Re: ColorSync Workflow unity profiles (again)
Re: ColorSync Workflow unity profiles (again)
- Subject: Re: ColorSync Workflow unity profiles (again)
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 09:49:26 +0100
The Default profiles that ship with ColorSync are meant to be
default INPUT, not OUTPUT, profiles.
Yes, in any CIE conversion there has to be a SOURCE definition that
references the recipes / channel values in the object to the
co-ordinates of a connection space, whether Lab D50 / XYZ for the
host-based ICC framework or XYZ for the RIP-based PostScript
framework.
Whether it's the ICC source unity profiles in ColorSync or the UseCIE
procedure source CSAs in a DesignJet RIP, either avoid blasting the
raw recipes to the device by assigning a source and converting the
recipes via a connection space.
But the difference is that in a DesignJet RIP, the source is commonly
used and commonly accepted, say for RGB either Adobe RGB (1998) or
ColorMatch RGB or Apple RGB or sRGB. This is not the case with the
unity profiles ColorSync builds.
ColorSync 2.5 and up are not simply system extensions either, but
scriptable faceless applications, so conceptually there is no
difference between ColorSync, Photoshop or Linocolor. All require
source and destination profiles in their appropriate application UI
popups, but only ColorSync autobuilds and autoinstalls undesirable
source color space specifications.
For now, we recommend that users choose appropriate profiles to use
when converting or tagging images
for professional CMYK output (e.g., Steve Upton's free TR001 profiles).
Please don't miss the point here: With the enormous growth in short
run color, your concept of professional CMYK is as obsolete as the
Quark UI term 'Separations' and 'Composite' printer.
Your market segment is not 'professional' offset print runs of
100,000 glossy catalogues because here the investments are so high
that manual, conventional production methods may still be in use.
Your market segment is 'non-professional CMYK', that is, the ten
inkjet posters, the thousand QuickMaster DI four page brochures, the
work done by hundreds of thousands of designers on Macs every day of
the week.
These people do not have the reproduction know-how. They look to you
for UI intelligence so they don't have to know, at least not for
decent results if not top of the line results.
Adobe, Heidelberg, Hewlett-Packard ... others are giving these users
safer UI implementations than Apple.
Time to make a change here, like so:
Implement ISO 12647-2 say paper type 2 semi-glossy for the Apple CMYK
unity profile. Implement Adobe RGB (1998) for the Apple RGB unity
profile. Call the Lab profile 'Lab D50' and not 'Generic Lab' which
in any case is non-sense as the ICC specification recognizes one and
only one Lab flavour, so there is nothing for 'generic' to be
relative to.
And do some intelligent, organized promo for standards-based,
colorimetrically defined printing conditions, too.
OK, this ends today's web whack for better UI and better workflow
(but I'll be back on this one -:)).