Re: Macbeth gray vs. Kodak gray?
Re: Macbeth gray vs. Kodak gray?
- Subject: Re: Macbeth gray vs. Kodak gray?
- From: Bill Fernandez <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 19:02:45 -0700
Sandy--
I'm just an amateur photographer whose been wrestling with color
management issues so I might not have the answers that you need but
I'd like to take a stab at it.
It sounds to me like you'd like to run an ICC-based color managed
worfkow in your studio but you're dealing with a variety of vendors
that range from ICC savvy to completely closed loop.
What I'd suggest is this:
(1) In your own studio, profile your input devices (scanners, digital
cameras) and your monitor(s) and your printer and use an ICC
color-managed workflow. When done properly then all your images
should look the same on the screen as they do on your prints (subject
to variations in gamut, viewing conditions, profile accuracy, etc.).
As a test you can scan (or take a picture of) the Kodak portrait
target and the MacBeth color chart, view them on your monitor and
print them on your printer and they should match up pretty well.
(2) When you send out images for printing on the Frontier, do a
profile-to-profile conversion from that native profile of the image
to the sRGB profile. Since the Frontier (reputedly) assumes that
every image it receives uses the sRGB colorspace, then you should
convert your images to this space before printing them on the
Frontier.
(3) When sending images to the vendor that says "our profiles change
all the time", then if this means that they have properly ICC
profiled equipment and are updating the profiles to adjust for drift,
then: (a) If they're able to take any profile-tagged file and print
it correctly (as Photoshop can) then just send them images tagged
with the image's native profile, or (b) get their latest profile and
do a profile-to-profile conversion to convert your images to the
printer's profile (similar to the Frontier scenario above).
(4) When sending to a vendor that doesn't use ICC-profiled printers,
get your own custom profile made for their printer (e.g. have them
print the profilecity.com targets for you then send them to
profilecity.com to get a profile made). Then before sending them an
image do a profile-to-profile conversion to their printer's profile
and send it to them untagged. Then as long as their process
maintains it's present calibration you should get predictable results.
(5) I've referred to the "native" profile for an image; here's what I
mean. For my film scanner I've created custom profiles for each film
type. When scanning film of a particular type I simply "attach" the
appropriate profile. This way I'm not modifying the image data from
the scanner, just telling Photoshop how to interpret it correctly.
Thus all my image master files are stored with the "raw" data from
the scanner and "tagged" with the corresponding profiles.
(6) If someone says they're converting to sRGB for everything then it
means they're not working at a fine-arts level of quality. Working
spaces to consider for your own studio work are Ektaspace, DonRGB,
AdobeRGB and Kodak's ProRGB. These are the ones whose pros and cons
are debated when maintaining the full gamut of image colors is an
issue.
Hope this helps and hope its correct,
--Bill
At 6:46 PM -0600 18-2-02, Brian-Sys Admin wrote:
...I have had so many recent
changes I have decided to throw out all my profiles and start completely
over. My first step was to have a roundtable discussion with my labs
manager, their color specialists and a respected Kodak color specialist.
<snip>
AAAAAUUUGHH? Am I nuts? This just isn't the way this is suppose to
work is it?
Also, as long as I am starting from scratch, can anyone tell me what
color space I should work in. I have been using colormatch and my
primary lab has begun to use colormatch. However, they have a proshots
set up and have just been told that proshots does not recognize
colormatch. Proshots has told them that srgb is becoming the industry
standard. The lab wants to use the same colorspace throughout and think
they are about to change everything to srgb. This seems a little odd to
me. Should I use srgb?
--
======================================================================
Bill Fernandez * User Interface Architect * Bill Fernandez Design
(505) 346-3080 * email@hidden *
http://billfernandez.com
======================================================================
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