Colour Management

Sep 18, 2004

From: Gisle Hannemyr gisle+

The image I’m using as an example is "ducky.tif" … I’ve just added some pure RGB and CMY
from the colour swatch.

What do you mean by "added some pure RGB and CMY" … this statement doesn’t make sense to me. What exactly did you do? If you added say red at RGB = 255/0/0 for example you’ll find this is waaay out of gamut for any printer and won’t print well at all.

– I am using a calibrated monitor, and I’ve created a custom ICM- profile for the monitor and installed that as the default profile with Windows XP.

Did you calibrate with Adobe Gamma or with a colorimeter?

– I want to soft proof to see how it will look like when printed on this lab. So I do the following:
* View->Proof Setup->Custom,
* Select the profile: Frntr-NO-Trond-TorgFoto-Gls.icc
* Untick "Preseve color numbers".
* Choose Intent: "Relative colorimetric" (I’ve tried the others as well – but "Relative colorimetric" gives "best" results.) * Tick "Use Black Point Comp."
* Tick simulate "Paper White" (and "Ink Black" is ticked). * Tick "Preview"..

This sounds right … you might also turn on the gamut warning (View > Gamut Warning) to see if there are many colors that aren’t in the printer profile’s gamut since these definitely won’t print accurately.

It looks horrible! The white background is bluish, and the pure colour swatches display pronounced colour shifts in the direction of "dirty".

Probably looks better if you turn off "simulate paper white", which simulates the reduced brightness of a reflective surface like paper compared to a backlit display like your monitor. This is typically what you see when you use ‘simulate paper white’.

What color temperature did you use when you calibrated your monitor? 6500K? If you used 9300K you might very well see excessive blue in your whites.

Question 1: I am doing anything wrong? Or is this how this image will appear when printed on the lab with this profile?

If your monitor is well calibrated and the printer profile is accurate then this is probably how it will look, within the limits of soft proofing.

Question 2: If I am not doing anything wrong, is there anything I can do to preserve the colours I see in my working space?

Download a profile from a top of the line printer, say the glossy profile for the LightJet 5000 from Calypso ( www.calypsoinc.com ) … this will have a much wider gamut than the Frontier machines and also better whites. If it looks poor too when you soft proof you’ve probably got a bug somewhere in your system (or a lot of seriously out-of-gamut colors). If it looks good then you’ll see the difference between top-of-the-line vs low end consumer prints.

The lab in question is a typical "consumer" lab – not a professional photofinisher. I guess that 99.9% of the images they receive are /not/ colour managed, so I would assume that their workflow are set up to convert from some default (probably sRGB) to their own profile, so if I convert before sending my files, will they not be converted twice?

Typically these labs expect a sRGB file (usually jpeg) since most of their customers don’t know any better. Use the profile to softproof but don’t convert to it before sending in the file.

Qurstion 2: Do consumer labs actually check for colour profiles in images before printing?

No, they just assume it’s sRGB and run it through, from what I’ve heard. In a high-volume consumer environment that’s what you’d expect.

Question 3: What sort of "Colour Profile" is most likely to give best results when processing at such a lab:
– A narrow gamut "working space" such as sRGB?

This is what they are set up to receive and what you should use unless your testing indicates different.

Since prints from these labs are so cheap why not prepare the same file different ways (ie, sRGB, AdobeRGB, converted to their profile etc) and get a print from each and verify that they prefer sRGB? You can get three prints for under $1 in the USA so just run a test. Guys who have done this reported that they didn’t see any major differences though, FWIW.

Bill

Gisle Hannemyr

Sep 18, 2004

(Bill Hilton) writes:

From: Gisle Hannemyr gisle+

The image I’m using as an example is "ducky.tif" … I’ve just added some pure RGB and CMY
from the colour swatch.

What do you mean by "added some pure RGB and CMY" … this statement doesn’t make sense to me. What exactly did you do? If you added say red at RGB = 255/0/0

That’s what I did, yes. Sorry …

for example you’ll find this is waaay out of gamut for any printer and won’t print well at all.

That’s what the soft proofing showed 🙁 .
I had hoped it just was an error in my workflow, but OK – these colour just don’t print well so I’ll have to do without them.

– I am using a calibrated monitor, and I’ve created a custom ICM- profile for the monitor and installed that as the default profile with Windows XP.

Did you calibrate with Adobe Gamma or with a colorimeter?

I used Eberhard Werle’s QuickGamma and QuickMonitorProfile. They are just software that rely on your eye to provide feedback, just like Adobe Gamma (there is no colorimeter) – but they appear to work better than Adobe Gamma. I plan to buy a colorimeter, but I am still learning about this.

– I want to soft proof to see how it will look like when printed on this lab. So I do the following:
* View->Proof Setup->Custom,
* Select the profile: Frntr-NO-Trond-TorgFoto-Gls.icc
* Untick "Preseve color numbers".
* Choose Intent: "Relative colorimetric" (I’ve tried the others as well – but "Relative colorimetric" gives "best" results.) * Tick "Use Black Point Comp."
* Tick simulate "Paper White" (and "Ink Black" is ticked). * Tick "Preview"..

This sounds right … you might also turn on the gamut warning (View
Gamut Warning) to see if there are many colors that aren’t in the
printer profile’s gamut since these definitely won’t print accurately.

OK – so now I see why all the "pure" RGBs I added won’t print. They are all out of gamut. The CMY from the swatch didn’t trigger any gamut warning – and they don’t shift much when I soft proof.

It looks horrible! The white background is bluish, and the pure colour swatches display pronounced colour shifts in the direction of "dirty".

Probably looks better if you turn off "simulate paper white", which simulates the reduced brightness of a reflective surface like paper compared to a backlit display like your monitor. This is typically what you see when you use ‘simulate paper white’.

That fixed the blue background. The out of gamut colours are bad (but now I understand why). But the rest is still not good – for instance, a lot of detail is lost in the texture of the "wing" of the rubber duck.

What color temperature did you use when you calibrated your monitor? 6500K? If you used 9300K you might very well see excessive blue in your whites.

6500 K. Turning off the "simulate paper white" removed the blue cast.

Question 1: I am doing anything wrong? Or is this how this image will appear when printed on the lab with this profile?

If your monitor is well calibrated and the printer profile is accurate then this is probably how it will look, within the limits of soft proofing.

OK.

Question 2: If I am not doing anything wrong, is there anything I can do to preserve the colours I see in my working space?

Download a profile from a top of the line printer, say the glossy profile for the LightJet 5000 from Calypso ( www.calypsoinc.com ) … this will have a much wider gamut than the Frontier machines and also better whites. If it looks poor too when you soft proof you’ve probably got a bug somewhere in your system (or a lot of seriously out-of-gamut colors). If it looks good then you’ll see the difference between top-of-the-line vs low end consumer prints.

It certainly looks better – there is now more detail in the "wing" of the rubber duck – but still not as much texture as I see in my working colour space.

The lab in question is a typical "consumer" lab – not a professional photofinisher. I guess that 99.9% of the images they receive are /not/ colour managed, so I would assume that their workflow are set up to convert from some default (probably sRGB) to their own profile, so if I convert before sending my files, will they not be converted twice?

Typically these labs expect a sRGB file (usually jpeg) since most of their customers don’t know any better. Use the profile to softproof but don’t convert to it before sending in the file.

OK.

Question 2: Do consumer labs actually check for colour profiles in images before printing?

No, they just assume it’s sRGB and run it through, from what I’ve heard. In a high-volume consumer environment that’s what you’d expect.

OK.

Question 3: What sort of "Colour Profile" is most likely to give best results when processing at such a lab:
– A narrow gamut "working space" such as sRGB?

This is what they are set up to receive and what you should use unless your testing indicates different.

OK.

Since prints from these labs are so cheap why not prepare the same file different ways (ie, sRGB, AdobeRGB, converted to their profile etc) and get a print from each and verify that they prefer sRGB? You can get three prints for under $1 in the USA so just run a test. Guys who have done this reported that they didn’t see any major differences though, FWIW.

That is what I plan to do, as soon as I’ve mastered this good enough to be sure that my own workflow doesn’t mess things up.

Thank you for your answers. It helped clearing up a lot of things. —
– gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no – http://folk.uio.no/gisle/ ] ============================================================ ============ «To live outside the law, you must be honest.» (Bob Dylan)

bhilton665

Sep 18, 2004

From: Gisle Hannemyr gisle+

Thank you for your answers. It helped clearing up a lot of things.

Sounds like you’re doing everything right in the ICM color management flow, once you got a handle on the "pure" colors that are out of gamut. Hope the prints come out as expected 🙂

Bill

Mike Russell

Sep 19, 2004

Gisle Hannemyr wrote:

I am trying to learn colour management. I am running Windows XP and Photoshop CS.

The image I’m using as an example is "ducky.tif" (one of the sample images that came with PS). I’ve just added some pure RGB and CMY from the colour swatch. Those that are interested can download the sample image (ducky.tif) and the sample printer profile I am using:
(Frntr-NO-Trond-TorgFoto-Gls.icc – it’s from a Fuji Frontier lab) from this page: http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/photo/ducky.html .
– I am using a calibrated monitor, and I’ve created a custom ICM- profile for the monitor and installed that as the default profile with Windows XP.
– I am working in 8 bit mode, and sRGB, the image I am working on (ducky.tif) has sRGB as its embedded profile.
– I want to soft proof to see how it will look like when printed on this lab. So I do the following:
* View->Proof Setup->Custom,
* Select the profile: Frntr-NO-Trond-TorgFoto-Gls.icc
* Untick "Preseve color numbers".
* Choose Intent: "Relative colorimetric" (I’ve tried the others as well – but "Relative colorimetric" gives "best" results.) * Tick "Use Black Point Comp."
* Tick simulate "Paper White" (and "Ink Black" is ticked). * Tick "Preview"..

It looks horrible! The white background is bluish, and the pure colour swatches display pronounced colour shifts in the direction of "dirty".

This is fairly typical. Simulating a sheet of paper on a display is going to look dingy because the dynamic range of a sheet of paper is much smaller any display. Try comparing it with an actual white sheet of paper next to your monitor, and adjust the ambient light a bit if necessary and you should get in very close.

Question 1: I am doing anything wrong? Or is this how this image will appear when printed on the lab with this profile? (I’ve tried some other Frontier Lab profiles – and they all look bad).

I don’t like this particular profile – it has a blip at the dark end of the green curve that makes me suspicious of pilot error in preparing it. I’d be interested in whether Bill Hilton or others with profiler tools can verify this blip. Be that as it may, you’re unlikely to be doing anything wrong, or more specifically

Question 2: If I am not doing anything wrong, is there anything I can do to preserve the colours I see in my working space?

My suggestion would be to print a test strip consisting of shades of gray from pure black to white, on the Frontier, and see if you can discern the shades of gray at the top and bottom of the curve. There should also be no color cast anywhere on the curve. If this is true on the print, as well as your monitir, how far off can you be?

Let’s say that I’m able to tweak the image so that I am happy with the colours as they appear after soft proofing, so I am ready to ship the image to the lab for printing, then:

In general, I adjust the image to look good on the display, using the info palette to make sure the neutral, shadow, and highlight are where they should be, and simply print without much reference to the soft proof.

The lab in question is a typical "consumer" lab – not a professional photofinisher. I guess that 99.9% of the images they receive are /not/ colour managed, so I would assume that their workflow are set up to convert from some default (probably sRGB) to their own profile, so if I convert before sending my files, will they not be converted twice?

Yes – they probably assume sRGB. Furthermore they will usually alter the colors manually in order to improve their images for typical cursomers. You may be able to get them to leave all of this up to you. This is discussed at the excellent web site drycreekphoto.com, . In particular they give a procedure for using their Frontier profiles (which includes a copy of your Frontier’s profile) here:
http://drycreekphoto.com/Learn/profiles.htm

Qurstion 2: Do consumer labs actually check for colour profiles in images before printing?

Usually not. Standard procedure should be to convert to sRGB and don’t embed a profile.

Question 3: What sort of "Colour Profile" is most likely to give best results when processing at such a lab:
– A narrow gamut "working space" such as sRGB? – A wider gamut "working space" such as Adobe RGB? – The lab’s own ICC profile (e.g. Frntr-NO-Trond-TorgFoto-Gls.icc) in this particular case?.

Use sRGB. If you have arranged with the lab to respect your settings, as per the DryCreekPhoto procedures, you may use any working color space (sRGB, Adobe RGB, or any other) provided you convert to their Frontier profile before printing.

You’re going to need to print a few test prints, and hopefully discuss the printing procedure with the person at the lab operating your Frontier printer. Happy printing.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

Scott Southerland

Sep 19, 2004

This is just telling you that the white point of the paper is more blue than a ‘true’ white. Your eye and brain haven’t made the immediate white point adjustment quite yet.

Try this: Turn on the soft-proof. Press the F key a couple times to toggle full screen mode, press tab to hide all palettes, cmd+R to hide rulers. Close your eyes. Now open them – does the white still look blue?

Scott

On 2004-09-18 17:02:59 -0400, Gisle Hannemyr <gisle+> said:

It looks horrible! The white background is bluish, and the pure colour swatches display pronounced colour shifts in the direction of "dirty".

Gisle Hannemyr

Sep 19, 2004

"Mike Russell" writes:

I don’t like this particular profile – it has a blip at the dark end of the green curve that makes me suspicious of pilot error in preparing it.

How do you visualize the profile?

My suggestion would be to print a test strip consisting of shades of gray from pure black to white, on the Frontier, and see if you can discern the shades of gray at the top and bottom of the curve. There should also be no color cast anywhere on the curve. If this is true on the print, as well as your monitir, how far off can you be?

Thanks – I’ll try it.

—
– gisle hannemyr [ gisle{at}hannemyr.no – http://folk.uio.no/gisle/ ] ============================================================ ============ «To live outside the law, you must be honest.» (Bob Dylan)

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