Following standards (choosing standards-based CMYK and RGB)
Following standards (choosing standards-based CMYK and RGB)
- Subject: Following standards (choosing standards-based CMYK and RGB)
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2001 18:27:46 +0100
John Zimmerer <email@hidden> wrote:
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).
ColorSync is a default install on Mac OS systems and not an optional
install for those who wish to use a professional extension.
I have a prereading group and in that prereading group I must have
consensus. The prereading group both contains Steve Upton and Dr.
Friedrich Dolezalek of FOGRA (who is fine with being Fred Dolezalek).
Now this prereading group is not talking to the US only, nor to only
Mac users. And all Mac users don't live in the US, either. I know the
ColorSync product manager holds pizza and coke sessions in walking
distance of Cupertino, but the rest of us live in Europe, Asia,
Australia ... whereever.
TR001 is a US-only standard, and while the color space is registered
with the ICC as far as I know, the data itself is not free of charge
on the web.
ISO 12647-2 as an an international standard which the US has ALSO
agreed to, and for which the data sets as I have posted I don't know
how many times are available free of charge for everybody off the
FOGRA web site at www.fogra.org as indeed they are off the ICC site.
Also, as FOGRA points out then within an RGB / Lab workflow where the
data itself stays in high gamut three channel spaces, targetting CMYK
for a small color space like TR001 makes less sense than targetting
CMYK for a larger color space like ISO 12647 paper type 1 (glossy
offset) or paper type 2 (semi-glossy offset).
While I have written Steve Upton's web site into every single
relevant page of my project, and while I have to agree with FOGRA
that TR001 is not optimum, I don't have a web site where users can
download ISO 12647 profiles.
As we all know, Heidelberg product management declined to post ISO
profiles. And GretagMacbeth product management seems to me to be
headed in the same direction at the speed of a retreating bunny
rabbit. So who is going to help the poor user? Because in an ICC
workflow the user MUST have an Output / Simulations profile in order
to accomplish the simple task of simulating an offset space.
FOGRA itself cannot post these profiles, as it once used to. For each
data set there are many possible black replacement settings and many
possible gamut mapping options, which increase exponentially with
each new release of ProfileMaker and Printopen. Fred Dolezalek could
spend all the hours of all his working days until retirement
supporting Heidelberg and GretagMacbeth customers. What an awful fate
for a very nice person.
Also, I have to say that Fred Dolezalek and Karl Koch of ColorBlind
are quite right about the only possible default RGB color space,
given the lay of the land. The only solution is an RGB space that
supports the largest of the ISO 12647 spaces AND is D50.
As Dr. Sehran Tatari has pointed out (and he's just Sehran Tatari
BTW), then both Adobe RGB (1998) and eciRGB10 are well-behaved 8 bit
spaces. And in terms of film gamut, the films out there don't on the
input side support pure 100% offset yellow on the output side. But
equally that with the move to hi-fi color, clipping the Lab finescan
to an RGB space is in any case undesirable, compared to a 16 bit Lab
workflow.
Point taken, but since ColorSync must have a default space for RGB,
then I move that this be eciRGB10. Not because it's European, but
because Karl and Fred have a point. And because what John Zimmerer
has now is a 9300 Kelvin Apple Trinitron space which looks
suspiciously like the original default RGB space in ColorSync 1 just
as the 'Generic CMYK Profile' looks ditto.
The problem in color management is the product management which is
petrified with fear of what other companies in the market think. Who
cares what other companies in this market think, just stick to the
facts and care what the USER thinks. Fewer product managers in the
kitchen, please, and more color architects.
Sorry, I really do need to blow off steam ... -:).