Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
- Subject: Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
- From: Marc Levine <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 11:49:43 -0500
From: email@hidden
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 10:20:29 EST
Subject: Re: Help Choosing a Color Management System
To: email@hidden, email@hidden
In a message dated 3/8/02 6:17:59 PM, email@hidden writes:
>
I am a physicist trying to help my wife, an artist, pick out an
>
"acceptable" color management system. My wife uses a 21" Apple Studio
>
Monitor with Colorsync, Photoshop 7 (actually V5.5 today), Painter 7, an
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Epson 7000 with Generations 4 and 5 ink, printing on matte smooth
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acid-free bright white 24" wide paper (she could use some advice on
>
papers also). She would only use a few papers, possibly even one.
>
>
What I have been able to learn is that Colorvision has a bundle for $499
>
that includes a 7 filter monitor calibration system and a printer
>
calibration, but does not have any privisions for calibrating the
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scanner which seems to me to be a fundamental flaw. On the other hand,
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for $499, Monaco has a 3 filter monitor calibration system and a
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calibrated target for calibrating the scanner which would seem, in
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principle, to be all that is necessary to establish a closed loop
>
calibration. Which of these systems would be preferable, and would it
>
be necessary to go to a hand held scanner based system for about $2500
>
to get a reliable system? Or asked another way, would a few tweaks on
>
either the Colorvision or the Monaco system be good enough?
You could certainly start with one or the other, with the intention of
upgrading later if your needs prove sufficiently demanding. The Gen 4 inks
are fairly reasonable to profile, and a scanner-based printer profile for
them would be likely to be fairly effective (I'd recommend working with them
at this point in time). The Gen 5 inks are still an open question, the
additives that make them capable of sticking to slick surfaces may effect
their color constancy under different lighting, and in the process the
ability to profile them easily.
The Monaco intro level package does offer a more complete solution on paper.
In reality the question is more complex. Scanner profiles are not very
useful
for scanning natural media artwork, since they are based on the response of
the scanner to photographic film or photo prints. Simply using a monitor
profile in your scanning preview, and bringing highbit files into Photoshop
for correction on your calibrated monitor may be most practical, which
effects the value balance of the two bundles.
On the monitor front the ColorVision bundle definately holds the edge, with
the advanced meter, and advanced profiling features. These advanced features
will not be of much use on your particular monitor, since it lacks
individual
gun controls. This line of monitors has a distrubing tendancy to die at an
early age, however; and if your next monitor is an LCD then the ColorVision
meter offers a significant advantage there, as it can calibrate LCDs.
On the printer profiling front, scanner based printer profiles are a
compromise under either package. Monaco's EZ Color probably gets you a bit
closer on the first try than the current ColorVision product, but both
require tweaking, and in the end the ColorVision ProfilerPLUS result is
likely to be as accurate or a bit more accurate... hard to say since so much
depends on the scanner. ColorVision is definately way ahead on CMYK features
for PostScript printers and RIPs, so if you are considering a RIP for your
7000, the added black generation, ink limit and other features in
ProfilerPLUs are a real bonus.
In terms of updates, ColorVision offers a lower cost step to
spectrophotometer based profiling, and again offers more CMYK features at
this level; while Monaco's midprice offering doesn't compete as well on
paper. However Monaco offers more features at the top end, but for thousands
more than the mid-priced solutions.
C. David Tobie
Design Cooperative
email@hidden
In deciding on an ICC profiling application, I would consider these things:
1) Ease of use. You want to be sure that the package you purchase provides
the maximum quality with the minimum amount of effort. You really shouldn't
need to use the software that often unless you are always buying different
media or have an affection for sledge-hammering your equipment every time
you get an error message. The point is, the learning curve needs to be as
short as possible.
2) Quality of technology. With any profiling package, probably the most
important thing is the quality. Choose a package that makes the best
profiles out of the box - without spending a lot of time on tweaking. The
whole concept of color management is to reduce the time you spend noodling
with color and the better your profile is to start, the better off you will
be.
3) Tool set. The foundation of ICC color management is that each device gets
a profile (pretty simple). A good package should make profiles for all the
devices in your workflow. Some will argue for or against scanner profiles -
citing that a calibrated monitor is all you really need. Actually, I would
consider a device profile as important as the device itself. Again, this
process is about saving time, not making work for yourself editing color.
Profile editing tools are also important, but keep this in mind: color
editing tools for a profile are not worlds apart from color editing tools in
your applications. The more you use them, the better you will be able to
manipulate them, the more you will be able to push your results. The key
idea is to not to have to use them.
In his response, CDTobie reluctantly says:
-Monaco's EZ Color probably gets you a bit
closer on the first try than the current ColorVision product
-The Monaco intro level package does offer a more complete solution on paper
These are the real issues. How much time you want to spend editing your
profiles is your decision. I think that both tool sets supply you with a
bevy of adjustments and could be manipulated to improve profile performance.
I definitely get the sense that Tobie is quite familiar with the
ProfilerPLUS tool set and can undoubtedly make an improved profile with them
in relatively short time. However, my suggestion to you would be to pick the
package that gives you better "out-of-the-box" color and provides a more
complete solution for all of your components and spend less or no time
editing. In this case, I think that MonacoEZcolor is likely to be the better
choice. Then, instead of spending extra time editing profiles, you could do
something fun, like bowling. (if you like that sort of thing)
Regards,
Marc
--
Marc Levine
Monaco Systems
Technical Manager
Sales Division
www.monacosys.com
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