Not a novice but no expert either... I am using LR4's Book module (OS X 10.6.8) and would like to ensure "accurate" color before I hit that "send to Blurb" button (since it's linked to my credit card). LR4 converts images to sRGB before sending them to Blurb. I am previewing my photos on an NEC PA271W monitor. Does it matter what setting I choose in MultiProfiler, such as sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc.?? I don't understand what effect (if any) these monitor settings would have in this case. I am used to profiling the more conventional monitors, but I don't recall such choices. It looks like Blurb also makes available an output profile "based on the GRACoL2009" for softproofing. Any tips for how to best set up the PA271W with MultiProfiler for this particular task? Thank you, Armand
On Jul 24, 2012, at 2:10 PM, Armand Rosenberg wrote:
Not a novice but no expert either... I am using LR4's Book module (OS X 10.6.8) and would like to ensure "accurate" color before I hit that "send to Blurb" button (since it's linked to my credit card). LR4 converts images to sRGB before sending them to Blurb. I am previewing my photos on an NEC PA271W monitor. Does it matter what setting I choose in MultiProfiler, such as sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc.?? I don't understand what effect (if any) these monitor settings would have in this case. I am used to profiling the more conventional monitors, but I don't recall such choices.
Unfortunately you can’t get “accurate color” out of LR to Blurb because, as you point out, sRGB is sent to them and naturally sRGB isn’t the output color space. In LR, you should be fine viewing the images in MelissaRGB. You could soft proof to sRGB but that isn’t going to buy you anything useful. As for the CMYK profile they provided, you can’t use it in LR as it only supports RGB output profiles. But since Blurb provides a single CMYK profile and expect it to define all the possible papers they provide, plus you have no idea what rendering intent would be used (with or without Black Point Compensation), soft proofing in Photoshop seems pretty silly to me. It is highly questionable if this CMYK profile reflects the actual print conditions. My experience with Blub out of LR is you have to send off your images and hope for the best. That said, I wasn’t at all happy with the quality of the book I got back. I used some pretty tough reference images (Roman 16’s, synthetic test images etc). One image was placed on the book cover and in the inside and the two didn’t print anything alike which is a bad sign. Several pages had what looked like black spots (dirty toner?). Andrew Rodney http://www.digitaldog.net/
Hi Andrew, Agree - all the problems you raise with softproofing for Blurb are correct - I went through all this soon after LR4 shipped and I wanted to create a book of images to distribute to some friends. I worked around the softproofing issue by selecting what they said was their highest quality printing paper, then softproofing in LR using an RGB printer profile that I thought rendered an image appearance somewhat similar to what a SWOP2 profile delivers in Photoshop (this to get around the basic CMYK profile constraint in LR). Then having made the final image adjustments under softproofing to this profile (I forget now which one I used) I sent the book to Blurb's website. When I got the book back I was NOT disappointed. Some of the photos were made just before dusk, some at night under artificial light, and some with flash - so all in all, not "vanilla" lighting conditions, but the resulting images were pretty faithful in tone and colour to the expectations I had for them from the previews. That said, I think this whole process remains too much of a crap-shoot, but it is new, so there is a way to go in making it more fool-proof for sure. The main thing is that Blurb and Adobe need to cooperate on a set of profiles that not only reflect Blurb printing conditions (assuming they normalized between their various service providers), but are usable in LR. Mark ________________________________ From: Andrew Rodney <andrew@digitaldog.net> To: 'colorsync-users?lists.apple.com' List <colorsync-users@lists.apple.com> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 5:15:54 PM Subject: Re: MultiProfiler question On Jul 24, 2012, at 2:10 PM, Armand Rosenberg wrote:
Not a novice but no expert either... I am using LR4's Book module (OS X 10.6.8) and would like to ensure "accurate" color before I hit that "send to Blurb" button (since it's linked to my credit card). LR4 converts images to sRGB before sending them to Blurb. I am previewing my photos on an NEC PA271W monitor. Does it matter what setting I choose in MultiProfiler, such as sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc.?? I don't understand what effect (if any) these monitor settings would have in this case. I am used to profiling the more conventional monitors, but I don't recall such choices.
Unfortunately you can’t get “accurate color” out of LR to Blurb because, as you point out, sRGB is sent to them and naturally sRGB isn’t the output color space. In LR, you should be fine viewing the images in MelissaRGB. You could soft proof to sRGB but that isn’t going to buy you anything useful. As for the CMYK profile they provided, you can’t use it in LR as it only supports RGB output profiles. But since Blurb provides a single CMYK profile and expect it to define all the possible papers they provide, plus you have no idea what rendering intent would be used (with or without Black Point Compensation), soft proofing in Photoshop seems pretty silly to me. It is highly questionable if this CMYK profile reflects the actual print conditions. My experience with Blub out of LR is you have to send off your images and hope for the best. That said, I wasn’t at all happy with the quality of the book I got back. I used some pretty tough reference images (Roman 16’s, synthetic test images etc). One image was placed on the book cover and in the inside and the two didn’t print anything alike which is a bad sign. Several pages had what looked like black spots (dirty toner?). Andrew Rodney http://www.digitaldog.net/ _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Colorsync-users mailing list (Colorsync-users@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/colorsync-users/mgsegal%40rogers.com This email sent to mgsegal@rogers.com
On Jul 24, 2012, at 3:32 PM, MARK SEGAL wrote:
I sent the book to Blurb's website. When I got the book back I was NOT disappointed.
Well that’s good news. Maybe I’ll send the book off again. Pretty easy to do in LR since all I have to do now is click 1 button to upload. Hopefully it will print better but that would tell us something about their QC and consistency. Andrew Rodney http://www.digitaldog.net/
Yes, useful test - but before doing it, if you have not done so already and if you think the nature of your previous results may call for it, I'd suggest running the images through the Develop Module using an RGB profile that roughly simulates high quality press printing, to see whether it may be worthwhile tweaking any of them a bit before sending. I think it helped in my case. Mark ________________________________ From: Andrew Rodney <andrew@digitaldog.net> To: 'colorsync-users?lists.apple.com' List <colorsync-users@lists.apple.com> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 5:40:08 PM Subject: Re: MultiProfiler question On Jul 24, 2012, at 3:32 PM, MARK SEGAL wrote:
I sent the book to Blurb's website. When I got the book back I was NOT disappointed.
Well that’s good news. Maybe I’ll send the book off again. Pretty easy to do in LR since all I have to do now is click 1 button to upload. Hopefully it will print better but that would tell us something about their QC and consistency. Andrew Rodney http://www.digitaldog.net/ _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Colorsync-users mailing list (Colorsync-users@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/colorsync-users/mgsegal%40rogers.com This email sent to mgsegal@rogers.com
participants (3)
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Andrew Rodney
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Armand Rosenberg
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MARK SEGAL