Marco Ugolini wrote:
>I don't think it's strange. Fortunately for all of us, Photoshop
>honors and implements color profiles correctly, from what I >can tell, so
that the soft proofing and printing procedures >are accurate to the extent
possible with ICC technologies at >their present state of development
So it would appear that the only
tool students possess to navigate effectively from data to ink is the visual
examination of the image on the screen using soft proofing.
Soft proofing seems to bear up to
close scrutiny even in situations where colour changes are unexplainable ( at least for a
laymen like myself).
One such situation, which you
might be able to help me understand is, using soft proofing to examine a file
after it has been converted to its output profile and then returned to the RGB
workspace. I have heard of
photographers using this technique
to verify that they have successfully complied with requests from
publishers that RGB files be sent in Adobe 1998 but with no colours out of gamut
in US swap coated.
Soft proofing these converted
files with the same output profile ( using relative without BPC, no paper white and no black ink) still
shows a change in brightness and colour (which displaces transitions in
lightness along a gradation and could conceiveable produce
banding). I cant figure out
how out of gamut colours could survive this procedure.
These changes are apparently real
because, not only will a further conversion which returns the file once again to
the output profile, show changes in lab values that correspond to the visual
changes shown earlier on the screen, but the print matches the soft proofing
appearance. Colorthink shows these colours stuck to the underside of the space
like those little fish that swim around the shark , definitely outside, but on the edge.
But as you say it seems to prove
that soft proofing procedures are accurate, and for me, I need to trust one
thing in a sea of chaos in order to move forward.
Thank you all for your
explanations.
Eugene Appert
Montreal,
Canada