Silver Rag kicks Crystal Archive's butt? Do I have this right?

[bill t.]

Can't varnish on this cold day so have been doodling with ColorThink 2.3.

I downloaded some Crystal Archive profiles for various systems, and this is what I saw.  Good grief!  Based on CA's online hype I didn't expect this.

Am I doing something wrong, or is the main photographic claim to fame of Crystal Archive only its super gloss?  Is anybody getting good CA results from a more generous profile?

The wireframe is Silver Rag profile created with my i1Photo Pro system, it's almost identical to Museo's profile.  The solid hull the profile for the Oce Lightjet, which seems to be slightly more optimistic than the profiles for the other systems I looked at.

[Czornyj]

Gamutwise any c-print doesn't come close to pigment inkjet print, and CA is especially shitty emulsion, even among the whole retarded c-print category.

[digitaldog]

IMHO, to be expected.

[bill t.]

Live & learn.

When I first starting seeing facemounted CA some years ago at Lik's galleries, I noticed how blank looking bright areas were, especially in dramatic sunset colors.  I assumed is was just the inherent low dynamic range of the transparency film he was using at that time.

[Wayne Fox]

Yes to be expected.  But to say that means Silver Rag kicks Crystal archive in actual prints is overstating it because C prints done right can look outstanding, and in some respects because of the surface possibilities (there isn’t pigment inkjet process that comes close to Fuji Flex pure mirror gloss and pigment metallic paper prints just don’t quite equal Kodak Metallic ). Even if you compare them side by side, you may find you prefer the look of the C print on at least some.

Getting great looking color out of limited gamut devices has been going on a long time. sure they won’t match compared side by side but that doesn’t make them bad.

Note that I personally far prefer inkjet and have been doing some serious work trying to find the perfect way to face mount a pigment print to give me the same look as if I face mount a Fuji Flex print, because the visual differences between c printing and good inkjet, while often extremely subtle are important to me, and the longevity factor is important.

but a gamut plot doesn’t really show much about the differences.

[bill t.]

Wayne of course I was comparing apples and oranges.  I did lots of type C Ektaprint and Cibachrome in the 70's and in spite of each's significant limitations if one had the right kind of image the prints could be spectacular.  It was then impossible to post process a mediocre image into something presumably beautiful.  The only processing option back then was to spend a lot of time looking around for shots that could be well presented by the media, then waiting around for the best possible light, if one wanted spectacular results.

Anyway, I then greatly enjoyed Ektaprint type Cs in ways I now like certain low gamut matte media that produce a subtle march of tonality across the surface.  That's not what Crystal Archive is about!

Anyway, an interesting feature of ColorThink is that you can compare point cloud samples of an image with the gamut envelope for a particular media.

****

The first image image shows only the point cloud for a very typical New Mexico daylight landscape.  As with most landscapes shot anywhere, it aligns primarily along the "b" axis.

The middle image shows how well Crystal Archive embraces the point cloud with an Agfa machine.

The last image shows how Silver Rag contains the cloud.

******

The difference is a lot less that suggested by the raw gamut envelope comparisons, as both profiles manage to contain a goodly percentage of cloud.

Have not seen a CA print of the image, but I suspect I would prefer the gentler textures and smoother tonalities of Silver Rag, regardless of color management issues.  But if I were selling expensive pieces to TV personalities, basketball players, and ex-presidents in Las Vegas...

[hugowolf]

Bill, are you using ColorThink or ColorThink Pro?

Brian A

[bill t.]

Just basic ColorThink 2.3.  It doesn't do all the razzle dazzle stuff like finding rotations inside the gamut envelope and other exotic color management diseases, most of which are of more concern to printing presses than inkjet printers.  But it does a great job of comparing profiles and of plotting the color distribution in actual image files against the available gamut in a particular profile.  Being able to view image color distribution plotted against gamut envelopes is very educational, and made me realize simple gamut envelope comparisons alone don't tell the whole story.

I also use it to evaluate the effects of varnishing on various media.

It's a little quirky in the user interface, but that's made up for by the programmer pretty clearly understanding the utility of the concept.  It used to be possible to compare gamuts with iccview.de, but apparently that's gone.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... It used to be possible to compare gamuts with iccview.de, but apparently that's gone.

Thanks for the link, Bill! It actually still works. I was particularly interested in the color distribution of one particular image of mine that I expected to be difficult to print, as it has a lot of subtle blue variations, typically outside sRGB gamut that I am requested to send to a lab.

Here is the image:


Aqua Blue II by Slobodan Blagojevic, on Flickr

And here are the plots comparing sRGB and AdobeRGB agains the color distribution of the image. Adobe can hold just a smidgen more colors than sRGB (for this particular image), so the question is:

Which paper profile/printer/process combination would result in a max coverage (apart from ProPhotoRGB, the image's embedded profile, of course)?

[Wayne Fox]

Off topic but had to say it,


Love that shot.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Love that shot.

Thanks, Wayne. That is why I am curious as to what would be the best way to print it. I did have it printed on 36"x36" canvas, from an sRGB file, and it does look nice, though a bit subdued compared to the emissive rendering on screen. I am thinking face-mounted acrylic (as the modern presentation goes well with the modern architecture), but which paper?

[howardm]

nice shot w/ great color!  Is that the 'natural' color of the day or did you adjust the WB to pull out more blue?

[bill t.]

You don't get to choose your paper!  Your lab will have a super glossy paper which they know will facemount well.  Your choice will be their way or the highway.  For gamut checking you can assume any of the super glossy RC inkjet papers, they're all about the same in terms of gamut.

Yes, damned fine image!  And you can be proud of yourself for producing an image that is almost completely out of gamut for any known media!  Takes years of practice.

Sometimes if you can't tuck a color range inside the gamut envelope, you can still keep it from going blank by increasing the relative luminance contrast for colors very near by, so you can at least see some textural and luminance differences in those areas if not true color differences.  For instance in gamut-challenged sunset clouds that can be done by creating a luminance mask or monochrome version of the image as a mask on a curves layer, then bumping the contrast and texture on the mask with the curves control or maybe even Detail 3.  Much black painting of un-useful mask areas will be required.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

nice shot w/ great color!  Is that the 'natural' color of the day or did you adjust the WB to pull out more blue?

It's a mid-day shot, where I played with different WB and was stunned by the effect the tungsten WB produced. It is basically all white balconies with blue-reflecting windows. Something like this:

[howardm]

Thank you for the clarification.  I've been looking at a bunch of Antarctica images lately and it really fits in w/ that motif.

[hugowolf]

...  It used to be possible to compare gamuts with iccview.de, but apparently that's gone.

It was gone for a long time, but it is back again, although the site is a little more flaky and mostly in German.

Brian A

[Stefan Ohlsson]

Thanks, Wayne. That is why I am curious as to what would be the best way to print it. I did have it printed on 36"x36" canvas, from an sRGB file, and it does look nice, though a bit subdued compared to the emissive rendering on screen. I am thinking face-mounted acrylic (as the modern presentation goes well with the modern architecture), but which paper?

Most labs uses c-prints when they do face-mounted prints. This will give you a much smaller colour gamut compared to a well done pigment print. You will also get a print that will fade 3-4 times faster than a pigment prints according to the tests made both at Aardenburg and Wilhem Research. We have made some tests with face-mounting pigment prints and now we are very satisfied with the results. We don't see any problems with delaminating that was a problem in the pasts. So if you want to preserve the largest colour gamut, pigment prints is the way to go.

Best/
Stefan
www.korta.nu/profiler

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Ok, let's forget face-mounting for a moment. Let me rephrase the question:

Which paper/printer/process combination results in the widest gamut?

In general, and specifically for blue-rich images, like mine. As for pigment ink, my understanding is that it is superior to dye ink when it comes to longevity, but not gamut?

[bill t.]

Only experimentation will reveal the best blue-friendly media.  I too have a blue-heaven shot that is at least 80% out of gamut on any media.  The interesting thing about it is, it looks best on an OBA canva that has a such a shallow gamut that literally everything that is blue is out of gamut.

The question is not which media is least out of gamut in the blues, but rather which one has the most attractive palette of Gamut-Failure-Blues.  Best not to become enthralled with the graven representations of one's images on the screen, but rather learn to love the prints.

[hugowolf]

Ok, let's forget face-mounting for a moment. Let me rephrase the question:

Which paper/printer/process combination results in the widest gamut?

In general, and specifically for blue-rich images, like mine. As for pigment ink, my understanding is that it is superior to dye ink when it comes to longevity, but not gamut?

You could try soft proofing with various ICC profiles, to see what is and is not in gamut.

Brian A