Colorsync Architecture
Colorsync Architecture
- Subject: Colorsync Architecture
- From: Nick Wheeler <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 10:03:10 -0500
John Z wrote:
Seems to me that this issue goes away if we remove the ColorSync
preferences altogether. Only one vendor (to my knowledge) currently
looks to the preferences. That way you'd know for sure what profile
gets used for untagged images (the corresponding generic profile). For
any app calling the ColorSync preferences (e.g., Photoshop), we could
always return the generic profiles.
Chris Murphey wrote:
To allow for untagged images to remain untagged, and have a user
selectable assumed profile allows *by design* inconsistent color
appearance and at the end user's whim. Can you imagine the additional
technical support problems this can cause? Hide it from the user so
when the find it and change it, then can't find it again to change it
back, but have no idea why everything is coming out crazy pink or
green.
Absolutely. Chris Murphy has it right, there needs to be a baseline set
of standards built in to the OS that can be overridden at the app level
by people who know and care about what they're doing. For the rest,
leave them out of all this stuff.
Bruce Fraser wrote:
It's an even bigger pain because many photoinkjets register a single
uber-profile withe ColorSync, then swop in the correct media-specific
profile based on the media settings in the printer driver. In
applications like Photoshop, we use the media-specific profiles. It
would be a royal pain to have to change the paper-specific profile in
ColorSync every time we wanted to print to a different paper. An
explicit null setting would save EVERYONE a world of grief.
Printer drivers that ship with the printers might best be designed to
not allow for any user intervention other than the typical media and
resolution choices. What we have now is a complete fiasco.
I suppose a null setting is a good idea but if a better print driver is
desired then there are professional packages out there to do the job:
Colorburst, ImagePrint, Best, Pressready (rest in peace) etc come to
mind. It's counterintuitive to ask these cheesy print drivers to do
professional level work.
Right now we have the worst of all worlds, how is it put: the best is
the enemy of the good.
Andrew Rodney wrote:
The camera manufacturers just don9t do it. They supply some EXIF data
(if
sRGB). I can't tell you why they don't but it's a drag and the
colorspace is
known (you the user have to set it) but not carried with the file
(excluding
EXIF data which can be set to "none" which isn't helpful).
It is a perversion that I'm not inclined to encourage by having three
different sRGB settings in the ColorSync preferences window! They can
either embed them in their images, or too frigging bad.
I don't want three sRGB settings (I don't even think we should have
three
sRGB's). What I'm suggesting is that there are situations where you
might
want to tell whatever system is making an assumption about the untagged
files that these are in X or Y colorspace, not necessarily assume it's
sRGB.
I think your suggestion of doing this WILL help in many cases but
there are
cases where hard wiring sRGB with no way to alter that could cause
further
problems for some.
The world of digital cameras, well that's a horse of a different color.
Cameras should give us RAW if we care, sRGB if we don't, period.
That's not going to happen. At the consumer level they will move to
proprietary systems which insure their end users buy the camera, the
printer and all the consumables. That's what all these varients are
about.
It seems inevitable at that level, the manufacturers will use
proprietary color spaces to lock users into using their stuff. It's an
absolute no brainer.
Sure it will work ok if you plug your little card from your Canon
camera into your HP printer, but look how much better it looks on a
Canon printer. Why those reds just come alive.....Why you don't need to
use a computer or that horrible colorsync stuff at all!
The only way for developers to deal with this is to build systems to
recognize the incoming camera files and tag them accordingly - this is
what Adobe does now with CameraRAW and supported cameras, and what
Phase One is trying to do with Phase One capture and "camera profiles"
what ever they are.
This is the route Apple will have to go with iPhoto.
I hope at the professional level we will continue to get RAW capture,
but I fear for the worst.
Best wishes,
Nick Wheeler
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