Re: Profile Editing Thoughts
Re: Profile Editing Thoughts
- Subject: Re: Profile Editing Thoughts
- From: Darrian Young <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 20:15:55 +0200
Eric Bullock wrote:
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I am also curious to see people's thoughts on this. The whole idea of using
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a $5000 spectrophotometer and a $5000 color management package is so you
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get more accurate color more quickly...or so I thought. Now I realize that
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color management is a moving target, and that no one should expect to get
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push-button color right off the bat, but the whole concept of editing the
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resulting profiles seems to be contrary to taking exacting measurements in
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the first place!
There is definitely a large difference between different profiling packages,
but with a $10,000 system, something must be wrong if you do not see notable
improvements right off the bat. Many times (and I would even say most) the
problems are not with the color management system but rather due to external
factors. By controlling the external factors, the rest starts to fall into
place. Yes, it is possible to fine-tune a profile to get even better
results, but that does not mean that a good (and I would like to stress
good) profiling system does not give exceptional results from the start.
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...My opinion of color management at the
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moment is that it isn't there yet for many of us. Those of us that work in
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a production enviornment don't have time to devote to mucking about with
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it.
I hear this argument periodically and would like to start by mentioning that
I think it is possible that the systems you have seen might not have been
configured optimally. We install and implement color management almost
exclusively in production environments, and the results can be seen the
first day. Aside from color correspondence, prints using images separated
with your customized output profile will have better modulation and will
have more depth and detail compared to images separated with a generic
table. Using this same profile in Photoshop or Linocolor along with the
monitor being correctly calibrated and profiled will give a good softproof
right off the bat (if you have the programs configured correctly which isn't
always so easy - Chris Murphy, Andrew Rodney and Bruce Fraser have great
papers to help out with that). If you decide to fine-tune even further, you
can alter just the CMYK to Lab table of the profile to adjust your softproof
without affecting the separation (as happened with tables) in Photoshop.
Regarding scanner and camera profiles, at least in my experience, they
require a bit more work (I mentioned this in another post) but not more
than, and usually less than the normal scanner calibration and adjusting,
and with better results. One thing I am in agreement with, and I will
probably get blasted as this is after all a Colorsync list, is that ICC is
not there yet for contract proofing. Even still, you can edit the profiles
manually or use other means in conjunction with your color managed workflow.
One of the issues I have not understood with color management is why many
people demand 100% perfection in order for it to be valid for them. No, it
is not perfect, but if you printed 75 to 80 percent of the colors correctly
without ICC color management, and with it you can print 80 to 90 percent
correctly, isn't this worthwhile? - aside from quality gains and relative
ease of setting up the system compared to other methods.
In short, at times it is difficult to show customers who share your thoughts
why they need to stop for a moment and take a look at what a CMS can do, as
you well know, production environments are usually a bit crazy, but I have
not had a case where, almost immediately, the gains were not evident or
worthwhile for the client.
Regards.
--
Darrian Young
Microgestio Valencia