Display Colour Management
Microsoft Windows 7 will introduce two significant new features for display colour management :
- Support for high colour technology
- A display calibration wizard, which enables users to visually calibrate any monitor attached to the PC.
High Colour In Windows 7
The new high colour feature in Windows 7 enables applications to render content beyond 8 bits per pixel. The graphical image appears in a color space that is larger than the standard red-green-blue (sRGB) gamut, with much higher precision and a higher dynamic range.
Today’s wider gamut display devices support more colors that the human eye can recognize than the sRGB gamut. Such devices can deliver a better image experience by using laser, LED, or even updated fluorescent backlights. Multiple wide-gamut content sources support more colors than sRGB, including HD-Photo, VC1-FX, and BluRay. Protocols to send such content from the PC to the display include HDMI 1.4 xvYcc and DisplayPort.
Higher bit depths provide higher precision within a particular gamut of color and help to reduce banding artifacts that interfere with imaging, video, medical, and editing applications. High Dynamic Range support is provided by for the support of larger brightness values.
Windows 7 has three pixel formats for high-color capabilities :
- 30-bit extended-range (XR) format.
- 30-bit high-precision format.
- 48-bit high-precision and wide-gamut format.
This table compares how the three formats and 8-bit sRGB suit the requirements of various applications and devices.
Task |
Standard |
High Precision |
Extended Range |
High Precision & Wide Gamut |
Application |
Inadequate precision and image quality for professional and high-end consumer applications |
Adequate precision and image quality for medical and technical applications |
Inadequate precision and image quality for professional and high-end consumer applications |
Covers all gamut requirements for foreseeable future media |
Display and camera gamut support |
Does not cover gamut of current cameras (e.g. AdobeRGB) or upcoming media formats. |
Does not cover gamut of current cameras (e.g. AdobeRGB) or upcoming media formats. |
Covers gamut of current cameras (e.g. AdobeRGB) or upcoming media formats. |
Covers gamut of foreseeable future cameras and upcoming media formats along with most future monitors and TVs |
Bandwidth estimate |
Efficient bandwidth and power consumption for laptops |
Efficient bandwidth and power consumption for laptops |
Efficient bandwidth and power consumption for laptops |
2X bandwidth and power consumption as other formats |
Miscellaneous |
Current standard on all PCs, GPUs and monitors |
Trivial implementation even on most DirectX 9 GPUs |
New implementation. Current GPUs do not support transparent compositing. |
Enables HDR (High-Dynamic Range) displays |
Direct3D 10 lets developers create a 10-bit, 10-bit XR, or 16-bit-per-channel render target. This enables software developers to preserve content that has values beyond the traditional 8-bit formats. However, the support for High Color in Direct3D 10 is limited to full screen mode only.
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• Windows 7 Display Drivers |
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• Improved Gaming Performance |
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• Colour Calibration |
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• Color Calibration Wizard In Action |
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• Color Calibration Wizard In Action |
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• High DPI & Readability |
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