Workflow critique & a little bit of confusion
Workflow critique & a little bit of confusion
- Subject: Workflow critique & a little bit of confusion
- From: Wim Melis <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 03:45:31 +0200
Hi,
Well, things are starting to move along nicely. We had our Agfa IT8
scanner target custom measured, and the Epson 1290 is profiled for
proofing. Because it took so long to get the IT8, and we had to start
scanning before it arrived, we had to resort to using a profile that
locks into the scanner output space and apply it afterwards.
This is our current workflow for the scanning part:
1. - Scan images in 16-bit with factory scanner profile
2. - Save in AdobeRGB
3. - Open in Photoshop, assign custom scanner profile (ICC Scan)
4. - Convert to AdobeRGB, with BPC
For the Epson proofing part (image to be proofed is still in AdobeRGB)
5. - Convert with RelCol conversion and BPC on, to printer space.
(Printer profiles by the ancient PrintOpen 2.5 lite.)
And finally:
6. - Have our lithographer convert them to CMYK and perform the
sharpening. (We don't have a press profile yet, can't convert myself.)
Everything seems to work as expected. But there are two things so far I
don't understand.
a) When I tried Perceptual in the proofing step, it looked absolutely
awful: bright and oversaturated. This is a conversion from a wide gamut
AdobeRGB space to a smaller gamut printer space. So I expected to see a
slight loss of saturation with Perceptual. The opposite happens.
b) For reference, I had our lithographer scan one of the images
(reflection) we had already scanned ourselves. (Lithographer with Fuji
Lanovia, us with Scanmate F6). They looked very similar, but: the
histogram went much further down to deep black with the lithographers'
scan. If I try to adjust the level from our scan to match the black and
white points of the lithographers' scan, the image becomes to contrasty.
I wonder where this difference comes from. Could it be perhaps be caused
by more stray light in our scanner, thus softening the blacks?
In general, any thoughts on improving this humble workflow are welcome!
Wim
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