RE: Suggestion for the ICC and Color Management Vendors
RE: Suggestion for the ICC and Color Management Vendors
- Subject: RE: Suggestion for the ICC and Color Management Vendors
- From: "Peter Leyland" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 18:54:11 +0100
- Thread-topic: Suggestion for the ICC and Color Management Vendors
I agree with you Ray. CM is very much the preserve of the geek (and the
odd photographer) and far from being universally adopted.
There is a certain amount of satisfaction in producing a print that
matches what you see on the monitor. When it's your own monitor and
printer this isn't too difficult a task and it's also arguable whether
or not you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars to achieve that
aim. Moving away from home is when the fun starts and there is still a
very long way to go in the litho print world of CMYK before we have
total harmony. To a degree this is understandable given the mechanical
(analogue) nature of the equipment and the fact that the time served
printer will always be more interested in the size and position of the
dots on the paper. As far as he is concerned 'give him a good set of
plates' and he will print a good job and who are we to argue? The
closest he will come to colour management is the density of the colour
patches. Put another way it still remains with the file creator to cause
the litho printer to print what he expects and not the other way round.
At least that is my opinion albeit as the printer and to a large degree
the creator of the file I have a vested interest in the whole procedure.
It actually goes further because being the service provider it is my
company that takes the customer file, colour managed or otherwise and
prepares it for output to our equipment/platemaker. Not too sure who is
in control here but given that a truly colour managed file complete with
tag remains a very rare beast, at least it does in my shop, the fact
remains that even attempting a colour managed workflow in such an
environment, where it (CM) is a rarity has its problems... Still, I am
sure we all accept that to be the case and rather than 'hide' behind a
superior knowledge of colour management theory and (mal) practice we
understand that not everyone else is on board or even has a remote
interest in the subject. When all is said and done the customer simply
wants a copy, or copies even of whatever. Most willing accept what is on
offer, others prefer to seek perfection...
The trick, of course, for the perfectionist, is using a colour workflow
that will achieve such an end in an 'open' colour managed workflow.
Unless, and until, everyone is on board with an equal understanding or
at least defined standard of colour management then the endless debates
and waving of proof copies will continue. Digital printing is a whole
lot closer to meeting the expectations of the colour geeks given the
ability to colour profile the equipment on a regular basis - every hour
if that's what you want. To this end it would be fair (wouldn't it?) to
say that the equipment manufacturers also have a role to play and indeed
do so already. The Epson 9800 with a RIP can manage perfectly well
without a need for external profiling to give a repeatable and
predictable print. A laser copier/printer needs to be calibrated
regularly but I suspect that the next generation will be capable of
doing this on the fly.
Wandered a little here on my own hobby horse but until we get bottled
colour management on every desktop then I suspect the debate will
continue. When Apple or indeed Microsoft do indeed bundle the basic
software and hardware to give an acceptable automated level of colour
management to the monitor then the average Joe will have no more need to
understand colour management than he needs to know anything about
machine code today. Almost done a full circle there as I think I have
put the argument for doing away with colour management totally or at
least as practised today.
Peter Leyland
PDQ Print Services
93 Commercial Street
Dundee DD1 2AF
Tel: 01382 201778
Fax: 01382 201776
-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Maxwell [mailto:email@hidden]
Sent: 06 April 2006 21:48
Cc: email@hidden
Subject: Suggestion for the ICC and Color Management Vendors
Recently there was a thread about profile editing features being added
to Photoshop (Re: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 using GCR or UCR). Some
said these features should only be in very expensive separate
applications.
I would like to point out to everyone in the color management business
that color management is not wide spread. It is not on every computer.
It is used by a very few knowledgeable color geeks (like me). If we all
want to make big money off of ICC color management it must be on many
more computers.
Remember that the richest man in the world understood market share. He
priced his operating system so that everyone could afford it, not just a
few IT experts. It is my opinion that the manufactures of color
instruments and profile software that don't allow this software to be
moved from computer to computer without registering it with the vendor,
are shooting themselves in the foot. I have profiled many of my friends
monitors. After they understood what I had done they wanted to buy
their own instrument.
I would also like to congratulate Steve Upton for writing an outstanding
ICC utility and pricing it so that all can afford it.
Do your market research. Study the demand curve (price vs. number
sold). Sell instruments that can be moved from computer to computer. I
have no problem with the instrument acting as a dongle. Just get rid of
the registration and activation.
What do other users on this group think?
Ray
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