Re: maclife.de
Re: maclife.de
- Subject: Re: maclife.de
- From: "Bob Frost" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:06:39 +0100
Uli,
As a former scientist myself, I would point out that your research into
camer profiles seems very limited at present. You've only tested one camera,
I believe, whereas Adobe has specific camera profiles for many, many
cameras, and now has the new camera-matching profiles for many Canon and
Nikon cameras. Have you tested the ones for your Canon? Have you tested
Canon's own raw converter? Has your work with the one camera been confirmed
by others to be superior? Without it being translated into English (or
American) few people will be able to try to confirm it or point out its
inadequacies (if it has any).
I can see that there is a very small (?) market for 'perfect color
reproduction', but the main market is surely for color that looks good, (or
black&white that looks good!).
Adobe's take on the use of ICC camera profiles is spelt out on their website
FAQs :-
"Why introduce another camera profile format instead of using ICC camera
profiles?
Some technical background is required to fully appreciate the reasons.
First, ICC camera profiles used by raw converters today are designed to
process output-referred (i.e., rendered) image data, not scene-referred
(i.e., raw) image data. Furthermore, the sequence and placement of color
transformations described in an ICC camera profile can prevent other image
processing stages (such as highlight recovery algorithms) from performing
optimally. Third, there is no standard that describes the input color space
of the ICC camera profile color transformation (it is often, but not always,
a tone-mapped set of RGB camera coordinates). Consequently, ICC camera
profiles are not portable: they can only be used with the raw converter for
which they were explicitly created in the first place. Using an ICC camera
profile designed for one raw converter with another raw converter nearly
always produces incorrect (though sometimes entertaining) results.
In contrast, DNG camera profiles are designed specifically to process
scene-referred image data. The color matrices, color tables, and tone curve
transformations are applied in separate stages (instead of all in one step)
to minimize exposure dependencies and to enable other image processing
stages to perform optimally. The entire color processing model is described
in the DNG 1.2 specification and SDK, thus enabling portability of DNG
camera profiles among all raw converters that support DNG 1.2. Unlike ICC
profiles, DNG profiles can store color adjustments separately for two
illuminants (usually illuminants A and D65), which are used by the raw
converter to derive the final color transformation automatically from an
image's white balance. Finally, multiple DNG camera profiles can be embedded
within DNG raw files, thereby making DNG images self-contained and ensuring
that the photographer's chosen "color appearance" stays with the file
wherever it goes. "
That seems reasonable to me, and I find their products to be very good
(along with some of Microsofts). LightRoom is becoming an excellent program
for general photographers. But if a few of you want to do something
different, nothing is stopping you from doing just that. You obviously have
the means of making and using your ICC camera profiles, so what's the
problem?
Your statement about your dislike of Adobe (and Microsoft) as a Company
starts to raise question marks in my mind as to your scientific
'neutrality', and to my mind has no place in a scientific comparison of
different workflows.
Bob Frost.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Uli Zappe" <email@hidden>
So if someone is presented to you as an intellectual authority so
strong that his take on a topic overrides your own research results by
default, whereas you consider the actual products this person has
created to be of sub-par quality in several respects, and therefore
express your doubt that he's really the authority you are told to
believe he is, that's a smear?
That sounds strange to me, but maybe that's a cultural or language
kind of issue, or maybe I got carried away at that point in a way that
I shouldn't have. The reason for my reaction was twofold, in any case.
First, I reacted to an "authority" type argument by Andrew, as I
consider this type of argument irrational and therefore strongly
dislike it. And second, I strongly dislike the behavior of Adobe as a
company, which from my POV has largely taken over the former role of
Microsoft as the behemoth that tends to suffocate progress, albeit in
a more defined area. It depends on your concept of "smartness" whether
you think that a "smart" person can possibly work in such a company;
in a narrow sense of purely technical "smartness", that's most
probably the case. But I would not accept such a person as an
authority, in particular, I wouldn't accept such a person as an
authority on the topic of proprietary vs. standardized technology,
which is what this discussion was partly about.
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Colorsync-users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden