Unexpected result after converting image profile to softproof profile

[digitaldog]

Here's a demonstration of Soft Proofing to a Fuji Frontier Dry Lab inkjet printer that prints in the sRGB space

No, it absolutely does not print in sRGB as no printer does!
http://2.static.img-dpreview.com/files/w/TS560x560?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitaldog.net%2Ffiles%2FsRGB_vs_SilverPrinters.jpg&signature=36ank%2BwiYB4k6tcKgbvVORmmoRg%3D

[Mark D Segal]

No, it absolutely does not print in sRGB as no printer does!

Of course, but maybe he meant their profile reflects a gamut that is somehow close to sRGB in size and shape.

[Rand47]

Mark,

Again, I can't thank you enough (and the others a well) for your generosity of spirit in helping with this.

Best regards,
Scott

[Mark D Segal]

You are welcome Scott, much appreciated. This has turned into quite a complicated little topic, from which we are learning stuff.

[Rand47]

You are welcome Scott, much appreciated. This has turned into quite a complicated little topic, from which we are learning stuff.

Mark,

Yes, indeed!  And for a lot of folk who don't have the privilege of doing high quality printing themselves, this is where the rubber really meets the road in trying to stay in control of the process, and get the best results they can.

I'm also feeling a little better about my own initial confusion!  LOL

Scott

[Doug Gray]

Tim,

If you identify the Frontier profile (State, Location, printer and exact profile name) you used in your example I'll download it and analyze how similar or not it is to sRGB. Frontier profiles have rather narrow gamuts barely exceeding sRGB in only a few places such as a midrange cyan. And that is only halfway between Adobe RGB and sRGB. Smaller than even a 4 color el cheapo desktop printer.

[digitaldog]

Of course, but maybe he meant their profile reflects a gamut that is somehow close to sRGB in size and shape.

Nope too. No printer can produce all of sRGB, the shapes are quite different.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Tim,

If you identify the Frontier profile (State, Location, printer and exact profile name) you used in your example I'll download it and analyze how similar or not it is to sRGB. Frontier profiles have rather narrow gamuts barely exceeding sRGB in only a few places such as a midrange cyan. And that is only halfway between Adobe RGB and sRGB. Smaller than even a 4 color el cheapo desktop printer.

We've discussed this in the past and as before you've presented the same arguments by splitting hairs over color reproduction color gamuts from high volume consumer grade printers at big box stores such as Costco and Walmart.

You're just making this harder than it has to be. These printers interpret RGB data, not CMYK. So the reproduction of color is going to be a standard that will accommodate regular consumers with digital cameras whose default jpeg color space is sRGB. Their printer is not going to be some exotic or oversized color space. It will have it's own color gamut shape that's not exactly any synthetic RGB working space but by and large it's going to reproduce colors that fall within a common and standard color space and that being sRGB.

I've provided methods a hobbyist can implement if they have Photoshop to do convert/assign testing by simply printing a test target at a Costco printer and check how far off it is from sRGB or Costco's supplied profile. This obsessing over a printer's gamut able to reproduce one color region such cyan isn't going to help a hobbyist.

[Stephen Ray]

Fortunately, I didn't have them print it.

I could be way off base here as I did not read 40+ posts but, study your critical path here. The prints were fine earlier. You have no print yet of the file you've profiled in this instance. The saturation you're seeing is what is required by the printing process but will result in normal print colors if you go ahead and print it. For example; A very bright red in the scene may measure only 160r in sRGB but the print process may require 255r to recreate the same bright red. So, if you convert the sRGB file to the printer profile but turn off viewing through the printer profile, you will see (and can measure) 255r.

Again, I could be mistaken as I haven't read this very long thread. Maybe y'all have already reached this point.

[Stephen Ray]

Here's a demonstration of Soft Proofing to a Fuji Frontier Dry Lab inkjet printer that prints in the sRGB space: (meaning printer maintains similar saturation/hue/contrast of an image converted to sRGB given that it was edited on a calibrated/profiled display).

I think what you might mean to say here is; "The inkjet printer that prints from the sRGB space." As most shops do ask the file be submitted in sRGB. However, realize the actual print gamut falls significantly short of much of the sRGB space.

Below is the difference between the Fuji print and the actual source image and a picture of how it appeared on my display Soft Proofing through the printer profile in relation to sRGB space. Note the greenish yellows turned redder. That's about how off what you can expect Soft Proofing EXACTLY as described above.

I've just taken a look at some Dry Creek profiles for various Costco locations and processes. Many suspect profiles are obvious to me. Most of the profiles I looked at have significant data problems that will result in the matter you experience; The "greenish yellows turned redder" in your soft proof view being a clear alert the process of printing or profiling or both is not controlled. I don't believe its the fault of Dry Creek as they can only generate from the data their provided.

[Doug Gray]

We've discussed this in the past and as before you've presented the same arguments by splitting hairs over color reproduction color gamuts from high volume consumer grade printers at big box stores such as Costco and Walmart.

I don't recall discussing this with you previously. I consider Frontier printers reasonably high quality printers but with limited gamut. That often isn't a problem. However, gamut size aside, Drycreek profiles should provide good, color managed results with Costco printers. The OP describes a sudden problem in a process that previously worked. Proper use of profiles provides a variety of Intents such as Perceptual and Relative and it can be useful to be able to select the best one. Further, while the Frontier printers RGB mapping appears to be much closer to sRGB than that of a large gamut printer it still needs to be provided a profile converted RGB image to achieve the best match with a soft proof.  BTW, assigning the printer profile to an image converted to sRGB and sending it to Costco will result in exactly the same print as just sending the sRGB image and requesting the same settings.

You're just making this harder than it has to be. These printers interpret RGB data, not CMYK. So the reproduction of color is going to be a standard that will accommodate regular consumers with digital cameras whose default jpeg color space is sRGB. Their printer is not going to be some exotic or oversized color space. It will have it's own color gamut shape that's not exactly any synthetic RGB working space but by and large it's going to reproduce colors that fall within a common and standard color space and that being sRGB.

I've provided methods a hobbyist can implement if they have Photoshop to do convert/assign testing by simply printing a test target at a Costco printer and check how far off it is from sRGB or Costco's supplied profile. This obsessing over a printer's gamut able to reproduce one color region such cyan isn't going to help a hobbyist.

People are free to stick to sRGB images and avoid the complexities of color management. If it works for you that's great but this section of the forum would not exist if others didn't want more control and repeatability.

[Tim Lookingbill]

I think what you might mean to say here is; "The inkjet printer that prints from the sRGB space." As most shops do ask the file be submitted in sRGB. However, realize the actual print gamut falls significantly short of much of the sRGB space.

And why would most shops ask to submit files in sRGB when the Dry Creek Photo profiles of similar print models render a close enough match to sRGB as I demonstrated in the  posted image. It shouldn't just slightly make greenish yellows look reddish. It should be WAY OFF! It suggest the color spaces are not so dissimilar.

The green to reddish results in the print vs soft proof results from Dry Creek Photo profile in the image I posted is indicating that profile was not built from the Raw linearized print space (largest gamut possible) but an optimized state of the printer output which can be quite similar to a standard synthetic RGB space such as sRGB.

I've printed an sRGB image to a Fuji Frontier DL6xx at my local Walgreens and told the tech to choose "Printer Space" instead of sRGB in the print driver. The saturation increase of the print was quite noticeable! Similar to assigning AdobeRGB to an sRGB file. I downloaded a DL6xx profile from a European Fuji Frontier site and converted the sRGB image to it which significantly reduced saturation and made it print as if I'ld printed in sRGB set in the Fuji printer driver.

I've just taken a look at some Dry Creek profiles for various Costco locations and processes. Many suspect profiles are obvious to me. Most of the profiles I looked at have significant data problems that will result in the matter you experience; The "greenish yellows turned redder" in your soft proof view being a clear alert the process of printing or profiling or both is not controlled. I don't believe its the fault of Dry Creek as they can only generate from the data their provided.

And thus what is a hobbyist photographer printing at Costco suppose to do if even their processes aren't consistent and controllable. Certainly a custom profile is not going to work if this is the case. My posted soft proofing demo image is providing a way for the hobbyist to do a random test print to see how off it is from a standard color rendering space. It's not perfect but at least the photographer will get an idea what to expect and what to do about it.

Anyone using Costco is not looking for perfect color matching.

[Tim Lookingbill]

I don't recall discussing this with you previously. I consider Frontier printers reasonably high quality printers but with limited gamut. That often isn't a problem. However, gamut size aside, Drycreek profiles should provide good, color managed results with Costco printers. The OP describes a sudden problem in a process that previously worked. Proper use of profiles provides a variety of Intents such as Perceptual and Relative and it can be useful to be able to select the best one. Further, while the Frontier printers RGB mapping appears to be much closer to sRGB than that of a large gamut printer it still needs to be provided a profile converted RGB image to achieve the best match with a soft proof.  BTW, assigning the printer profile to an image converted to sRGB and sending it to Costco will result in exactly the same print as just sending the sRGB image and requesting the same settings.
People are free to stick to sRGB images and avoid the complexities of color management. If it works for you that's great but this section of the forum would not exist if others didn't want more control and repeatability.

Well it's obvious Costco changed something and didn't tell the OP what that change was. Soft Proofing with Costco printer profile and using different rendering intents isn't going to fix it.

Temporarily assigning the printer profile to an sRGB image will soft proof what state the printer was in the profile reflects if it happens to be close to an optimized for sRGB state.

If assigning shows an extremely changed sRGB preview like say over saturation as if assigning AdobeRGB to sRGB then the image from its original editing space needs to be converted to the Costco profile. If doing this renders a bad print then the OP needs to talk to the photo lab technician on what changed.

As for Fuji Frontiers Dry Labs having limited gamut see the Colorsync Utility showing its comparison to sRGB. I converted my ProPhotoRGB test images to that European Fuji Frontier profile to print at my local Walgreens having the tech choose "Printer Space" instead of sRGB in the Fuji driver. Not much difference to just printing an sRGB image in sRGB printer space.

[digitaldog]

We've discussed this in the past and as before you've presented the same arguments by splitting hairs over color reproduction color gamuts from high volume consumer grade printers at big box stores such as Costco and Walmart.

You're just making this harder than it has to be. This obsessing over a printer's gamut able to reproduce one color region such cyan isn't going to help a hobbyist.

Hobbyists and everyone else should be provided correct facts. Not misinformation! What you wrote was simply wrong! Again. As we have discussed before. 
”The reason there's so much ignorance on the subject of color management, is that those who have it are so eager to regularly share it!” - The Digital Dog

[Stephen Ray]

Fortunately, I didn't have them print it.  I just uploaded the file to my wife's "album" and clicked on the image to view it.  It was horrible.  I checked her account preferences, and she has set as a default "Auto Correct Off."  I opened the same file in LR and it was garish, although it did look a lot more reasonable when I checked the Softproof box again.

I dunno...maybe I was over-aggressive when doing the softproof optimization.  However, I've been softproofing for many years and printing myself, and haven't run into this phenomenon, at least in this century!

Again, study this critical path by the OP. He is observing the file using the values required by the printer machine until he enables soft proofing when he sees the file as it will eventually print.

" It was horrible." Yes, because you're looking at an untagged file or the viewing software is not color managed.

"it did look a lot more reasonable when I checked the Softproof box again." There you are!

[Stephen Ray]

And why would most shops ask to submit files in sRGB when the Dry Creek Photo profiles of similar print models render a close enough match to sRGB as I demonstrated in the  posted image.

Maybe some history will help here...

The machines were developed to use color lookup tables more than 20 years ago and before ICC profiles were in general use. They were scanner-based for printing from film, both negatives and positive films and hardcopy Type-C prints. The machines had / have many lookup tables optimized for many film types and many scene types. I don't believe there was much consideration of "sRGB" at the time.

Eventually, it became a bonus that one could bypass the scanner and have a file printed from outside the loop. sRGB was the only prevalent color space and Adobe 1998 was new (and rare.) What else could possibly be used as a base at the time? Same with digital cameras (again rare) at the time and monitors at the time. Many service technicians did not even know that printing from outside the loop was even possible! Most machines were installed in one-hour shops that had no other computer-based imaging, but the larger shops who had IT staff could simply network into the machine and send files. Surprise. When Photoshop 6 arrived with sensible soft proofing things really took off.

Just really smart, outstanding machines, all engineered before Photoshop could use ICC profiles.

So, with the older silver halide machines, they don't really print in sRGB space. Technically, they print in many proprietary RGB or conceivably "CMY" spaces that, we know, is limited to that particular type of photo process. The newer dry lab process is not unlike any other good inkjet process and thus, has more gamut for the most part and operators and technicians are computer savvy nowadays. Yay.

[digitaldog]

Maybe some history will help here...

Excellent and useful history; a keeper and thanks!

[Doug Gray]

Maybe some history will help here...

The machines were developed to use color lookup tables more than 20 years ago and before ICC profiles were in general use. They were scanner-based for printing from film, both negatives and positive films and hardcopy Type-C prints. The machines had / have many lookup tables optimized for many film types and many scene types. I don't believe there was much consideration of "sRGB" at the time.

Eventually, it became a bonus that one could bypass the scanner and have a file printed from outside the loop. sRGB was the only prevalent color space and Adobe 1998 was new (and rare.) What else could possibly be used as a base at the time? Same with digital cameras (again rare) at the time and monitors at the time. Many service technicians did not even know that printing from outside the loop was even possible! Most machines were installed in one-hour shops that had no other computer-based imaging, but the larger shops who had IT staff could simply network into the machine and send files. Surprise. When Photoshop 6 arrived with sensible soft proofing things really took off.

Just really smart, outstanding machines, all engineered before Photoshop could use ICC profiles.

So, with the older silver halide machines, they don't really print in sRGB space. Technically, they print in many proprietary RGB or conceivably "CMY" spaces that, we know, is limited to that particular type of photo process. The newer dry lab process is not unlike any other good inkjet process and thus, has more gamut for the most part and operators and technicians are computer savvy nowadays. Yay.

Good analysis. From analyzing a few of the Frontier profiles there is some variation amongst them. It's probably due to machine to machine variance. Printed images, when supplied a straight sRGB image appear to print somewhat like my Canon 9500 II does selecting sRGB and letting the printer manage color. What it prints is "off" from what it prints with a custom profile. Using a profile should provide more consistency not to mention being able to select Intents but just printing the sRGB file directly is vaguely acceptable, especially for those that use no color management at all which is probably 90% or more of people that just buy printers to print their home snapshots. The average dE of my 9500 operated in "Printer manages color" for a wide range of in gamut colors constrained to be in sRGB is about 6 and that is about what the Costco Frontier profiles do as well though the mapping is quite different. The 9500 expands the sRGB gamut where it can and lightens the image as well. The result is oversaturated, especially the greens and not appealing to me but I've used color management so long that these kinds of differences bother me when I print w/o color management.

[smthopr]

A personal experience:

I won a photo book in a contest at a photo event.  The book is printed on fuji crystal archive paper and then carefully by hand made into a beautiful hard cover book.  This company required that I upload the photos into their website as .jpg at 360dpi and tagged sRGB.  (the book company contracts with an outside lab).  I asked the book company for the .icc profile used by the lab and they supplied it to me.  I used this to soft proof the images in photoshop, but saved the files as sRGB as required.

And... the prints in the book came out as expected.  Yes, they might not be the most accurate, but they are accurate enough and the soft proof was a good guide to handling the out of gamut colors and restricting the images to the printer gamut.

So, what I'm saying is that this sRGB process can work well.  Yes, there are colors that my Epson can print that this lab can not, but really it's not that big of a deal.  The book looks fantastic and very much worth the $200 that I didn't spend myself!!!!

[Mark D Segal]

I can well understand that. The books one gets from Blurb and many other providers are produced on HP Indigo machines or similar and the gamut is not the widest, but many photos don't require huge gamuts or can be squeezed in under softproofing satisfactorily, so the results come back looking OK; and the process you describe for preparing the photos is a good way to go. There is one relatively new machine on the market that I saw demonstrated about a year ago - the Canon DreamLabo 5000; it's an inkjet production printer for making photobooks, etc. and the output is stunning. Unfortunately, this machine is enormous and costs a fortune (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfE5k0wClWA). There are extremely few in operation on the North American continent, so not obvious where to find firms using them, but it's the high-end of the industry and would deserve the best possible "pre-press" colour management of the photos being sent to it.