Before I do that I should mention that I had reverted to build 636 without paying attention to the number, trusting that a popup invitation to do this made me believe this is the latest Build. Should I go back to the true latest? I ask because I now believe this is when that change of preview colors must have occurred.

Ha! While juxtaposing the best frame to snip I noticed for the first time that my entire monitor is darker with somewhat smaller sized graphics in comparison to the two surrounding monitors. I was having Windows calibration troubles recently with the monitors and there lies the squirrel. I keep my coloring theme on the darkest, therefore I never noticed this before. My age and keeping my room dark must have something to do with this as well though I had my cataracts removed several years ago. Thank you Roger anyway, your attention to settings was helpful.

That will do it! I use DisplayCal to help keep profiles applied but even that had one profile disappear on me earlier this year and I was puzzled by a change in one screen. Glad you resolved it.

Just one more question while I have you: The popup announcement informing me of the availability of Build 636 still shows up each time I open Vegas. Where do I get rid of it? By latest build, you do mean 636, don't you?

By latest build, you do mean 636, don't you?

643 is the latest.

@Paul-Fierlinger  B 636 Update 5 post has been "replaced" by B 643 Update 5 post. (Some bug fixes were added in 643.)

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/vegas-19-build-643-update-5--135607/

I would download update 5 from the website (the fixed b643), install it, and then the update nag will go away.

So how to explain why I got the announcement for 636 when i had already been working on 643? What made that happen?

That shouldn't be possible- 636 was pulled and replaced. You checked under help and confirmed you were on 643 when it appeared?

The confusion between 636 and 634 goes into the next round.......
Hopefully Vegas Pro 20 will come out soon to finally put an end to this.

Well, yes. I was opening 643 to continue my current work when that popup showed up and I just grabbed it without giving it much thought and even praised here the ease with which the "upgrading" worked. But I must add that reverting back to 643 was also a piece of cake.🎂 Vegas Pro 20 sounds useful.

I still don't get how you went from 643 to 643. If you see it again please screenshot it and then the build # under help.

Ha! While juxtaposing the best frame to snip I noticed for the first time that my entire monitor is darker with somewhat smaller sized graphics in comparison to the two surrounding monitors. I was having Windows calibration troubles recently with the monitors and there lies the squirrel. I keep my coloring theme on the darkest, therefore I never noticed this before. My age and keeping my room dark must have something to do with this as well though I had my cataracts removed several years ago. Thank you Roger anyway, your attention to settings was helpful.

I strongly recommend a Spyder Pro for calibrating and matching your monitors with custom ICC profiles.

If you are trained in color theory, you can get by for a while with Calibrize or Adobe Gamma, both software solutions.

As far as working in a darkened room, that is unsustainable because the eyes will drift freely without a daylight reference. Here are some tricks I learned in the film finishing biz, which has relied on calibrated video monitors since the 1970s. This was first posted on the old SCS forum in 2004 and bears repeating::

musicvid10 wrote on 10/6/2004, 8:13 PM

I did precise color correction (stills) for a living for almost fifteen years. The biggest "gotcha" is staring at the video image too long. The eyes begin to adjust to the correction and then you want to correct more. These are practical, time tested rules. Following them AND developing your native abilities over time will insure success:

1) Keep a daylight balance in your work area. Just ordinary flourescents, or worse, incandescent will not work. Pay the extra for true daylight tubes. The worst thing you can do is work in a darkened room with a monitor. That way the eyes have NO reference and drift like a ship without an anchor.

2) Set up your monitor profile exactly and recheck it every two months minimum. If you are unfamiliar, there are many tutorials and tools available to help you.

3) Glance at your image, don't stare. Make a snap judgment (.xx cyan, .xx green for instance) and stick to it. Know your colors. Look away from your monitor often. Apply HALF the correction that you determined. Put it away. Check it again in 4 hours.

4) After 1-2 hours work, take a break. Get some food (yes, blood sugar affects color vision). The eyes tend to want more and more red in the image as the day goes on. What looks great to you at 11 pm will always look dark and red (your words) the next day.

5) Good lighting and careful white balance at the shoot will save you tons of time later (especially if you don't have to rerender). Even if the raw footage looks a little off, it won't look that way to your client. And it won't look off to you when you look at it again in six months. It takes that long to develop objectivity toward your own work. Believe me on this.

6) If you start playing with curves, write down every change you make and render a test for each. Look at them tomorrow. Its easier to go the wrong direction or too much in the right direction than get it right the first time. Making individual gamma corrections involves a huge learning process. Shooting a grayscale at the beginning of each scene can be a big help here.

7) Color correction is like fresno peppers. A little goes a long way.

Here is a demonstration I posted that shows how quickly the eyes can become fooled by color fatigue. Your rods and cones are not a stable reference, but a constantly moving target:

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/color-fatigue-demo--118176/

Don't move your eyes from the gray square during the fifty second video.

Yes, I checked the Help number once I realized I went backward and the popup was still showing up each time I restarted Vegas. I checked my numbers under Help several times. The thing is, most bug fixes go right over my head because I don't even encounter the bugs so many of you do because of the way I use Vegas but trust me, I spend at this stage of my work more hours with Vegas than TVPaint. Most of you would notice the backward build number just by the return of certain bugs so for that reason I could have remained with 643 and never know about it if I wouldn't follow these threads.

By the way, when I was checking my monitors, all four of them to fix the calibration issue, on two of them (the two of which are Asus and those were not calibrated correctly) I by mistake turned on the Gaming setting under Menu, which really took me by surprise how well my work appeared before I realized that for me, that has to actually be the best setting because all I work with is hand drawn animation, line drawn with dippy pen thinness so the game setting is of course a natural -- this to just document what kind of issues I run into.

By the way, wouldn't those of you with an intimate approach to the Vegas workings be able to see I have downloaded both those builds twice. I upgrade and register every new one as soon as they are released, usually the first day. I've been with Vegas since #6 and have gone through each build == now I can say 'and a couple of those twice" 🙃

@Musicvid

My wife, who is my only collaborator has a fine arts painting education and work experience and is considered by most of our peers the finest background painter in the business. After observing how she matches colors for over thirty years I have come to the conclusion she has perfect color pitch the way only some musicians have perfect tone pitch. While most animators will choose their colors from a color wheel by trial and error, she chooses hers only with the slider gadget and this she can do in a matter of two or three seconds because she knows exactly which color she is after.

So in our case she is the best calibrator for our needs and always hated my monitors because all our work passes back and forth on our monitors through both of our screens. Once she saw my discovery of switching to the Game menu she was ecstatic that she can finally see her proper colors on my monitors too. She once bought the Spyder and couldn't get along with it for reasons I can't remember but she is our team's best calibrator.

If you look at our Vimeo films you will understand what I am talking about but Vimeo also has a tendency to over-saturate. Just understand that each one of those backgrounds are watercolor paints without the water and to watch her put on the layers of hues as she paints is a feast for the eyes, she knows that well what she wants from the first stroke and color selection which has nothing in common for us with what ends up on her paintings.

When I say I work in a dark room it is actually just a corner of our living room with many windows covering three of the walls but Sandra is also a horticulturist and our entire house is surrounded with tall shrubs and trees letting in very little sunshine. I have the window curtains in my corner always drawn so the darkness is a sort of lush darkness of the woods - but dark enough to have a need for a small electric light for me to find things on the top of my desk. But I get up often to let two dogs in and out of the house as is their wont which is all the time. I also do most of my drawing work at night time and editing during daylight hours because I need to always hear the film's soundtracks. I sleep about 4 hours a day with a couple of power naps throughout. I've been working like this since 1958 -- same type of lighting and still don't need glasses throughout most of the hours (and read a lot from a Kindle). We are all animals of varying species.

Web browsers aren't color managed for video so if the monitor gamut is greater than sRGB it will look overly saturated. Hopefully that will change at some point as Adobe RGB, P3 and REC 2020 monitors become more common.

I was never impressed with Datacolor's hardware or software and switched to I1 years ago.

Just to clarify, the reflective color primaries used in art and print graphics coexist in a different quadrant of the visual universe than transmission color science. My brother, a veteran commercial art director in D.C. is the visual artist in our family; I could no more do what he does than he could color correct a video or still transmission image. I don't tell him how to paint, and he doesn't tell me how to correct his cellphone video.

And he tells me regularly that a watercolor or acrylic he worked on half the day will look too dark and too pink the next morning and he will be compelled to change the background tint.

Regardless, I too have a new perspective on this, having also had my blue-deficient color vision restored after my own cataract surgery. Here is an article I found that I know you and your talented spouse will enjoy reading together.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220401-the-women-who-redefined-colour?ocid=ww.social.link.facebook

If you look at our Vimeo films...

You didn't say where one could find these...

Thanks, M vid; looks like an interesting article. There are more views on coloring than there are colors in the universe. Nevertheless, always an interesting and never ending topic.