Profile Editing Thoughts . . .
Profile Editing Thoughts . . .
- Subject: Profile Editing Thoughts . . .
- From: Darrin Southern <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 17:16:26 +1000
My world of color is currently focused on supplying 'digital proof'
solutions to customers who wish to either limit, replace or substitute the
need to create film, to then build an 'analog proof' for financial or
workflow reasons. The output must 'visually' match the final printed item,
within 'expectable' variance.
I put a number of words in 'quotations' as these are the key factors.
This situation is where a number of people seem to be in, who day in - day
out, try to reach this goal, and think they are failing.
I have been though a number of different rips and profiling tools, which I
am currently working with a DTP41 (no uv filter) PrintOpen 4.0 PC (if anyone
has an update, could they send it to me) and the BESTColor XXL with the
Epson 7000, 7500, 9000, 9500 (soon 10,000) and the HP5000 models. All
viewing of output (digital and analog) is done in a D50 booth (and outdoors)
Any new user 'expects' to be able to build profiles 'without' editing to
reach the goal of 'reasonable' color accuracy.
What part of the process should be defined as inadequate (or broken), when
an icc profile is built of the target output (chemical proof, printing press
etc) - say in PrintOpen, and the color rip is configured correctly - say
BESTColor, then an other icc profile is built of the inkjet - the Epson 7000
Semi Gloss stock, and when viewing in the booth, there is a yellow cast
through the inkjet printout.
The supplied 'canned' profiles do not have this cast, although as Ulf
replied on the 15th June in 'Best Color, where did I go wrong?' from Jim
Richards, this is due to the fact that BEST edits 90% of their profiles.
I have been in Jim's shoes, where I thought I would try to do better than
the supplied 'canned' profiles, only to be very disappointed with my
attempts to build my own profiles. For the record, I use the same spectro
(sans uv filter) and profiling software as BEST does.
It's not that the BEST 'canned' profiles are not brilliant, with no cast in
the gray balance, but when you add your own custom reference profile, the
output from the inkjet is not within 'expectable' variance (not enough cast)
If we must edit profiles, in the above mentioned situation, do we edit
numerically, or visually ? Do we edit the printer or reference profile ?
Can we separate the source and target profiles in this combination ?
Isn't the output a combination of the two ?
The real question :
Does the editing of profiles undermine the goal of expectable Colorsync
workflows being in the hand of all ?
without the need of color experts . . .
Darrin.