RE: Assigning and converting vs. Assigning only
RE: Assigning and converting vs. Assigning only
- Subject: RE: Assigning and converting vs. Assigning only
- From: Greg Nuckolls <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 17:02:34 -0500
<<cut snip hack>> I have a Scitex EverSmart
>
scanner and after a lot of testing I find I get better results scanning
(in
>
RGB) without ICC enabled. ICC scanning gives quite muddy shadows or 3/4
>
tones, while "default_POS" setup gives a better overall image and I spend
>
less time tweaking the software settings.
>
Anyway, when I scan without ICC mode the image opens up in Photoshop 6 with
>
the question of how to handle the image. I have a Optical/Spyder calibrated
>
Sony monitor (gamma 2.2 and 6500K) and if I assign that profile and then
>
convert to my working space (AdobeRGB) the image is 100% what I see in the
>
EverSmartScan app. If I assign the AdobeRGB directly the image is quite
>
close to what I see within EverSmartScan - but more saturated.
>
>
My question is: What method is better regarding image quality?
>
>
Assigning my monitor space and then converting to AdobeRGB is far more
>
convenient since the colors match completely. But is that conversion
>
damaging my file a lot? Would it be better to just assign AdobeRGB and then
>
tweak the saturation?
>
>
(If there is anyone out there that has made a custom profile for an
>
EverSmart - what software did you use, and was there a big improvement over
>
the default scanner profile?)
My experience with our EverSmart Pro is that the "Default" scan options tend
to work great... provided you calibrate on a regular basis, as recommended.
Unfortunately those profiles are EverSmart Profiles, not ICC... (I think the
new software release (Version 3.0) has changed this, but we haven't
installed it yet). This would explain the saturation you're seeing when you
open the untagged scans with Adobe RGB in Photoshop, since AdobeRGB is a
fairly wide space, and your scanned untagged colors would be distributed out
in that space..
Our workflow here is to scan in RGB, then save the image to TIFF with the
ColorSync option checked. The ColorSync option automatically embeds a
pre-assigned ICC profile to the scan. After embedding the input profile, we
convert to Adobe RGB before burning to CD for our customers. The custom
profiles we use are updated monthly, using a fresh calibration and profiles
that are generated using Kodak ColorFlow Profile Editor. We've snagged
several jobs from our competitors due to the better overall color we get in
comparison to their scans. A profiled EverSmart combined with a profiled
LightJet RGB -> RGB workflow is a pretty lethal combination!
Greg Nuckolls
Color Analyst
A&E Products Co., LP
"Reprographics With A CAN-DO Attitude!"
www.aeproducts.com