Simulating conditions for an LED wall in Photoshop - ICC Profile?

[sarahd64751710]

Hello

We have a chinese-made video wall similar to this one:

Leyard uEV Series | Leyard

It travels and we cannot test our imagery on it until right before a show, on site. We need a way to test our imagery on this very limited gamut.

We are attempting to develop a system that will allow us to (somewhat accurately) recreate the crappy video screen look that is causing the banding on our images at the various venues. We have achieved limited success.

  Since I am a total noob in terms of working within Photoshop’s color settings and profiles, I was hoping to set up an environment within Photoshop that could accurately emulate the conditions under which this banding takes place. I will outline below the limitations of the display technology as we understand them.

Display Characteristics

• Low resolution (typically 3840x1080)
• Limited brightness
  • Display typically used outdoors
  • Display is set to around 5% or 10% of actual brightness for indoor use
• Limited gamut
  • There is no way of knowing the actual gamut because of a lack of hardware documentation
  • Images appear to support less than 8-bit color

It is impossible to set one specific standard, as the panels will change from show to show (they are sourced locally for each venue), and we have no way of knowing what the limitations are until we get on site and they calibrate the displays for the show. Calibration is usually something that happens 1-2 days before each keynote.

Since we develop our imagery at 16-bit, and since we operate in the sRGB color space, it is difficult to achieve an accurate reduction in gamut/quality/brightness/intensity to troubleshoot. This has made our work very difficult.

I am hoping to develop a “preset” of sorts that will cap our colors in Photoshop in a way that simulates the limitations of these displays. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just an approximation will do, but it could go a long way towards allowing us to test our imagery to emulate the limited hardware found on site.

Do I need to make a custom ICC profile? If so, how do I do this? If not, what would a solution be here?

Any ideas or directions are helpful.

Thanks!

[Mylenium]

You can create custom LUTs from adjustment layers and use that to emulate the final look. Other than that even trhe technicians don't know how the perceptual color will turn out until the devices have been calibrated. This is a whole different thing from color profiles and it's all based on experience and eyeballing stuff.

Mylenium

[D Fosse]

There is nothing to simulate. There is no "limited gamut", any more than any average office monitor has limited gamut. A public display panel is no worse, it covers sRGB just as well as an office monitor.

No monitor ever made can reproduce the full dynamic range that the eye can perceive. You have no problem accepting this in front of a screen in your office, because the surroundings just become ambience and the screen is what you concentrate on. You adapt.

But when the screen shrinks to become just a tiny element in the whole visual field, your perception shifts.

Of course you can simulate the experience, but it's a wholly relative exercise based solely on visual perception. The reality you already see.

[Trevor.Dennis]

If there are problems, is it more likely that they are caused by the controlling software?  A quick Google search appears to indicate that not all video wall software is created equal.

The Common Problems And Solutions Of LED Video Wall (1) | LinkedIn

https://gpodisplay.com/6-most-common-misconceptions-about-video-walls-part-1/

https://digistump.com/board/index.php?topic=2044.0

[sarahd64751710]

Thanks for the reply.

True., We are using a different panel in each country on our tour, and some are better than others; ranging from high-quality commercial panels to cheap Chinese knock-offs that have dirty power and limited brightness. We are at the mercy of the house.

Our current workflow consists of:

- Creat comp that looks good in sRGB on my screen at 8 bit

- Send PNG to art director on site 4000 miles away.

- He tests it

- He sends back comments and we do this all again.

Each rotation takes an hour or two.

If I had some sort of clipped preset in Photoshop that limits the output to something that VAGUELY resembles these screens (when they are pumped with only 5% power), then I could maybe remove 2 or 3 cucles from our production pipeline.

That's all I'm trying to do.

Sorry for typos, I'm drunk as hell right now.