The ABC of device links and modular profiles
The ABC of device links and modular profiles
- Subject: The ABC of device links and modular profiles
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 07:09:42 +0200
Claudio Corvino wrote:
Here in Italy many prepress guys consider CM as something potentially
dangerous to keep away from.
The fact that inkjets are wet printing systems, and that creative
professionals selling digital dots are in the nature of the case
forced to learn about black generation to produce the visually most
pleasing prints from their digital dots, means that creatives are
going to take over separation because they are going to learn faster
than fast.
When the photographer's product was still made with film, light and
chemicals, she handed it to the prepress expert as an analog viewable
graphic. The prepress expert used a high volume scanner with
proprietary, built in RGB to CMYK tables. The photographer wasn't
concerned with RGB and could look to the prepress expert to secure
the quality of the image on the printed page.
When the photographer's product evolved into RGB data composited and
color retouched on the desktop, then from the prepress expert's point
of view the photographer became responsible for the RGB data that
serves as input to all CMYK conversions, and from the photographer's
point of view the proprietary, prelinked RGB to CMYK tables in the
scanner's firmware didn't secure the quality of the image on the
printed page as the tables couldn't be loaded into desktop publishing
software.
The ICC framework resolves this conflict by splitting the proprietary
and prelinked RGB to CMYK tables in two. An input RGB to connection
space profile and an output connection space to CMYK space profile.
Usually an output monitor RGB profile is added to the chain for
softproofing, and an output color printer CMYK profile for proof
printing, too.
This way the photographer becomes repsonsible for color managing the
studio scanner, monitor and color printer, and the prepress expert
for color managing the print production process. Whether RGB is
converted into CMYK in the studio or in the print shop doesn't matter
any more, the results are the same.
However, the photographer is harder pressed commercially because in
the eyes of her customers her equipment is cheaper than the prepress
experts. This by definition means she is considered less
knowledgeable, and must work harder to experiment and learn in order
to extend her creative control. The longterm effect of this imbalance
is going to be that learning from her inkjet and her print profiling
software, she will soon be teaching the prepress expert the basics of
quality separation, chiefly because as a photographer she is much
more visually critical and much more bent on iterative
experimentation than the prepress expert who once served her.
The modular ICC framework has enabled this change in the division of
labour, but it can't change industry mindsets overnight, and it can't
make software developers dream up intelligent and conceptually
consistent implementations. But I wouldn't say that a little
punishment directed to that end is altogether a waste of time -:).