Re: Colorsync-users Digest, Vol 9, Issue 146
Hi Martin I think you'll find that most resellers on this list also, like me, spend a lot of time building profiles on-site for customers and for a very wide range printers and RIPs. Also our exposure to a wider set of workflows make us ideally placed to provide feedback to X-Rite, which we all do on a regular basis. My own experience with colour management goes way back to Linocolor. Rob
On 16 Sep 2012, at 09:52, Rob Griffith <robgriffith@colourcollective.co.uk> wrote:
Re the comments on i1 Profiler I agree with Scott. It's up to us to work with the tools we're given. We can give feedback to X-Rite but at the end of the day they aren't designing a product for just us specialists, if they are going to make any money they have to appeal to a wider market.
What a surprise! The middlemen who flog X-Rite gear agree that everything is OK.
As an end user, the person who needs to build a profile at 2am for a 9am deadline, I can tell you that this cosy arrangement isn't acceptable.
I've been building profiles for years. The software and hardware that I've purchased from X-Rite should not just be easy to use in a simple workflow, it should reward deeper investigation by the end user too. I shouldn't need to be scouring the web or signing up for seminars from a bunch of middlemen to find out the real meaning of the arbitrary integers on a slider.
The preponderance of the views of resellers on this list really skews the debate.
The photographers, the print makers and the printers are the "specialists" here. They buy the software and hardware, deploy it and create stuff using it. It is their lives that are made easier (or harder) by the features (or lack of) in those products.
I imagine that a forum for chefs would not tolerate the resellers of pots and pans having so much prominence in the discussions about creating amazing dining experiences. I really don't know why people involved in image making put up with it.
-- Martin Orpen Idea Digital Imaging Ltd
On 17 Sep 2012, at 08:23, Rob Griffith <robgriffith@colourcollective.co.uk> wrote:
I think you'll find that most resellers on this list also, like me, spend a lot of time building profiles on-site for customers and for a very wide range printers and RIPs. Also our exposure to a wider set of workflows make us ideally placed to provide feedback to X-Rite, which we all do on a regular basis.
I appreciate that Rob, but there is still a fundamental difference between the requirements of image makers and the requirements of colour management people. Our relationship with the results of using these products is a sensual one -- as I imagine is the relationship with those that create these products. Standing between us are a group of people for whom the products are a commodity. You come in one year to sell us solution X and then the following year you're selling solution Y. Sure Y has benefits over X, but they are more often than not benefits that are more useful for the middleman than the end-user.
From the image maker's POV we'd be much better off with better documentation on solution X and a point release that fixed the bugs in it that we'd been able to feed back ourselves -- if only we had the opportunity.
A clear example from this forum of how the current situation doesn't work for image makers is the recurring problem of Profilemaker v2 profiles producing a cyan scum dot in the non-printing areas of inkjet prints. Reported by end users years ago, isolated as a problem that was unique to Profilemaker and Photoshop CS5 on the Mac by end users. Yet denied, misinterpreted and ultimately ignored by X-Rite and the colour management 'experts' that stand between the end users and them. Like a lot of problems that disrupt our production and waste our time and money it'll be solved by us spending more money on newer products and then quickly erased from memory, giving the impression that the current setup of you standing between me and X-Rite (and Adobe, Apple etc) is working OK. And, for the record, I'd still like to know why the PDFs sent to the Mac print spooler by Photoshop CS5 using Profilemaker ICCv2 profiles are structured in a way that causes the cyan scum dot? Profiles made using any other software from the same chart data do not do this. PDFs generated by Photoshop CS6 don't have this problem either... -- Martin Orpen Idea Digital Imaging Ltd
participants (2)
-
Martin Orpen
-
Rob Griffith