User:Previously Unsigned/Accurate color in Guild Wars

I've written this guide for anybody who wants to play Guild Wars with accurate color. Many people have uncalibrated monitors and even people that don't may notice that Guild wars reverts back to out of the box color when playing in fullscreen. I finally fixed that problem though thanks to a lead by Lania Elderfire and and am sharing the process here! (This should also benefit you if you want to maximize your monitor's potential or do photography.) I originally thought this was a problem with Guild Wars, but come to find out, it might be a limitation of DirectX or graphics cards in general! So if it works it may benefit other games as well.

Why should I care about this? The color of my monitor is fine!

The overwhelming majority of all computer users use uncalibated screens. Why is this this stupid?

• You spend a lot of money on monitor/graphics card but then fail to utilize their potential
• You are not experiencing the game the way the designers who made it saw it
• Incorrectly adjusted hue and brightness leads to reduced dynamic range - variety is needed in light/shadow/color
• You let your eyes get adjusted to a non neutral color source, messing your up your perception (can't view through a color cast and expect to still see accurate)
• Everybody who knows what they're doing or works in the industry agrees that calibration is one the most basic, necessary steps for media production - how can you know what you're producing if you don't even know what you're seeing!?

1. Get a colorimeter. I sugest the Spyder4 Express/Pro or ColorMunki Display/Smile.

2. Calibrate your monitor. You can consult the instructions that came with your device for this step.

3. Once the profile is installed and working, now download and install PowerStrip.

4. Now we need to capture the profile that was created in step 2 in PowerStrip. To do this, start PowerStrip, then right click it's tray icon then Color profiles > Configure. You should see a gamma ramp with red, green, and blue bar on the left, it looks like a curves command. If you see just a white line instead (a linear ramp), then follow do steps 4a-b, then continue with step 5.

4a. Right click PowerStrip in tray > Color profiles > Configure. Turn off "Enable color correction" and exit PowerStrip. Open the program included with your colorimeter to manage color and disable and renable the calibrations you did.

4b. Open PowerStrip again, go back to Confiure color profiles, and you should see a non linear ramp now. Continue to step 5.

5. Under "Gamma ramp options" in that window, you should see a keyboard icon next to the drop down menu that says "Linear gamma ramp". Click that icon and then click Capture from it's menu... it will then ask for a name. Now you can use the profile you made with PowerStrip... make sure that "Enable color correction" and "Apply adjustments to non-linear ramp" are enabled, using the profile you just captured.

6. Since PowerStrip will now oversee the calibration, you can turn off any 3rd party utilities and disable them from startup.

7. Now right click PowerTray and go to Options > Preferences. Double click the bar that says Compatibility near the bottom (it is not an actual button, it's just a header for the options below). If done correctly, there should be a Pstrip.ini shortcut on your desktop.

8. Close PowerStrip completely from the tray and then open the Pstrip.ini shortcut on your desktop with any text editor. Notepad is fine.

9. Under "[Global Options]" add "EnforceColor=1" (without quotation marks) to the list, save the file, then close it. This basically prevents anything else from tampering with the display besides PowerStrip, and if it's not enabled Guild Wars will revert to uncalibrated color when played fullscreen.

10. Open PowerStrip back up, and you should be done! Start Guild Wars in fullscreen and look for a change. You may notice blinking colors occassionally however, usually whenever you enter a new area or the screen blinks black, it will look like your monitor uncalibrated for a second, then PowerStrip will kick in.