ipf8400 gamut

[Wayne Fox]

when you demonstrate the clipping of an image when going from ProPhoto to sRGB and conclude that sRGB is inferior to ProPhoto and should be avoided as it results in bad prints ... you are really not advising people correctly.

I know I said I was out of this thread, but sorry, this comment I’m really having a hard time with.

First, your statement that ppRGB can “get you into trouble” is what started this whole thing, and while you point out some theoretical issues with perceptual rendering intents, you haven’t provided a single real world example which actually demonstrates this problem. You claim it’s not up to you to prove it, perhaps this is because you haven’t been able to?

I went back through a couple hundred of my images last night, and found around 20 that I decided a perceptual intent offered me a better print, since your main premise is this is mostly problematic when using that intent.  No surprise to me, all of these are ones that exceeded sRGB and AdobeRGB quite a bit ... so in these cases in a workflow where I try to predetermine the appropriate size of the working space, which seems to be what are advocating, i would have chosen ppRGB.  I couldn’t find a single example of an image with a fairly limited color palette that may have fit inside a smaller space where I decided a perceptual intent was necessary.  So while perhaps there are issues with perceptual renderings, the only way around this would be clip the colors into a smaller working space to start with, something which even you claim isn’t the best policy.

I tried this with a few images last night, trying to see if I could get a better image.  Choosing images that appeared to easily fit in the gamut of AdobeRGB, I opened two copies from ACR, one in aRGB, the other in ppRGB (both in 16bit). I left them a little “off” I made a couple of saturation, density, and color changes inside of photoshop, and then I printed each of those twice, once using a relative intent, once using a perceptual. Sorry, no real difference at all, the fact that the ppRGB space was so large didn’t really change anything in either case, most likely because the colors weren’t that far out of gamut from the printer space.

So I took you challenge ... and after a few hours with my 9900 I can’t see where ppRGB got me into trouble because my image palette was small enough to be contained in sRGB or aRGB, and choosing ppRGB messed things up.

Whereas Andrews advice (as well as many others) seems pretty sound (just stay in ppRGB until you are ready for output), at this point the main conclusion from this entire thread is what you advocate isn’t necessary because it’s a waste of time and won’t yield any visible difference (and runs the risk of costing some quality) ...

So not intending to sound blunt or direct and with no desire to offend, it appears you are that one that may not be offering the best advice. Now admittedly it probably won’t hurt anything, but it doesn’t gain anything.

My first digital printer was a Kodak XL-7700, cost me $10K used back in 1993!

I ended up buying three of those before they finally introduced the 8300 which we ended up deploying in about 100 locations (3 in each)

 Built like tank!  (because that’s where they went first )

I remember how amazing it seemed at the time ...

[digitaldog]

Built like tank!  (because that’s where they went first )
I remember how amazing it seemed at the time ...

Yup, rack mountable and weighted a lot too. I still have prints made way back then, stored in the original 10x10 Kodak boxes. They still look damn good considering how old that technology was.

[Robert Ardill]

That long, wow?
My first digital printer was a Kodak XL-7700, cost me $10K used back in 1993!
And yes, viewing two prints side by side to evaluate print quality doesn't require a lick of theoretical digging. You do need to have a good pair of eyes however...

Yes, well I have to bow to your superior experience

Quite right, you don't need a lick of theoretical digging to compare two prints side by side.  What about getting the best out of your equipment and workflow though?  Just happens by luck I suppose.  Buy the camera, click the button, send the file to the printer ... and hey-presto you have a wonderful print, every time.  Would be nice, wouldn't it?

What about all that color management stuff, profiles, raw images, bla bla bla?  No need to know about any of that?

Come on Andrew ... you're arguing for the sake of arguing, and losing the battle I'm sorry to say because, as you know, you're on shaky grounds when it comes to that video of yours.  Best to accept that you've overstated the case and correct the information.

Robert

[digitaldog]

Come on Andrew ... you're arguing for the sake of arguing, and losing the battle I'm sorry to say because, as you know, you're on shaky grounds when it comes to that video of yours.  Best to accept that you've overstated the case and correct the information.

You are entitled to that opinion, and that's all it is. Given what you've written here about a number of areas of color management, I'm taking that opinion with a grain of salt (or less than a grain  ). In terms of winning or losing an argument, which I didn't think was par for this post, it appears you sir are the one who's peers here are disagreeing with your opinions as you've got little to back them up. It's why long ago, I suggested it was time to move on. Certainly the OP did after you kind of hijacked the thread.

[Robert Ardill]

You are entitled to that opinion, and that's all it is. Given what you've written here about a number of areas of color management, I'm taking that opinion with a grain of salt (or less than a grain  ). In terms of winning or losing an argument, which I didn't think was par for this post, it appears you sir are the one who's peers here are disagreeing with your opinions as you've got little to back them up. It's why long ago, I suggested it was time to move on. Certainly the OP did after you kind of hijacked the thread.

Yes, well I'm not sure that I can be accused of being the only one who has hijacked this thread ... but you're right, it's poor form on all our parts, so on my part I apologize to the OP.

Robert

[Robert Ardill]

I know I said I was out of this thread, but sorry, this comment I’m really having a hard time with.

Well I’m glad that you are back because I was really concerned that I had offended you seriously with my flippant remark.  I hope we can put that unfortunate episode behind us.

First, your statement that ppRGB can “get you into trouble” is what started this whole thing, and while you point out some theoretical issues with perceptual rendering intents, you haven’t provided a single real world example which actually demonstrates this problem. You claim it’s not up to you to prove it, perhaps this is because you haven’t been able to?

ppRGB can get you into trouble primarily because it’s easy to push colors out of gamut in any workspace that is larger than your monitor’s workspace, as you can’t always see the OOG colors (you may see banding but the problem may only manifest itself at output).

Here’s an example.  The image on the left looks fine, doesn’t it? (if you viewed the original image on a wide-gamut display in ProPhoto you might think it a bit over-saturated and I would agree, but a lot of photographers are still on sRGB displays and the image will look fine on these).  The  image on the right is the same one with gamut warning turned on.  The image is in ProPhoto and the output profile is for a Canson Baryta paper, which has a gamut slightly bigger than aRGB.



What’s going to happen to the OOG colors?  Well we can get an idea from soft-proofing, but if we don’t know about soft-proofing and gamut warnings etc., we may get an unpleasant surprise when we print. We may not, but we may.

The point is that if you know what you’re doing, then you can work in ProPhoto with little risk – because you will check the image gamut, you won’t push it beyond your printer gamut … and so on.  But a lot of people (look at the start of this thread) really don’t know very much, if anything, about profiles, OOG etc.  So let them loose with ProPhoto and it’s like giving a Lamborghini to a 10-year-old: he’ll probably crash it.

So yes, of course ProPhoto can get you ('one', I should say) into trouble.  You, no doubt, are fine: you’ve been at this game for decades and you really do know what you’re doing.  That isn’t true of all photographers, not even professional ones.

I went back through a couple hundred of my images last night, and found around 20 that I decided a perceptual intent offered me a better print, since your main premise is this is mostly problematic when using that intent. 

No, I didn’t say that Perceptual is the one that is most likely to cause problems. Actually it’s probably the one that is LEAST likely to cause problems because a good perceptual profile will normally do a reasonable job of squeezing the OOG colors into the smaller space, with little or no banding.  Although it will shift the colors, more than likely (see below).

Actually a Relative Colorimetric mapping is much more likely to cause flattened areas and banding … as Andrew demonstrated in his video.  What happens when you go from ProPhoto to sRGB can just as well happen when you go from a larger working space to a smaller destination space using RC.

No surprise to me, all of these are ones that exceeded sRGB and AdobeRGB quite a bit ... so in these cases in a workflow where I try to predetermine the appropriate size of the working space, which seems to be what are advocating, i would have chosen ppRGB. 

You’ve made my point.  The images that caused problems were images that had a wider gamut than your output device.  If your image had been in a smaller working space you would not have had the problem, mainly because the image colors would have been less saturated.

I couldn’t find a single example of an image with a fairly limited color palette that may have fit inside a smaller space where I decided a perceptual intent was necessary.  So while perhaps there are issues with perceptual renderings, the only way around this would be clip the colors into a smaller working space to start with, something which even you claim isn’t the best policy.

If the image has a small gamut (smaller than the destination) then you can quite happily use a relative or perceptual mapping: it will make very little difference especially if the profiles are good.

When I talk about the possible greater shifting of colors when printing (using perceptual) from a very wide gamut working space compared to the same image printed from a smaller working space (that can still contain the image’s gamut) I’m talking about very subtle differences.  You would only be concerned with these if you were a perfectionist like me.  I wouldn’t worry about it.

Of course clipping the colors into a smaller working space is not at all a good idea!  Especially as WS->WS mappings are always RC, and so you will literally get clipping and possible flattening and banding (as Andrew demonstrated in his video … b-x, I’m getting a sense of déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said).  However, if you want to minimise the color shifts then converting to a smaller working space that DOES contain the image’s color WITHOUT clipping may give you less of a color shift when mapping with a perceptual intent.  It depends on how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ the profile is (and ‘good’ profiles that give a true perceptual mapping are likely to cause a greater color shift … so you might consider them to be ‘bad’ profiles  .

I tried this with a few images last night, trying to see if I could get a better image.  Choosing images that appeared to easily fit in the gamut of AdobeRGB, I opened two copies from ACR, one in aRGB, the other in ppRGB (both in 16bit). I left them a little “off” I made a couple of saturation, density, and color changes inside of photoshop, and then I printed each of those twice, once using a relative intent, once using a perceptual. Sorry, no real difference at all, the fact that the ppRGB space was so large didn’t really change anything in either case, most likely because the colors weren’t that far out of gamut from the printer space.

So I took you challenge ... and after a few hours with my 9900 I can’t see where ppRGB got me into trouble because my image palette was small enough to be contained in sRGB or aRGB, and choosing ppRGB messed things up.

Here’s an example:



Same image, both in ProPhoto, the left image is mapped with a relative colorimetric intent and the right hand image with perceptual.

Even someone with pretty dodgy eyesight can see that there are significant color differences: look at the sky blues and the petal magentas.

Maybe they look fine to you and you would be happy with either (or neither!) … but don’t tell me there’s no difference!

Whereas Andrews advice (as well as many others) seems pretty sound (just stay in ppRGB until you are ready for output), at this point the main conclusion from this entire thread is what you advocate isn’t necessary because it’s a waste of time and won’t yield any visible difference (and runs the risk of costing some quality) ...

That’s up to each of us to decide for ourselves. 

I believe that there is a risk of loss of quality (in terms of color shifts, banding, flattening of areas of color) which may cause you to have to re-edit and reprint if you work in too large a working space without taking real care in your work (which in itself is an overhead, and possibly a waste of time).

You sort of don’t have much choice initially if you work from Lightroom: you will effectively be in a large working space.  You don’t need to commit to a smaller working space until you are ready to print.  As I’ve suggested in an earlier post (today, I think), you can keep your developed raw image as a smart object in Photoshop, which allows you to change from one working space to another.

So here’s an example of a valid workflow from raw:

• Process the image in Lightroom (and be careful not to go crazy OOG over an intermediate workspace like Adobe RGB, but don’t worry too much about it)
• Open the image into Photoshop as a Smart Object – choose whichever working space you like: ProPhoto is fine
• Do the next stage of editing in Photoshop
• Now you decide to print and you know because you’ve examined your image gamut that Adobe RGB will contain the image’s colors without clipping (quick soft-proof will tell you that)
• Convert the image to Adobe RGB
• Make any further tweaks to get the image ready for print (good idea to turn soft-proofing on)
• Print your image

You might say: why bother?  Well supposing that your output is the web and not print.  You now have no choice but to go to sRGB … so you convert your image to sRGB instead of aRGB in step 5 above.  Whoa!  Banding, flattening … ugly!  No problem, go back into the raw smart object and adjust the saturation so that it fits into sRGB without the ugglies.

So choosing smaller workspaces does not mean that you are forever limited to them. 

In case you think I’ve just made up this workflow to get out of a sticky spot, have a look at this thread: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=91514.0

 

So not intending to sound blunt or direct and with no desire to offend, it appears you are that one that may not be offering the best advice. Now admittedly it probably won’t hurt anything, but it doesn’t gain anything.

Could be, but as you’ve guessed, I don’t think so  .

Robert

[digitaldog]

ppRGB can get you into trouble primarily because it’s easy to push colors out of gamut in any workspace that is larger than your monitor’s workspace, as you can’t always see the OOG colors (you may see banding but the problem may only manifest itself at output).

So you propose we clip all the colors into the gamut of our displays? We'd then be able to see them all.

You understand that the OOG overlay you use is buggy, shows OOG colors that are not really OOG and treat a tiny degree of OOG the same is a boat load of OOG? It's pretty useless IMHO (and it's a legacy feature that predates soft proofing in Photoshop which is far more effective.

[digitaldog]

So here's my PA272W (red) with Adobe RGB (green wireframe) with a big honking piece of the 3880 out of gamut for both. What this illustrates is the silly idea that ProPhoto RGB is too big because it falls outside display gamut and is true for many (most) of our output devices! We soft proof yes? Lots of colors we can't see. So let's just throw the baby out with the bath water, clip colors we can capture and can print to (in this case) Adobe RGB just so we can see them on the display? I don't think so! Not when I can see them when they are printed.

Show me an output device that fully contains the gamut of a working space like sRGB. Good luck. There are some that fall fully within Adobe RGB (1998) SWOP V2 fully falls within Adobe RGB (1998) gamut. Not a Lightjet (most but not all colors). A modern ink jet? Forget about it!

The idea we have to somehow match the gamut of our output devices OR working space's to fully fit our display profile so we can see them is just silly! Unless your only output is to a display. Or you're happy to clip colors you can capture and can reproduce but decide it's more important to see them on an intermediate device (the display) than the final device (the printer). This idea we can't use a color space because it contains color we can't see is largely FUD.



This illustrates too how Adobe RGB is too small a working space in terms of gamut to use for output to the 3880. It's why in the test I did today, the ProPhoto RGB image has much better blues/cyans on the fish image, the fishermans shorts, and why the colorful cloth image has more 'shadow detail/sharpness' because I didn't clip allow those useful colors seen above.

[Schewe]

Here’s an example:



Same image, both in ProPhoto, the left image is mapped with a relative colorimetric intent and the right hand image with perceptual.

Even someone with pretty dodgy eyesight can see that there are significant color differences: look at the sky blues and the petal magentas.

Maybe they look fine to you and you would be happy with either (or neither!) … but don’t tell me there’s no difference!

That’s up to each of us to decide for ourselves. 

Ok, you've proven that there is a difference between RelCol & Percept rending when printing from PP RGB. Cool...did you expect anything less? Of Course there will be a difference. DOOOOH. So which is better? RelCol or Percept? Are you saying the you cant make a move to make one look like the other? (clue, pretty easy to do with HSL).

So, the question begs to be asked, which looked "better" RelCol or Percept? Do you need help making one look like the other?

Look, ignore OOG warning info will you? Realize that the OOG warning is at best telling you that some colors may be out of gamut...it doesn't tell you much else.

You really, REALLY need to move beyond Out Of Gamut colors...The odds are, if you've opened a raw capture into PP RGB there will be OOG colors in most printers. The important thing to consider is what do those OOG colors look like? That's what soft proofing provides.

Once you know what the final print will look like, what moves do you want to make (which is a strength of LR's soft proofing).

Nope, sorry, still not convinced...

Storing my master RGB in PP RGB still seems lie the best option as long as you use soft proofing.

If you don't know how to soft proof, that's not my problem...

BTW, let me know if you want to know how to make the required adjustments to make one look like the other in the above posted images...really easy to do (hint: HSL adjustments)

[Robert Ardill]

So you propose we clip all the colors into the gamut of our displays? We'd then be able to see them all.

You understand that the OOG overlay you use is buggy, shows OOG colors that are not really OOG and treat a tiny degree of OOG the same is a boat load of OOG? It's pretty useless IMHO (and it's a legacy feature that predates soft proofing in Photoshop which is far more effective.

Don't put words in my mouth Andrew.  I've never suggested we clip all the colors into the gamut of our displays.  There's a big difference between selecting an appropriately-sized workspace for your image and clipping all the OOG colors to a workspace that is far too small to contain the image's gamut (as you so ably ... or perhaps not so ably ... demonstrated in your video by clipping the hell out of your test image when you converted it to sRGB).

If you don't trust the Photoshop or Lightroom OOG warnings (is the Lightroom OOG warning also a legacy feature that is buggy, in your opinion?) then there are other tools that are not buggy and give a much better view of the potential problems, as you very well know.  Here is a GamutVision colormap that shows OOG colors: as you can see it shows more OOG colors than does Photoshop, and does so with more discrimination:



But anyway, I get it: ProPhoto and the print is the holy grail and anything else is a load of gunk.  Hope you don't waste too much paper and ink.

Robert

[Schewe]

But anyway, I get it: ProPhoto and the print is the holy grail and anything else is a load of gunk.  Hope you don't waste too much paper and ink.

Pretty much yes...and yes I don't waster a lot of paper/ink...I usually nail it 1st print out (after soft proofing). Sometimes I print a 2nd print (in case I screwup signing the darn print-but that's atypical).

Yes, you can go down various rabbit holes if you want...I choose not to do so.

And yes, ACR Smart Objects are "interesting"...heck you can even spec out Lab as an output space if you want to go down that route.

Personally, my personal choice is ProPhoto RGB and a Linear gamma as an output space in Photoshop (from Lightroom). But that's another debate all by itself (as to why linear is a better gamma to work in than 1..

[Robert Ardill]

Ok, you've proven that there is a difference between RelCol & Percept rending when printing from PP RGB. Cool...did you expect anything less? Of Course there will be a difference. DOOOOH. So which is better? RelCol or Percept? Are you saying the you cant make a move to make one look like the other? (clue, pretty easy to do with HSL).

So, the question begs to be asked, which looked "better" RelCol or Percept? Do you need help making one look like the other?

Look, ignore OOG warning info will you? Realize that the OOG warning is at best telling you that some colors may be out of gamut...it doesn't tell you much else.

You really, REALLY need to move beyond Out Of Gamut colors...The odds are, if you've opened a raw capture into PP RGB there will be OOG colors in most printers. The important thing to consider is what do those OOG colors look like? That's what soft proofing provides.

Once you know what the final print will look like, what moves do you want to make (which is a strength of LR's soft proofing).

Nope, sorry, still not convinced...

Storing my master RGB in PP RGB still seems lie the best option as long as you use soft proofing.

If you don't know how to soft proof, that's not my problem...

BTW, let me know if you want to know how to make the required adjustments to make one look like the other in the above posted images...really easy to do (hint: HSL adjustments)

You remind me of my brother, Andrew: he's a master argumenter, and what he does is to shift the subject when he's on the losing end of the argument. 

You asked me to give you examples to demonstrate color shifts, but when I do you say "doh! what did you expect?" and then you lecture me on how to correct these colors and to ignore the fact that they were OOG.  The reason they are wrong is that they are OOG and so the perceptual rendering shifts them to bring them into gamut whereas the relative rendering clips them.  Of course we can do something to correct this: we can not let them go into gamut in the first place; we can bring them back into gamut, or we can tweak them to bring them back to something like what they should be (which can be very difficult if we can't see the colors on our monitor and we don't trust the OOG warnings!).  Also, if you do need to make corrections like this, I would recommend Selective Color rather than HSL as it gives much better control.

What you appear to be suggesting is this:

• Keep your image in ProPhoto and forget about Gamut Warnings, they're unreliable and a waste of time
• Soft proof the image and tweak it to make it look 'good'.
• Print the image in both RelCol and Perc because you won't be able to see which looks better on your monitor (since the monitor gamut is smaller than your printer gamut)
• Pick the print you like best and throw away the other (or give it to charity) .... or ....
• Go back to step 2 and see if you can make further tweaks that will result in an acceptable print

So, if you like pain then that's fine, it will keep the ink and paper suppliers in business, so some good will come of it. 

But don't tell me to ignore OOG warnings and at the same time tell me to trust the soft-proofing, when you know only too well, since you mentioned this yourself in another thread, that the problem is that the monitor gamut is smaller than the print gamut in areas, AND the monitor gamut is significantly smaller than ProPhoto so you may not be able to SEE colors that are out of gamut in these areas, even with soft-proofing on, if the colors are greater than your sRGB or aRGB monitor.

Whether you like it or not, this is currently a problem, and there is no magic solution to it.  You can take a chance as you propose, and go ProPhoto all the way; or you can try to reduce the unknowns by restricting your image to a space that is close to your monitor's gamut.  Yes, this will mean that you may not be able to print some of the more saturated colors that you would have been able to do from ProPhoto ... but it also means that these more saturated colors won't be there, and you can use your HSL or Selective Color or Contrast or dodge/burn, or whatever adjustments to give the saturated look you want (as you know the impression of saturation is a relative one: if you have a desaturated color near a more saturated one, you bump up the impression of saturation by a huge amount, in the same way that local contrast gives a greater impression of detail, tonal depth and sharpness).

Look at this painting I did recently:



You may be interested to know that this was painted in PHOTOSHOP, with brushes that I have personally developed.  The image was painted in sRGB.  I think you may agree that there is plenty enough saturation, although I used watercolor colors that are not at all saturated.  The effect of saturation is because of the adjacent and contrasting unsaturated colors.

So, as they say, there's more ways than one to skin a cat.

Robert

[Robert Ardill]

Pretty much yes...and yes I don't waster a lot of paper/ink...I usually nail it 1st print out (after soft proofing). Sometimes I print a 2nd print (in case I screwup signing the darn print-but that's atypical).

Yes, you can go down various rabbit holes if you want...I choose not to do so.

And yes, ACR Smart Objects are "interesting"...heck you can even spec out Lab as an output space if you want to go down that route.

Personally, my personal choice is ProPhoto RGB and a Linear gamma as an output space in Photoshop (from Lightroom). But that's another debate all by itself (as to why linear is a better gamma to work in than 1..

Great ... I'm glad to hear your printing is usually successful.  But then, Jeff, you are a person who has years of experience printing and who has done a huge amount of investigating and experimenting in this area.  So you know, without needing much 'instrumentation' what is going to be OK and what is not, and you are not going to do stupid things like going bonkers with saturation in areas that you know your printer will struggle with (like saturated reds, perhaps).

It's like exposure: do you need to look at the histogram every time you take a shot?  I don't because I know from experience how to get a good exposure, just from the shutter speed and aperture.  Having said that, neither do I discount the camera's exposure meter or the captured image histogram: these are useful tools ... and they are especially useful when you are learning. As you get more experienced you don't need to rely on them as much, and you don't need to take 3 shots in order to get one right any more.  Just as you no longer need to do 3 prints in order to get one right.

Same isn't true for all of us.

Robert

[Schewe]

What you appear to be suggesting is this:

• Keep your image in ProPhoto and forget about Gamut Warnings, they're unreliable and a waste of time
• Soft proof the image and tweak it to make it look 'good'.
• Print the image in both RelCol and Perc because you won't be able to see which looks better on your monitor (since the monitor gamut is smaller than your printer gamut)
• Pick the print you like best and throw away the other (or give it to charity) .... or ....
• Go back to step 2 and see if you can make further tweaks that will result in an acceptable print

Well, you keep thinking one can't tell what rendering intent would be the most useful to use nor determine what moves one might make to get the final print you want. I don't bother to use both rendering intents (the vast majority of the time it's RelCol) and with with soft proofing I can reliably predict what the final print looks like-before putting ink on paper.

Not sure why you have a hard time understanding this...it's almost like you plot all this on paper and then because of the plotted result, determine in advance, that what you are thinking is gonna prevent you from getting the results you want, prevent you from getting the result you want and you simply quit.

Sure, I'm willing to make test print to prove that what I think a print is gonna look like actually looks like soft proofing predicts it will look like...the more I do that, the more I'm convinced that the soft proofed prediction is correct.

Sorry, you keep digging your hole and only get deeper with time...and what I keep doing keeps working. So, who's right? Well, what I'm doing seems to keep working really well. So, there ya go...do what I do or do what you do. I'll keep doing what I do...

[Robert Ardill]

Well, you keep thinking one can't tell what rendering intent would be the most useful to use nor determine what moves one might make to get the final print you want. I don't bother to use both rendering intents (the vast majority of the time it's RelCol) and with with soft proofing I can reliably predict what the final print looks like-before putting ink on paper.

Not sure why you have a hard time understanding this...it's almost like you plot all this on paper and then because of the plotted result, determine in advance, that what you are thinking is gonna prevent you from getting the results you want, prevent you from getting the result you want and you simply quit.

Sure, I'm willing to make test print to prove that what I think a print is gonna look like actually looks like soft proofing predicts it will look like...the more I do that, the more I'm convinced that the soft proofed prediction is correct.

Sorry, you keep digging your hole and only get deeper with time...and what I keep doing keeps working. So, who's right? Well, what I'm doing seems to keep working really well. So, there ya go...do what I do or do what you do. I'll keep doing what I do...

I don't know why you think that I don't get the results that I want? ... and that after much plotting and measuring and calculating I just quit 'cause I've proved to myself I can't get the result that I want? Honestly, you're as bad as Andrew!

What makes you think I don't have a very good idea of what is the best rendering intent to use for a particular print?  What have I said that gives you this notion? ... or are you just about making unfounded statements like this?

I get wonderful prints that I and my customers are delighted with.  Just because I don't follow your workflow doesn't mean that mine is any more complicated, takes any more time, or produces inferior results.  It's like the sharpening discussion we had: because we find out that deconvolution can give better results than USM doesn't mean that our workflow has suddenly become incredibly complex ... all it means is that we may be getting better results than before.

Instead of all of these put-downs it would be more useful if you went back to some of my examples and commented on these critically and intelligently.

Robert

[digitaldog]

Don't put words in my mouth Andrew.  I've never suggested we clip all the colors into the gamut of our displays.

You're now being rather ridiculous as we pin you down Robert. I didn't put words in your mouth, I asked you a question! See the little character at the end of the sentence that looks like this ? (another question mark).

Quote from: Robert Ardill on September 25, 2014, 04:56:40 PM
ppRGB can get you into trouble primarily because it’s easy to push colors out of gamut in any workspace that is larger than your monitor’s workspace, as you can’t always see the OOG colors (you may see banding but the problem may only manifest itself at output).
Andrew Rodney: So you propose we clip all the colors into the gamut of our displays?

You started this sillyness early on, suggesting there are issues, problems with ProPhoto RGB. By and large, your peers here have dismissed this and disagree. You've got an issue with it defining colors that fall outside display gamut, you wrote that just yesterday. I am unsure of your understanding of color management after all these pages so I asked. Are you aware that lots of color spaces, working space and output spaces fall outside display gamut? IF SO, how can you single out ProPhoto RGB?

Moving on. You suggest there's some issue with rendering intents and wide gamut and illustrate they appear differently. As Jeff so elegantly wrote: Duh! So what? But to backup your prejudices you write:

You asked me to give you examples to demonstrate color shifts, but when I do you say "doh! what did you expect?"

Color shifts? Color difference yes but shifts? Seems a stretch to me. Seems you sir are the politician!

You have this prejudices against ProPhoto RGB. You attempt to explain to lurkers that it is problematic but can't illustrate the issue, and admit you use it, then ignore that at least the one issue you have with it is shared by boat-loads of other color spaces. You're welcome to your flat earth ideas about color, but those of us with the satellite imagery see otherwise. As yet, I haven't seen anyone agree with you (quite the opposite). You're welcome to use whatever workflow you wish, I think I can speak for everyone by saying do use it and we wish you well. For lurkers and for the OP, much of what you've written doesn't wash. Doesn't make sense, can't be proven using a scientific method. And yet you love those gamut maps which are questionable and simply do not dismiss the facts our print output shows us time and time again.

Whether you like it or not, this is currently a problem, and there is no magic solution to it.

No, it's not a problem. At least for many, many LR/ACR and Photoshop users. It's your problem, your prejudice and if and when you properly learn to use the tools as others here have, you'll see it's not a problem. You call this an argument. I don't think so. I think you're kind of confused and have a workflow to defend and a prejudice towards a working space that IS used to process many or our images by choice of the raw converter we select. You're making up FUD with all these 'potental problems' and we're not buying it. I wrote we should move on pages ago. If the post has served any benefit , it's to point out that there are no prefect RGB working space. ProPhoto makes the best sense for many of us and that you're making mountains out of molehill's in terms of the issues you think there are with it's use. You can be very creative and screw up any image due to ignorance or on purpose to make a point. Don't screw up images.

Instead of all of these put-downs it would be more useful if you went back to some of my examples and commented on these critically and intelligently.

You may wish to review your own writings in this thread towards myself and Wayne before you go down that path Robert. Your quote above sounds like that of a politician who see's he's slipped up and has to cower to his base (whoever else that may be here if anyone).

[digitaldog]

Look at this painting I did recently:You may be interested to know that this was painted in PHOTOSHOP, with brushes that I have personally developed.  The image was painted in sRGB.  I think you may agree that there is plenty enough saturation, although I used watercolor colors that are not at all saturated.

Immaterial to the discussion, a digression, misdirection.

[Robert Ardill]

You're now being rather ridiculous as we pin you down Robert. I didn't put words in your mouth, I asked you a question! See the little character at the end of the sentence that looks like this ? (another question mark).
You started this sillyness early on, suggesting there are issues, problems with ProPhoto RGB. By and large, your peers here have dismissed this and disagree. You've got an issue with it defining colors that fall outside display gamut, you wrote that just yesterday. I am unsure of your understanding of color management after all these pages so I asked. Are you aware that lots of color spaces, working space and output spaces fall outside display gamut? IF SO, how can you single out ProPhoto RGB?

You know Andrew, there is also a thing called sarcasm and irony.  When you say "So you propose we clip all the colors into the gamut of our displays?" that is what I take it to be.  You surely wouldn't seriously ask me this question, wondering whether this is what I am actually proposing, wanting a serious reply from me.

If you did ask the question seriously, which I entirely doubt, then it's an absurd question, especially considering the fact that I have been lambasting you for doing just that with your test image on your video.

I don't feel that you are pinning me down at all.  On the contrary, I am completely confident in what I have said and so far you have failed to respond to the points I have made or to answer my questions to you.   For example, in the next post from you (the one before this reply), your comment is: "Immaterial to the discussion, a digression, misdirection.".  That has tended to be the gist of your responses.  

So I will again ask you the questions that have been for me at the root of our discussion: and that is regarding your assertion that sRGB is a bad working space to use. Here are my questions again:

Do you, or do you not accept that there is nothing wrong with sRGB, providing that the image gamut is contained within it?
Do you, or do you not accept that in your video you clip the wide gamut colors from the image, into a smaller color space whose gamut is much smaller than the image gamut, using a relative colorimetric mapping, and that you use this to 'demonstrate' that the smaller color space is deficient?

Moving on. You suggest there's some issue with rendering intents and wide gamut and illustrate they appear differently. As Jeff so elegantly wrote: Duh! So what? But to backup your prejudices you write:Color shifts? Color difference yes but shifts? Seems a stretch to me. Seems you sir are the politician!

Again, it seems to me that a response of "Duh! So what?" ... is not elegant at all but rather dismissive and discourteous.

Perhaps you would then answer me this question:
- How do you get color differences without color shifts?  And do you not think you are splitting hairs?

You have this prejudices against ProPhoto RGB. You attempt to explain to lurkers that it is problematic but can't illustrate the issue, and admit you use it, then ignore that at least the one issue you have with it is shared by boat-loads of other color spaces. You're welcome to your flat earth ideas about color, but those of us with the satellite imagery see otherwise. As yet, I haven't seen anyone agree with you (quite the opposite).

I do not have prejudices against ProPhoto.  I just do not think that it is the best working space to use unless your image has a very wide gamut that cannot be contained in a smaller color space but which nevertheless can be printed (as can be the case).  I have simply suggested that it is better (and you are free to disagree, of course) that using an unnecessarily large color space is unnecessary and can cause problems.

Of course I agree that all working spaces, as they are currently defined, have problems: as I've said, we are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, and this applies to all current working spaces.  sRGB has major issues too, at the opposite end to ProPhoto in that it is too small for many images.  Adobe RGB also has issues: again, it falls short of the gamut of modern printers, so that it is unsuitable for images that have a gamut that lies within the printer gamut but outside of its own gamut.  So I do agree that if you wish to use only one working space, then that working space should be large enough to hold the gamut of your images, and so a working space like ProPhoto is a valid choice.  You could also pick an intermediate one like Beta RGB which will pretty much cover all real-life colors (but which is in spots smaller than the best printer gamuts).  

I have illustrated the potential problems with very large working spaces both in this topic and in links that I have posted.  I have also suggested that you should talk to Graham Gill who is a CMM engineer and the author of ArgyllCMS as I personally think that he has in-depth knowledge of color management and can give you an independent view on this subject. So I am not asking you to take my word for it: I have tried to show you the problems and I have given you a link to an expert in the field.

You're welcome to use whatever workflow you wish, I think I can speak for everyone by saying do use it and we wish you well. For lurkers and for the OP, much of what you've written doesn't wash. Doesn't make sense, can't be proven using a scientific method. And yet you love those gamut maps which are questionable and simply do not dismiss the facts our print output shows us time and time again. No, it's not a problem. At least for many, many LR/ACR and Photoshop users. It's your problem, your prejudice and if and when you properly learn to use the tools as others here have, you'll see it's not a problem. You call this an argument. I don't think so. I think you're kind of confused and have a workflow to defend and a prejudice towards a working space that IS used to process many or our images by choice of the raw converter we select. You're making up FUD with all these 'potental problems' and we're not buying it. I wrote we should move on pages ago. If the post has served any benefit , it's to point out that there are no prefect RGB working space. ProPhoto makes the best sense for many of us and that you're making mountains out of molehill's in terms of the issues you think there are with it's use. You can be very creative and screw up any image due to ignorance or on purpose to make a point. Don't screw up images.  You may wish to review your own writings in this thread towards myself and Wayne before you go down that path Robert. Your quote above sounds like that of a politician who see's he's slipped up and has to cower to his base (whoever else that may be here if anyone).

You do sound quite angry.  I have already apologized to Wayne over the 'Flat Earth Society' quip and I hope he's accepted my apology.  I think it would be a good idea for me to go back on this thread to see if what you say is true and that I have been unpleasant, confrontational and illogical.  If so then I offer an unreserved apology to everyone I may have upset.

But I do think that it is perfectly possible to show the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses and problem areas of mappings from one color space to another by examining the profile that is used for the mapping and the way in which the CMM interprets this profile.  I admit that some of it is hidden to us because the manufacturers do not reveal their algorithms much of the time: however, we can, if we wish, use profiles from ArgyllCMS and LCMS for the mappings, in which case all of the information is freely available to us as these are both open-sourced programs.  As we can look at the source code and as we can examine the profiles we can know exactly what is happening.  In other words, given an image, we can know exactly what the output to the output device will be and this will tell us precisely what is happening to the colors.

We do not need to print in order to see this.  What we are looking at is the data that is being sent to the printer.  This doesn't reduce the need to look at the prints themselves, of course: but if we are getting issues with our prints then it may well show us that the problem is not with the profile or CMM (for instance) but at the printer itself (or vice-versa).  So it can provide useful information and help in diagnosing print problems.

Gamut maps are not the holy grail, but they can be very useful, as you know.  They can show you immediately and visually if there is a fundamental problem with your profile (both Chromix and Imatest give examples of this) ... caused perhaps by misreads when scanning the profiling chart.  They can show you what areas of your working space fall inside and outside of your print gamut, so you can focus your attention on these areas as they are the ones where the worst problems are likely to occur.  Additional features in programs like GamutVision allow you to see the color differences that will occur when you map your image from your working space to the destination space (in other words give you a gamut warning type image that is FAR more useful and sophisticated than either LR's or PS's: the map shows quite accurately the color differences that will occur and where these are).  

So I'm really surprised to hear you say that the gamut maps are questionable, especially as you are something of a color management expert yourself.  In what way are they questionable?  It would certainly be very useful to know in what way they are misinforming us, so I would be very grateful to you if you would be kind enough to explain the issues to us.

Anyway, it isn't clear to me that all of the 'lurkers' who have viewed this post have their minds made up that I'm talking nonsense. Perhaps some think that there may be something to it, and that it is worth trying to get an idea of what sort of things can help us get a better print without having to do it by trial and error (very expensive, very time consuming!!).  It would be good to hear from some of these photographers ... who may also have other ideas and suggestions that could be of benefit to all of us.

Robert

[digitaldog]

Anyway, it isn't clear to me that all of the 'lurkers' who have viewed this post have their minds made up that I'm talking nonsense.

I have made up my mind, that's enough for me to follow my own advise and move on. Anything else (in terms of your comments about this) is just a waste of my time to pay attention to. Got to put you on the Ingore/Do not call list on this one.

[John Hollenberg]

Anyway, it isn't clear to me that all of the 'lurkers' who have viewed this post have their minds made up that I'm talking nonsense.

When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.