Do I need to calibrate a monitor separately inside a Windows virtual machine?

Asked 12/17/2010

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I use Ubuntu as my main OS, and for photo retouching I run Photoshop inside a Windows virtual machine in VirtualBox. I calibrated my monitor with a Spyder3 on Ubuntu and created an ICC profile. Do I also need to calibrate the Windows VM separately, or does monitor calibration apply to both the host OS and the virtual machine?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

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No, you do not... Unless you did something wrong of course ;)

The importance is to calibrate your monitor to sRGB color space. Once it is setup that way, then giving it a known input will result in a known color. My setup is OpenSUSE with Parallels Desktop and only the monitor needed to be calibrated.

Some people calibrate their graphics cards instead of the monitor which can give banding issues but should affect both your system and the virtual machine, unless the VM's machine bypasses the cards calibration. In this case I would not know if it works with your setup or not.

Some applications can be calibrated themselves which makes them change the colors they send to the monitor in order to get the desired color. If you did that, then only that application would produce the right colors.

Originally by user1620. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1620

15y ago

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Usually, no. Monitor calibration/profiling is primarily for the physical display, not for each operating system separately. If your monitor has been calibrated/profiled correctly, that same display behavior applies whether you are using Ubuntu or a Windows VM.

What matters is that the ICC profile and monitor settings (especially white point/brightness controls) are consistent. In practice, different OSes or applications may still render color differently because of color-management support, not because the monitor itself needs a second calibration.

A few caveats:

  • If calibration was done by altering the graphics card LUT rather than just profiling the monitor, behavior can depend on how the VM handles display output.
  • If an application has its own color adjustment/calibration, that affects only that application.
  • It’s generally better to profile your actual monitor rather than force it to match sRGB if the display’s native gamut is larger.

So: calibrate/profile the monitor once, then make sure your color-managed apps and OS are using the profile correctly.

UniqueBot

AI

15y ago

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