I really don't know if the colors are different yet, or if a calibration for a FHD display will work on a HD+ display, but I know how to undo everything.

Question: you say we can toggle back and forth between your calibration profile by ticking or unticking the "Use my settings for this device" box. But what about that normally unticked box that we ticked a few screens earlier next to "Calibrate display". Does that not have to be unticked also to go back to the factory calibration?

 

I just switched to this color profile and there is a significant difference in how the screen looks. The whites on the background of a page are more comfortable to the eyes rather than being too bright. Reading text has improved as well. I really like it.

Thank you very much Flickster.

 

Hi Kilt, I don't believe so, if you are referring to the "Use Windows display calibration" box.

That box just enables Windows colour management and by default the display is normally set to the factory profile. It is not until you tick the "Use my settings for this device" box, that you enable the custom profile which you downloaded.

That is why if you untick the "Use my settings for this device" box, it should return to the default profile which is normally the factory installed one, giving you the ability to toggle.

If you are not confident that the colour has returned back to default just untick both boxes, does no harm but there shouldn't be a need to do that.

The colour calibration can be applied to any screen, however it may not look great on a different model display as the calibration settings could be way off.

On the FHD display you should be able to clearly see the difference between stock and custom profile. Best if you just download a colour wheel or type "screen colour test" in Google image and download one of them images in a descent resolution to use as a test. You can normally notice the difference most in the greys and blacks.

I haven't tried it on Windows 8, maybe it needs a reboot after applying the settings. If working correctly you should be able to pull up a test image and toggle on/off between default and custom icc/icm profile.

 

Flickster,

I really appreciate you putting this up here, it really helped on my w530. I do not have much of a trained eye when it came to color (All I use is CAD) and thought that my display was good how it came from the factory, especially coming from a really cheap computer... but then I gave this a try and WOW... Much nicer. Thanks again!!

Kevin

 

Here is the best one I've found for FHD display

 

I tried a few different online profiles before custom calibrating my FHD display using the Spyder PRO - that is the profile I posted.

The profile you have linked to is way to warm on my display and the black point is off for the W530 FHD, giving you reduced contrast. Also the Blues are not correct, which is probably due to it being to warm a temp for my display.

You can notice the colour temp is too warm in the greys and whites, also the shadow areas are more exposed.

It is however an improvement over the default profile but I will stay with my custom profile, I think it is much better suited to my W530 FHD display.

That is the thing with colour profiles, they are so easy to try and toggle ON/OFF. Anyone can try it, compare it to my profile and choose which one they like best for them. In saying that the point of profiles is to get accurate colour reproduction across multiple displays/devices, so images look similar no matter which colour calibrated monitor you use. For that purpose, I think the profile I posted is a better match on FHD screen - least for my display it is.

 

Went through your tutorial thanks, and it changed for the better. However, I cannot toggle on or off or try any other profile. Nothing changes again.

Can you tell me what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks.

~Bob

 

Flickster,

Thank you very much for the custom profile, i just got my 1080p FHD W530 machine without inbuilt calibrator, it looks so much warmer then what it was before, one thing tho, i noticed when i opened a image file in ACDsee, it will look very different to the Windows Photo Viewer, the Windows default image browser look a bit wash out, but funny is if I click the the button "Play Slide Show (F11)" then in the full screen mode the image has the same result as the ACDsee's.


I have tried to put some images in Photoshop CS6, pretty sure it is displaying RGB/8 mode, and the result is the same as the Windows Photo Viewer before clicking the slide show button.... which is the wash out version...I'm not sure whether it is caused by conflict of profile settings or...pls help, i have no idea how to make all of them display as the same and correct colour.

Thanks,
Ste