Re: Panther, sRGB, web browsers
Re: Panther, sRGB, web browsers
- Subject: Re: Panther, sRGB, web browsers
- From: Chris Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 21:26:58 -0700
On Dec 14, 2003, at 8:57 PM, Uli Zappe wrote:
Is this really true? I mean, at least choosing a different *display*
profile obviously influences all apps; all windows/window contents of
all apps look different with a different setting. I would expect the
same to be true with printer settings.
OK clarification is due on my part. I'm referring to the the ColorSync
default settings for RGB, CMYK and Gray (found in System
Preferences>ColorSync in 10.0-10.2, and in ColorSync
Utility>Preferences in 10.3.).
The display profile is ignored by most applications, because most
applications assume monitor RGB so images they display are unmodified
by ColorSync. Applications like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator,
Acrobat, Reader ask ColorSync for the currently set display profile,
and then they do display compensation accordingly.
Print settings is a can of worms because there's currently no mechanism
for color managed applications to inform the OS to NOT use ColorSync at
print time when the application is going to do color management at
print time. So it's possible to get double color management, or no
color management extremes. Relying on driver/OS level color management
means relying on the assumptions the application, driver and OS make
together about what source profile to use. With most printer drivers,
by default you do not get ColorSync or application level color
management, but rather that printer vendor's proprietary color
management.
If system wide settings wouldn't be honored, how could I tell my word
processor to print this purple headline correctly? (Word processors
usually don't have ColorSync prefs...)
Is this the reason for my current problem that changing the Color
LaserJet 5500's ColorSync profile in ColorSync Utility doesn't seem to
change printings from Preview, TextEdit and the like at all?
Maybe. I'm not that familiar with the LaserJet 5500's driver options or
what RIP it uses. It is a PostScript printer, correct?
ColorSync on OS X, when printing from apps that don't generate their
own PostScript, relies on the RIP doing PostScript color management. It
sends a source profile as a Color Space Array, but then expects the
printer's built-in RIP to supply the Color Rendering Dictionary. I'm
not sure how this has changed in Panther, but the UI as you are
describing it implies that setting a custom device profile should cause
Panther to include that as the CRD. That you continue to get the same
results regardless of this settings tells me that there is a good
chance Panther is either not generating a CRD (not sending a
destination profile to the RIP), or that it is but the RIP is ignoring
it. That's the problem with depending on PostScript color management.
Each RIP does things differently, and I see PostScript color management
as a totally unreliable way of doing color management. But that's
another story...
I was absolutely sure that changing this profile *must* influence the
printing of all apps. I also thought apps wouldn't need to implement
anything anyway, only the vendor of the printer driver (HP in my case)
would, since all apps use this driver.
Of course. The user interface implies it. I think it a huge mistake to
dump the selection of destination profiles into a relatively obscure
application instead of right in the printer driver. But maybe the
presence of a ColorSync option in every print dialog, even if the print
driver vendor didn't stick on in there, is an indicator of this finally
getting figured out.
I can hardly believe that's not the way it works. Why have this
setting in ColorSync utility at all? (Then again, no major Mac OS X
word processor uses Mac OS X's spelling dictionaries... :-(( )
Yeah, it's the sort of thing that makes me ask myself "hat mir jemand
ins Gehirn geschissen and vergessen umzur|hren? Verdammt Color
Management! Es macht mich ganz verr|ckt!" on a fairly regular basis.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (TM)
www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor
---------------------------------------------------------
Co-author "Real World Color Management"
Published by PeachPit Press (ISBN 0-201-77340-6)
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