Re: ColorSync -- The Missing Manual?
Re: ColorSync -- The Missing Manual?
- Subject: Re: ColorSync -- The Missing Manual?
- From: Dave Camp <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 07:48:13 -0800
on 2/28/02 10:32 PM, Steve Upton at email@hidden wrote:
>
<http://www.chromix.com/colorsmarts/smartnotes/smartNote.cxsa?snid=1017>
>
>
I certainly welcome feedback and discussion on these notes if there are
>
additional points I missed, inaccuracies or work-arounds.
Very nice!
You are correct in that there is no way to remove ColorSync from the print
path. Every CGContext has some sort of profile associated with it (if not
assigned by the application, I presume it's the document default from the
prefs panel), and every thing that is printed goes through an output
profile.
The one exception to this is that if the document profile matches the output
profile, no transformation is involved.
I think the only way to profile an inkjet printer in this case (i.e. Print a
raw target) is to use a printer vendor provided utility that can dump a file
(TIFF or whatever) directly to their printer.
Other interesting points while I'm on my ColorSync high horse:
Under OS X, Print Modules are not constrained to just taking RGB for image
data. They can specify that they can take CMY, CMYK, RGB, K at a minimum.
Theoretically, this means an inkjet vendor could actually ship a driver that
printed CMYK with no RGB conversions involved at all (because the Quartz
graphics system works in multiple color spaces as well). In a perfect world,
your CMYK file in Photoshop would arrive at the printer module still in
CMYK, with only a single transformation from the document's CMYK space to
the printer's CMYK space.
I say theoretically, because I'm convinced the sun will explode before that
happens. Most inkjet vendors come from the Windows world where sRGB is just
fine thank you. Convincing them that using a completely ICC based color
system would give them a superior product is near impossible. There is no
way ICC profiles could be better than the RGB-CMYK color tables they've
invented could be any better. And there is no way an ICC profile could
actually make inkjet output match the user's monitor (or anything else).
Heresy! Besides, marketing says they should be using different color tables
in different regions of the world anyway.
Oh, it's all so frustrating. I need a bigger ColorSync stick to beat them
with...
Dave
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