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Author Topic: sRGB, Adobe RGB, and ProPhoto RGB - Exploring the Gamut Limitations of Printing  (Read 21164 times)

digitaldog

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Amusing, but there is nothing here even close to fiendishly clever or really even clever. As you pointed out numerous times - similar things have been done before.  It's a form of soft proofing, or, when downloaded and printed, hard proofing.
Cross rendering a larger to smaller gamut output to print is indeed not new. We've been over it.
I'm still lost as to why I'd do this when one output is a print, the other is a display. I can't make an sRGB preview look like a ProPhoto RGB output to an Epson any more than I can get a gallon of water to fit completely into a pint container. If I need sRGB for viewing on the web, I'll send sRGB to that media. If I need a saturated print, using the full gamut of that output device, I'll send it ProPhoto RGB. How the print and the web are connected otherwise is what I'm still not at all clear on.
How do I make an sRGB soft proof match a ProPhoto RGB print? And why would I want to?
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Doug Gray

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Well, actually, as far as I'm concerned there is no problem. The display provides a very satisfactory prediction under soft-proofing of what will come out of the printer, because I am properly colour-managed from start to finish - notwithstanding the differences in gamut shape and DMax between the two output of the two devices, one of which transmits light and the reflects it. Prlnter profiles that provide good soft-proofing handle this gap quite nicely.

There is no problem proofing printers on a monitor because the gamut clipping path goes through the 3D LUTs first.
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Mark D Segal

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There is no problem proofing printers on a monitor because the gamut clipping path goes through the 3D LUTs first.

Doug, there can be such problems if one's profiling of both devices is not up to scratch. I've seen it, I hate being surprised by what comes out of my printer, so I'm pretty careful about profile quality, correct monitor calibration and softproofing. My wastage rate is very low as a result. Sometimes one is fooled, but not often with a good quality colour management set-up. The quality matters, especially using a high-end printer like an Epson 4900 with wide gamut media.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Doug Gray

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Doug, there can be such problems if one's profiling of both devices is not up to scratch. I've seen it, I hate being surprised by what comes out of my printer, so I'm pretty careful about profile quality, correct monitor calibration and softproofing. My wastage rate is very low as a result. Sometimes one is fooled, but not often with a good quality colour management set-up. The quality matters, especially using a high-end printer like an Epson 4900 with wide gamut media.

Mark,
I'm with you there. I've seen some pretty marginal printer profiles too and made some when I was first learning. GIGO.
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Doug Gray

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I'm still lost as to why I'd do this when one output is a print, the other is a display.
A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to get their prints to match their monitors. It's not a simple job but it is completely doable providing their monitor gamut encompasses their printed image gamut. It's close to doable even if the monitor gamut is a bit narrower that that of the image.
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I can't make an sRGB preview look like a ProPhoto RGB output to an Epson any more than I can get a gallon of water to fit completely into a pint container. If I need sRGB for viewing on the web, I'll send sRGB to that media. If I need a saturated print, using the full gamut of that output device, I'll send it ProPhoto RGB. How the print and the web are connected otherwise is what I'm still not at all clear on.
Your analogy to water containers is flawed. The "gallon" container is never filled. Not even close.
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How do I make an sRGB soft proof match a ProPhoto RGB print? And why would I want to?
This mostly depends on how well your viewing booth is set up to match your monitor when soft proofing. Seems that people have a lot of difficulty doing this. You have to understand illuminants, possibly create a profile targeting a specific illuminant if you aren't close enough to D50. Most aren't. Then get the illuminant WP, lux and monitor WP, nit levels correct. That's the hard part in soft proofing. Sure sRGB is a pretty limited space. Only use it if you have to.

Still, knowing how limited sRGB is, I'm just rather amazed how close almost all images I've looked at so far can be rendered in sRGB to proximate a high gamut print.

Also, someone might look into making 3D LUT monitor profiles that map like sRGB inside sRGB gamut but provide a better algorithm to the gamut boundry than RGB clipping.
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