ProfilerPRO (was: Comments on Monaco EZColor 2?)
ProfilerPRO (was: Comments on Monaco EZColor 2?)
- Subject: ProfilerPRO (was: Comments on Monaco EZColor 2?)
- From: Rudy Vonk <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 19:30:25 +0200
C. David Tobie wrote:
(and thanks for your and others' input on the Apple Cinema Display, BTW)
>
The low cost choice for
>
use with a SpectroCam is the ProfilerPRO plugin that you don't seem
>
interested in...
Ernst and I have been having a private exchange on this subject for the
past couple of days. In the end, based on what he tells me and is
confirmed by the ColorVision documentation, I have to agree with Ernst's
conclusion which probably prompted his remark: This software may be
great for profiling RGB devices, but it is positively dangerous, and
definitely useless, for profiling CMYK printers. The alleged control
over black generation, etc., is not only humbug, but actually covers up
the monumental flaw in the design of this program when used for CMYK
printer profiles. Let me try to state this in simple terms:
The program doesn't have a CMYK target. This would obviously be the most
trivial of features to develop, so the reason isn't ignorance or cost
saving, but probably quite different as we shall come to see.
Instead, it uses a fixed (or three different sizes, in fact) RGB target
only. To print a CMYK target, it tells you to load a particular
Photoshop Color Setting, or to modify this, or to roll your own,
whatever, which will transform ProfilerPRO's RGB target into a CMYK file.
All wrong. No way are you going to get from an RGB file through *any*
Photoshop ink setup a full suite of CMYK values to probe the full gamut
of the printer. What is worse, the so-called "full control over black
generation" has nothing to do with the profile you will eventually
build: it merely determines, in a rather arbitrary way, which
particular, severely limited subset of CMYK values your target will contain.
Why do this instead of printing a fixed CMYK Photoshop file as the
target? I can only surmise that it was much easier to create the
*sensation* that you have control over black generation by tweaking the
Photoshop settings (wrong, because you are merely altering the target
CMYK values), than to provide actual black generation control in the
profile-building process.
I repeat, it may be great for RGB profiles, and I have nothing but the
highest praise for ColorVision's Optical and PreCal monitor profiling
software, but ProfilerPRO for CMYK printers is a no-no.
--
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Rudy Vonk
Oviedo, Spain
<email@hidden>
+34 607 354100
You can't always want what you get.
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