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I noticed that some monitor profiling software (like X-Rite i1 Display Pro, for one example) install their startup gamma loaders under Windows 7.

Back in the XP days we used those utilities to load the LUT information into the display adapter's LUT table (since Windows didn't do it for us). However, I seem to remember coming across a bit of information about the reworked Windows 7 color management engine, which claimed that Windows 7 automatically loads the LUT information from the current monitor profile into the display adapter, thus making the gamma loader utilities redundant.

So, is this the case? Is gamma loader supposed to have any effect under Windows 7/8, or is it simply installed because the software vendor could not be bothered to recognize the OS version?

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Although the application has ramifications for viewing photos on a PC, I would think this question might be more suited to another forum. See programmers.stackexchange.com/?as=1 or superuser.com/?as=1 or serverfault.com depending on the scale of the implementation you are concerned with. – Michael Clark Feb 22 at 21:55

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Good question, Andrey,

I worked on some of this for Vista, and to the best of my knowledge, WCS is largely unchanged since then. It's challenging dredging up memories of what we did (vs. what we wanted to do). I do remember it was always very difficult to get support to do color management work.

Since there is only one application (I believe to this day) that ships with Windows and is color managed (Windows Photo Viewer), I think it is safe to say that things are largely as they were with XP.

I'm not aware of any 3rd party apps (ie. Photoshop) that use the new WCS color management engine, so any advantages of the new system remain unavailable until/unless it sees more widespread use.

Hope that helps, -Brad

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Oh, and I'm sorry to report that I may have more bad news for you. If memory serves, the team that developed the user account control (UAC) prompt (the prompt for elevated privileges, new starting with Vista), simply restored a linear (y=x) LUT after mucking with the screen. I believe this will neutralize your XP gamma/LUT utility after each request for elevated privileges, and I don't believe it was ever fixed. (I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so). So look for a UAC-aware gamma/LUT utility--hopefully such a thing exists. – bRad Gibson Apr 7 at 22:50

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