Realistic Color and Tint settings?

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FIDO69

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GTP_Fido
Hi, I'm a new member (used to haunt the granturismo.com site back in GT3 days) and I haven't seen this topic (or found it in search).

How do you set your color and tint, contrast and brightness? I DO NOT mean how do you do it technically (duh, find the sliders in the Option menu). I mean, how do you decide on what settings to give it for GT4?

Personally, I've just set it to what "looks good" based on two things: color of the grass, and color of a red '90's Miata (Eunos roadster). Because those are the two things I know in real life.

Is there a better way to get the most realistic (in a video game...) color and tint settings? What about contrast? Or, perhaps the question is: how did Kaz intend it to look?

thanks!

FIDO
 
Well hey there Fido,

Yep, it's intersting that PD put this 'tuning' into the game itself. Personally, I just set the brightness and contrast (both on my TV & in-game) to whichever makes the daggone thing easiest to see. Because of Gran Turismo's trademark intense shadowing and lighting, I put it to whatever compensates for this. I hate a DARK game, see. That is one reason I'm in no hopping hurry to get Doom 3; the dark "atmospheres" of Riddick et al do not amuse me.

Well, welcome the Dah Planet! :cool:

-GNJ-
 
I usually use video tests such as THX's Video Optimizer to set up TVs in general ... It doesn't always look natural w/ video games, however, but that's probably because of how they programmed the game (Doom 3 = good example as its lighting is very overdone and unnatural) ....
 
^^
Crap, i just looked at the title again... lol
I did not address your question. :sly: :grumpy:

Uhmmm, well, color and tint ain't no biggie to me. I just leave 'em where they're at. Interesting topic though; I can't say I've ever seen that particular subject come up before.
 
GuyNamedJohn
^^
Crap, i just looked at the title again... lol
I did not address your question. :sly: :grumpy:

Uhmmm, well, color and tint ain't no biggie to me. I just leave 'em where they're at. Interesting topic though; I can't say I've ever seen that particular subject come up before.
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You should of edited your post :banghead:


I've founded no need to change any of these settings , takes away from GT time :scared:

If anyone gets some , could you please share?
 
When I got the game I turned the brightness up abit and the colour up to 3 because I felt the game colours were abit washed out.....but thats probably more realistic....i jist wanted more vibrance....especially on the GT cars.....love the 350Z option z paintwork! :) 👍
 
there is an excellent DVD called 'Digital Video essentials' that you can play through the Playstation to set all the controlls correctly. Pictures look soooooooooo much better after that. There is a cut down version of the same thing on any DVD that is THX certified.

I would guess that the default settings in GT4 would then be correct.
 
here's how to quickly calibrate a screen to whatever you're viewing at the time.

step 1 - get a static image that has birght and dark areas - and outdoor scene with shadows is good.

step 2 - take all the colour out so it is black and white. This makes it much easier to adjust brightness and contrast.

step 3 - adjust the contrast (some TVs call this 'picture') so dark things are dark, but not all blending in together.

step 4 - adjust the brightness so dark things just start to show, but not so they appear washed out. steps 3 & 4 may need to be done a few times together as they will have an effect on each other.

step 5 - when you have a nice black & white picture that is well balanced and allows you to see clearly everything in the scene, start adding colour back in. Ideally try to match a flesh tone and try not to let it become too pink or orange. You'll probably find that this is too pale for most people so just turn it up until you are happy with it.

remember when you pause GT you can make small adjustments to brightness and contrast, which you may find helps if you don't want regular TV images to be so bright.
 
DaveS1138
there is an excellent DVD called 'Digital Video essentials' that you can play through the Playstation to set all the controlls correctly. Pictures look soooooooooo much better after that. There is a cut down version of the same thing on any DVD that is THX certified.

I would guess that the default settings in GT4 would then be correct.
Click to expand...
That's what I use or, if I don't have it on me, just a THX disc ...

Where do you get the THX blue glasses ?
 
Brock5000
here's how to quickly calibrate a screen to whatever you're viewing at the time.

[snip]

step 5 - when you have a nice black & white picture that is well balanced and allows you to see clearly everything in the scene, start adding colour back in. Ideally try to match a flesh tone and try not to let it become too pink or orange. You'll probably find that this is too pale for most people so just turn it up until you are happy with it.

remember when you pause GT you can make small adjustments to brightness and contrast, which you may find helps if you don't want regular TV images to be so bright.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Brock. Good explanation of setting Brightness and Contrast. Do you have a particular track or race that you do this with in GT4? Some tracks are set at dusk, and while I find them too dark (at normal settings), they OUGHT to be dark. Others are set in daylight and seem too high contrast, but the OUGHT to be bright and balanced towards the highlights. Right?

I realize that color and tint in a VIDEOGAME (not a DVD; I fail to see how setting picture on my DVD player will help my PS2 game's picture) where there are no fleshtones (?) might be difficult. But are there things we can use as references? Coke ads have a particular shade of red, match the GT logos to the colors on the case, etc?


(hmm, using a DVD settings disk IN the PS2 might help some... does anyone know if there's any correlation between the PS2 DVD picture and the PS2 Game picture?)
 
i made mine look as close to reality as you can get on my Tv,
brightness: 5
contrast: 5
saturation: -1
colour balance: 2 or 1

looks great
 
i have to set all my settings a bit high because my TV's color is starting to fade... so noticable after playing in my friend's place...
 
the setting will give you different results with every different tv/monitor (even if they're the same brand/model)...
seems as though you're doing it the right way, when us sound engineers test out mics we test them with plain speech (no singing or yelling just plain talking) because that is what most recognizable to us, and if something in the mic's character was off a bit, we'd know right away. If you're using the grass and your miata as a reference because you know how they should look, all i would add is use the sky for blue, and whammo you got your RGB set up!
 
I used my Avia Home Theater disk in my PS2 last night. I don't know. Seems like the blues and greens in GT4 look nice, but the reds look over saturated to me. (and a little orange). Also, the brightness seems a bit low (on tracks in full daylight, the asphalt looks too black, and the shadows are too deep).

Ah well, I just adjusted the GT4 settings to make it look 'good'. At least DVD's played in my PS2 (why would I do that when I've got a nice prog scan DVD player with a remote?) will now look good. :)
 
FIDO69
Also, the brightness seems a bit low (on tracks in full daylight, the asphalt looks too black, and the shadows are too deep).

Ah well, I just adjusted the GT4 settings to make it look 'good'.
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Told ya. :D

slomo nailed it. You simply cannot go off of a bunch of numbers from other people's sets; you just gotta make it where looks right to you. Add to that the factor that in Gran Turismo if I may elicit a bit of Robert Frost: "the woods are lovely [but] dark and deep" :lol: - you really have to compensate for this on some tracks.
 
Okay, this still bothers me a bit. I want to get the "Right" colors. Just a bit of perfectionist in me.

The question is: what do I use as my reference colors? I'm going to say that the grass and the sky are too unreliable, since there's no telling what Kaz used as the reference (sky is different depending on where you look and at what time). So, I think the best reference would be the car colors themselves. What if I got the color samples from a dealership and tried to match them with the game colors?

How would I compensate for room lighting and game lighting? hmm... the GT4 dealership lighting is presumably flurescent??
 
FIDO69
Okay, this still bothers me a bit. I want to get the "Right" colors. Just a bit of perfectionist in me.

The question is: what do I use as my reference colors? I'm going to say that the grass and the sky are too unreliable, since there's no telling what Kaz used as the reference (sky is different depending on where you look and at what time). So, I think the best reference would be the car colors themselves. What if I got the color samples from a dealership and tried to match them with the game colors?

How would I compensate for room lighting and game lighting? hmm... the GT4 dealership lighting is presumably flurescent??
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well, that may be a bit difficult, you may need different settings for each car to get that color right. gt's color controls are just simply not that detailed,
and who is to say kaz go the colors exactly right? that is extremely difficult to do, but if they did, you're better off keeping the gt4 color settings alone, and trying to find a channel with the colorbars (like the kind that used to come up when stations close for the night.... doesn't happen much anymore because of the miracle blade and juice man juicer infomercials) and using those colors as your reference-that's what they're there for. people in the graphics field spend thousands and thousands of dollars getting their monitors to be color calibrated with other monitors (and printers etc...) even if they were the same brand/model, built one after the other. you need hardware, you need software, there's a whole industry based on this.

also, i thought car companies were pretty secretive about the exact formulas for their paints.... kaz's team would probably have had to eye it, no?.... it would explain why the jaguar green looks so much better in real life.
 
I'll have to try it and see.

I don't have a problem calibrating my TV, I get high def DirecTV, and they occasionally have test patterns. I tune my TV to the Avia DVD. I have a VCR tuning tape.... I want to tune my games too.

I hope Kaz did use the right colors from the manufacturer. It really isn't that hard for them to have gotten it right just by using a digital camera and photoshop.
 
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