Nikon LS Scanner Color Profile / Photoshop Working Space

Greg wrote:

"Flycaster" wrote in message

You don’t want to work in your profile space because it is not grey-balanced.

Are you absolutely sure of this? Just curious. I agree that if it’s not grey balanced, it won’t
make a good general purpose working space, but this is the first time I’ve seen anyone
state that it’s not. I have the LS40, and raw scans do come out very neutral. It’s
conceivable that the raw profile really is grey balanced, and Nikon ensure that the
scanner & driver produce grey balanced scans, even in raw mode.

You’re right that the auto-calibration feature of most scanners will ensure a close approximation to a balanced gray.

But in general, scanner and other device profiles are not guaranteed to be "well-behaved". This means there is no guarantee the color space will be gray balanced, the black and white points may not coincide with the origin and max points, and there may be other interesting bends in the curve associated with the profile.

You may look at all of these features using curvemeister’s free profile plotter, which shows the neutral response curve for a profile. http://home.pacbell.net/geigy/downloads/profileplotter/index .htm

For these reasons and more, the accepted procedure is to use a profile designed to be a working space, for example Adobe RGB or sRGB. —

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

Thanks Mike.

Actually, the Nikon scanner profile is an *input* profile, anyway! Doh! 😉 (it simply cannot be selected as a working space in the RGB colour settings, for example)

Greg.

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

Greg wrote:

"Flycaster" wrote in message

You don’t want to work in your profile space because it is not grey-balanced.

Are you absolutely sure of this? Just curious. I agree that if it’s not grey balanced, it won’t
make a good general purpose working space, but this is the first time I’ve seen anyone
state that it’s not. I have the LS40, and raw scans do come out very neutral. It’s
conceivable that the raw profile really is grey balanced, and Nikon ensure that the
scanner & driver produce grey balanced scans, even in raw mode.

You’re right that the auto-calibration feature of most scanners will

ensure

a close approximation to a balanced gray.

But in general, scanner and other device profiles are not guaranteed to be "well-behaved". This means there is no guarantee the color space will be gray balanced, the black and white points may not coincide with the origin and max points, and there may be other interesting bends in the curve associated with the profile.

You may look at all of these features using curvemeister’s free profile plotter, which shows the neutral response curve for a profile. http://home.pacbell.net/geigy/downloads/profileplotter/index .htm
For these reasons and more, the accepted procedure is to use a profile designed to be a working space, for example Adobe RGB or sRGB. —

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

"Greg" wrote in message

"Flycaster" wrote in message

You don’t want to work in your profile space because it is not grey-balanced.

Are you absolutely sure of this? Just curious. I agree that if it’s not

grey

balanced, it won’t
make a good general purpose working space, but this is the first time I’ve seen anyone
state that it’s not. I have the LS40, and raw scans do come out very neutral. It’s
conceivable that the raw profile really is grey balanced, and Nikon ensure that the
scanner & driver produce grey balanced scans, even in raw mode.

Yeah, 100% sure. That your scans come to the monitor looking pretty "neutral" only means that the you have a good profile (which is a good thing, I might add). What is more important, however, is that the profile will help make sure that what you saw in the scanner is what you get in PS.

The grey balanced working RGB spaces are where you want to do your work and archiving. Profiles are used coming in, and on the way out. The working spaces are perfect, mathematical constructs. A device profile, otoh, describes the color space of a specific device under certain conditions, at a specific point in time.

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"Flycaster" wrote in message

Yeah, 100% sure. That your scans come to the monitor looking pretty "neutral" only means that the you have a good profile (which is a good thing, I might add). What is more important, however, is that the profile will help make sure that what you saw in the scanner is what you get in

PS.

But you made the assumption that I had not viewed the scans after simply *tagging* with a grey balanced "normal" working space. I have, and they look neutral. So, if you are 100% sure – how is it that you are so sure? Again – just
asking – I will not be surprised if you are correct. Note that even when "scanner
RGB" is selected, there are still ICC profiles that are used. (they’re in a Nikon
system folder somewhere – one for each film type & resolution). Thus, it’s not
actually possible to use Nikon Scan to get a *really* raw scan from the hardware,
I don’t think.

Using Viewscan, on the other hand, it’s a completely different situation. Vuescan
really *does* return a very raw scan, and it is most definitely not grey balanced.

The grey balanced working RGB spaces are where you want to do your work

and

archiving. Profiles are used coming in, and on the way out. The working spaces are perfect, mathematical constructs. A device profile, otoh, describes the color space of a specific device under certain conditions,

at

a specific point in time.

Understood/agreed

Greg.

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I don’t know that but I happened to find a great tutorial cd that will help you in this matter. http://www.siliconlogics.com/photoshop.htm

yep…up in the corner of the page it we can all become professionals in just 10 hours. kewl!

"professor" wrote in message

I don’t know that but I happened to find a great tutorial cd that will help you in this matter. http://www.siliconlogics.com/photoshop.htm