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William Walker

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Observations of a Greehorn
« on: November 28, 2009, 02:13:43 am »

I have been taking photographs for more than thirty years now, although, to be honest, I have only become passionate about photography since the advent of digital and the internet. I have had my Pentax K10D now for a few years, taken many pictures and spent many happy hours on the computer working with those pictures.
I read somewhere that the print is the final step (and also to a large degree – the point) of taking a picture.
With this in mind I have spent the last year or so doing homework on printing and printers and preparing myself for this quest. I started off by upgrading my computer and splashed out on the new (early 2009), - now old – Imac 24”. Beautiful! Then I read about the issues with the screen luminance and thought perhaps I had rushed into things. No matter, onwards I went.
I next upgraded to Snow Leopard when that came out. In the printer department, I narrowed the choice down to Epson and was perfectly positioned to buy the new 3880 as it came out. Beautiful! Now to push the learning up a notch or two – I downloaded “from Print to Camera” and spent six or seven wonderful hours in awe of Jeff Schewe and quickly became his number one fan. Then I started spending far too much time on this forum and soon learned that there was a lot of politics flying around – especially where my new hero was concerned! Super! (He is still my hero – even after the recent “Re – A Call for Support” postings!) To round this exercise off I opted for the Colormunki Photo – and read about its issues too. Somehow, it seems, I brewed up the perfect storm!
Now, in the “Camera to Print” video,  I gathered that setting up this whole glorious procedure could be somewhat frustrating – making sure this was set that way and that was set this way, checking for this, re-setting that - and so on. However, I did not realise the scale of the exercise. (Don’t you find that they always leave one or two vital clues for you to discover all on your own?) My dumbest mistake – after one or two hours of calibrating, profiling, soft-proofing and heaven knows what else - was forgetting to open the front flap to let the bloody picture out!
And so to the point of everything – the print. It came out looking nothing like the soft-proof.
It is now two days later and, last night, something finally came out in a rough likeness to what was on the screen. Things are (literally and figuratively) still a bit dark – but there was enough in that last print to give me hope. (Same as golf – there is always that one shot that you play that makes you come back and play again!)
It seems strange to me that we can put a man on the moon with less computing power than a calculator, we can sequence the human genome in less than a month, and yet, we cannot push one button on the computer and what appears on the screen comes out of the printer! Really, it can’t be that difficult, can it?
Finally, I understand that these things take time and one day I will look back on all of this with a smile.
One thing is true: if the print is the reason for taking the picture, then I have learned that printing pictures will change the way I take them. In a way it takes you back to using film because to print costs money, so it better be right! If you are going to go the trouble of printing a picture (and hanging it up) it has to be good in all photographic senses of the word, technically and aesthetically.
A whole new adventure awaits me!
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2009, 10:09:20 am »

I remember well when I first heard the innocent-sounding phrase "Color management" several years ago. How can two little words inflict so much pain?

It is indeed a long, slow learning curve.

As for Schewe: I once felt a little bruised by one of his comments, but the wealth of stuff I have learned from him over the years is just enormous. He is indeed one of my heroes, too. To keep from feeling too put off by some of his postings it helps to read what he says carefully. If he calls you "Bud," don't read too much into it.

Good luck wrestling with the Color Management dragon!

Eric

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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2009, 01:11:28 pm »

Quote from: WillytheWalks
And so to the point of everything – the print. It came out looking nothing like the soft-proof.
It is now two days later and, last night, something finally came out in a rough likeness to what was on the screen. Things are (literally and figuratively) still a bit dark – but there was enough in that last print to give me hope. (Same as golf – there is always that one shot that you play that makes you come back and play again!)

Hay, don't feel bad, even I screwed up the other day, after profiling a new paper and setting up prints in Indesign I sent it to print and forgot to set the new paper/printer profile. After 20 years of setting up print jobs on about every kind of medium I still make mistakes somethings. Maybe I should not be so hard on Adobe, Apple and the printer manufacture but I see where it can really make it frustrating on those without a full understanding of CM to not know when it is not their fault and go blindly looking for solutions.

The best thing you can do though is download a good known reference file to print or view on screen so that you always have an example of what is correct (photo wise) so you can know if it is monitor calibration and profile, or printer driver settings, application print settings or even a bad profile that are causing you to get incorrect colors.

Doyle
« Last Edit: November 28, 2009, 01:14:05 pm by DYP »
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William Walker

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« Reply #3 on: November 28, 2009, 02:06:58 pm »

[quote name='DYP' date='Nov 28 2009, 02:11 PM' post='328347']
Hay, don't feel bad, even I screwed up the other day, after profiling a new paper and setting up prints in Indesign I sent it to print and forgot to set the new paper/printer profile. After 20 years of setting up print jobs on about every kind of medium I still make mistakes somethings. Maybe I should not be so hard on Adobe, Apple and the printer manufacture but I see where it can really make it frustrating on those without a full understanding of CM to not know when it is not their fault and go blindly looking for solutions.

The best thing you can do though is download a good known reference file to print or view on screen so that you always have an example of what is correct (photo wise) so you can know if it is monitor calibration and profile, or printer driver settings, application print settings or even a bad profile that are causing you to get incorrect colors.

Doyle
[The best thing you can do though is download a good known reference file to print or view on screen so that you always have an example of what is correct (photo wise) so you can know if it is monitor calibration and profile, or printer driver settings, application print settings or even a bad profile that are causing you to get incorrect colors.]

Thanks for that - I printed again this afternoon and still there are problems with the colour not matching - what reference would you suggest?
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eronald

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« Reply #4 on: November 28, 2009, 03:58:11 pm »

You *need* a colorchecker (the big one) and a colorchecker image. That allows a you to figure out how good your monitor profile and monitor quality is, and do a final check of your print profiles.

Colorchecker images can be eownloaded off Bruce Lindbloom's site:  http://www.brucelindbloom.com/
Colorchecker tests MUST (I repeat MUST) be printed with relative colorimetric or perceptual intent. Absolute won't work.

You also can use the Thomas Holm test image: http://www.ekdahl.org/kurs/SpyderColorvisi...l_testimage.htm to test your profile quality.

I will make a free printer profile for anyone who asks nicely. Donations are encouraged, though

Edmund
« Last Edit: November 28, 2009, 03:59:06 pm by eronald »
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Schewe

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« Reply #5 on: November 28, 2009, 04:16:59 pm »

Quote from: WillytheWalks
It seems strange to me that we can put a man on the moon with less computing power than a calculator, we can sequence the human genome in less than a month, and yet, we cannot push one button on the computer and what appears on the screen comes out of the printer! Really, it can’t be that difficult, can it?


Color science is a lot harder that rocket science...with rocket science, you either land on your target or you are dead. Pretty high standards when missing costs you your life...with color science, it's _ALL_ about coming close to a match knowing it'll never match exactly...with regards to the human genom, sorry, can't really comment on that–I stayed away from bio science and stuck with physics and chemestry :~)


When I first started trying to do "color management" it was well before the term "Color Management" became so popular. The first attempt I made using a program called EFI Color Cachet actually worked surprisingly well way back in 1994/1995 time frame.

The scheme back then was to provide reference images printed in CMYK, the CMYK images, a CMYK setup file (before ICC profiles) and a method of wanking your monitor to have the CMYK image file match the CMYK output. You knew what the CMYK was SUPPOSED to look like so all you needed to do was twiddle the display controls till you got it to look "similar".

As primitive as this sounds, for CMYK output, it actually worked really well. This was back in the Photoshop 2.5 and 3 time frame.

Then Adobe decided to take a more draconian approach with Photoshop 5 and force people into "proper" color management practices...course, they kinda screwed the pootchie cause they bowed to MSFT and made the default color space in Photoshop be sRGB. Hence the beginning of the sRGB bullsyte... It's actually called sRGB because the guy who help formulate and push it as a standard was named Michael Stokes. First when he worked at HP then later at MSFT. Course, he's done his "damage" and now he's working at MSFT's computerized healthcare initiative (he gave up on color management :~)

At this point in time, color management can work and work very well. Soft proofing allows very accurate control over final output. The only problem is that a change in any of the overall color management system such as an OS update, a print driver update (or lack of an update), an application update or a color management application update can cause a total meltdown.

Case in point, it's really hard to print out a profile target through Photoshop CS4 using Leopard or Snow Leopard and recent Epson printers...the whole color management pipeline relating to intentionally untagged color targets is broken.

I will say there is light at the end of the tunnel (and hopefully it won't be a friggin' train heading at ya). Once you get things to actually work and understand how to use it, the potential quality of your color output can go way up...at least until some component gets updated and breaks the system :~(

Quote
Then I started spending far too much time on this forum and soon learned that there was a lot of politics flying around – especially where my new hero was concerned!

Well, it's never been a goal of mine to be anybody's hero...my main goal is to cut through all the PC crap and say what I think. Sometimes that offends some people with particularly thin skins or people who "think" they understand what I've written but somehow completely fail to comprehend the content. English is not my first language, I speak American which my Brit writing buddy Martin Evening likes to say "only vaguely resembles the Queen's English"...

The only sad thing about this sort of forum overreaction is that it tends to over-enforce a falsely civilized, politically correct mentality which in addition to causing a vanilla sort of behavior actually cuts down on the potential value of the content.

But have no fear...(unless ya wanna take me on in a debate), I don't think I'll be changing. So, all those small-minded, overly sensitive individuals that would rather have the forum take on a PG Rated "Disneyland" sort of environment may need to cut down on their caffeine or change their meds or find other softer and friendlier places to hang out.

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William Walker

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« Reply #6 on: November 28, 2009, 04:56:01 pm »

Thanks eronald and Jeff for the replies - its late in my neck of the woods so will continue tomorrow.

Jeff, at this stage my soft-proof and the print are not that close on most of the trials, although I've just printed my best "match" so far. I am beginning to realise that it is unrealistic to expect it to be exact, and, experience, trial and error and the odd bit of assistance from you guys will get me (and others) on my way!

Thanks again!
Cheers!
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eronald

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« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2009, 09:19:02 pm »

Quote from: WillytheWalks
Thanks eronald and Jeff for the replies - its late in my neck of the woods so will continue tomorrow.

Jeff, at this stage my soft-proof and the print are not that close on most of the trials, although I've just printed my best "match" so far. I am beginning to realise that it is unrealistic to expect it to be exact, and, experience, trial and error and the odd bit of assistance from you guys will get me (and others) on my way!

Thanks again!
Cheers!

Yes, color management is horrible. Yes, it's been built so vendors can finger-point and it never (almost never) works. Yes, Jeff Schewe will save the world.
And now, let me outline how everybody here can get their color management to just work:

1. Get a Mac. Even an iMac or laptop is usually decently usable when it gets delivered.
2. Set your color working space in Photoshop (Shift Command K) to sRGB.
3. Use vendor-supplied  profiles and settings for your media.

4. Get a decent software calibration package. I recommend Basiccolor Display or ColorEyes Display.  These packages have demos anyway.

Follow 123(4), and glance at whatever tutorial you feel like, and your prints should roughly match the screen.  If *you* think you can come into color management and make a custom profile with Snow Leopard, or survive the issues created by giving ProphotoRGB files to third parties, then you need your head checked. Standardize on sRGB and things will just work, and neither labs nor publications will foobar your files.. Leave anything more complex to the Jeff Schewes of this world.

I've never seen a real-world scenario where sRGB was a genuine problem; I bet I could even print and retouch all of Michael's work in sRGB and he would be incapable of seeing the difference. He's a middle-aged guy - guys have lousy color vision compâred to your average female fashion magazine intern.

Edmund
« Last Edit: November 28, 2009, 09:19:45 pm by eronald »
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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #8 on: November 28, 2009, 10:24:28 pm »

Quote from: eronald
Yes, color management is horrible. Yes, it's been built so vendors can finger-point and it never (almost never) works. Yes, Jeff Schewe will save the world.
And now, let me outline how everybody here can get their color management to just work:

1. Get a Mac. Even an iMac or laptop is usually decently usable when it gets delivered.
2. Set your color working space in Photoshop (Shift Command K) to sRGB.
3. Use vendor-supplied  profiles and settings for your media.

4. Get a decent software calibration package. I recommend Basiccolor Display or ColorEyes Display.  These packages have demos anyway.

Follow 123(4), and glance at whatever tutorial you feel like, and your prints should roughly match the screen.  If *you* think you can come into color management and make a custom profile with Snow Leopard, or survive the issues created by giving ProphotoRGB files to third parties, then you need your head checked. Standardize on sRGB and things will just work, and neither labs nor publications will foobar your files.. Leave anything more complex to the Jeff Schewes of this world.

I've never seen a real-world scenario where sRGB was a genuine problem; I bet I could even print and retouch all of Michael's work in sRGB and he would be incapable of seeing the difference. He's a middle-aged guy - guys have lousy color vision compâred to your average female fashion magazine intern.

Edmund

You forgot to add. Stay away from software that uses Apples new printing path. That includes LR and PSCS4. This is unless you're sure that you have a printer driver that can correctly print using the new printing path.

And second. Stay away from all new updates in case something has changed to once again cause double profiling. Witness LR3 Beta.

Doyle



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Schewe

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« Reply #9 on: November 28, 2009, 11:15:18 pm »

Quote from: eronald
Standardize on sRGB and things will just work, and neither labs nor publications will foobar your files..


Well, that's the MSFT way...and if you do that you are leaving a lot of capture color and thus potentially image quality on the table...

The ProPhoto RGB color space is only a problem to people who don't know how to set up their Photoshop Color Setting policies to "Preserve Embedded Profiles". Which has been the Photoshop default since CS (I think the "North American General Purpose was intro'ed in CS but it could have been CS2).

Then the only question is whether or not you want to use PP RGB as the backbone color space in Photoshop. Many times I'll have my RGB working space set to sRGB particularly if I've doing a lot of book work and need to work with screenshots. Oh, I'll still open images through Camera Raw as PP RGB images in 16 bit...tat is my default for photographic images while working in Photoshop.

I'll also cheerfully suggest you never give ProPhoto RGB files to anybody else. Clients, printers, photo labs, etc. will rarely know what they are doing so at the biggest, I'll give out Adobe RGB or even sRGB if they sound particularly stupid.

For CMYK, going from ProPhoto RGB to CMYK vs. sRGB to CMYK, sorry, big difference and sRGB is substantially inferior in a large number of colors in the CMYK gamut. sRGB is inferior in cyans and  blues/greens where it's really tough to get textural detail in those saturated colors. Oddly, it's red and red yellow/orange where sRGB really suffers in conversion from sRGB > CMYK...images whose colors blockup from sRGB maintain far better color gradations coming from PP RGB.

So, if you want the best working space for your hard worked master images that will future proof them for ever expanding gamuts of output color, going sRGB would be very short sighted and very limiting. Which, ironically is one of the big reasons that many photo labs demand sRGB...because they are very short sighted and they want to limit photographers' expectations...

As far as the rest of the 1-4 list...I would also take look at #1. While I agree and use Macs, it's been my experience that in the last few years, Apple (read Steve Jobs and his underlings) have pretty much marginalized ColorSync down to the point where instead of just making things work, it tends to get into everybody's way. The intentionally untagged profile target is just the more recent and obvious issues...print out of Windows is in many respects, easier and less prone to system problems than recent Mac OSs.

The single biggest mountain to climb relating to color management and Photoshop is the creation and proper use of high quality (and very accurate) display profiles. I have no particular problem with any of the hardware/software options out there but I tend to seriously suggest the NEC line of wide gamut display such as the 3090WQXi along with the NEC software and a puck suitable for wide gamut displays...

Sadly, it's the display where many photographers tend to "cheap out" and get lower end solutions that can cause all sorts of problems particularly related to display output. Anybody who complains about "dark prints" is prolly not deploying their display and display color management correctly.

Then, of course, you have the display environment...I have, for a long time, built an optimum imaging environment with reduced brightness, indirect environmental lighting with a D50 white point and no reflections ever on the display screens...I also have a D50 GTI viewing booth as well as a lamp with Solux bulbs and another lamp with straight 3000K lighting. All of which are used for proper viewing and print evaluation...

Hey,it could be worse...it could still be 1995 when none of this stuff worked :~)
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Wayne Fox

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« Reply #10 on: November 29, 2009, 12:48:59 am »

Quote from: eronald
2. Set your color working space in Photoshop (Shift Command K) to sRGB.

Since nearly every current device exceeds the gamut of sRGB (cameras, displays, and printers) I guess you can have the attitude of just trying to squish everything down to a lowest common denominator.  To me this doesn't sound like color management, its just managing output by limitation ... make sure you can't exceed the gamut of any device by using sRGB ... then everything will "match".  Of course, it also means you compromise much of the potential of many images.  

Using ProPhotoRGB isn't that challenging.  All ProPhoto does is make sure you have a big enough "bucket" to hold all of your data ... your working space itself won't constantly clip your data as you work on an image.  The entire premise of good color management is that because we interpret everything we see into something that we expect to see, devices of various capabilities can still appear visually very similar.  It isn't that critical that your display can't show a color that your printer can print, because the color management system remaps the colors you see on your display to simulate the relationship of the colors. You never see any color in the working space.  Sure it may not be a "perfect" match, but then again matching a reflective print against a transmissive display is never going to be perfect.  But it works pretty well.

I just installed a 9900 for a friend and he called and said he was disappointed he couldn't see much difference between the prints from his 9600.  The differences should be obvious.  I then discovered he was printing from his standard work files ... which are sRGB.  I told him to pick a couple of his favorites, find the raws, and rework them using ProPhotoRGB, then compare them.  Got an email a couple of days later saying his stuff is looking fantastic.  Had he used ProPhoto to start with, his 9600 images would have looked fine, and reprinting them with the 9900 wouldn't have required any extra work.

Soft-proofing on the other hand is more challenging, especially when printing with MK ink, and using sRGB won't help with that much.  I personally believe it takes practice and skill to "interpret" the soft proof information.  I've watched Jeff demonstrate this at least half a dozen times, and I still can't come close to duplicating what he does.  I've seen others that have a real knack with this as well, but I'm a little bit like Stephen Johnson ... just test it.  I guess too many years with an enlarger and printing test strips have created a habit that is tough to break.  Fortunately with PK ink and the newer papers, the results are pretty good most of the time.
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eronald

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« Reply #11 on: November 29, 2009, 06:58:52 am »

Quote from: Schewe
Well, that's the MSFT way...and if you do that you are leaving a lot of capture color and thus potentially image quality on the table...
True, you have less gamut. However you do get decent predictable color. And if you use labs or send images in for publication getting decent color reliably is a definite plus. Anything other than sRGB is, to use the words of a knowledgeable but cantankerous individual we all love, a big "Hurt Me" Button.

Quote
I'll also cheerfully suggest you never give ProPhoto RGB files to anybody else. Clients, printers, photo labs, etc. will rarely know what they are doing so at the biggest, I'll give out Adobe RGB or even sRGB if they sound particularly stupid.
And I'm just taking a shortcut and adding most photographers here to your list of computer challenged individuals. Why assume a photographer who is a "greenhorn" will know more about computers than a printer or a lab whose livelihood had involved files for over ten years, and who are still messing things up on a regular basis?

Quote
For CMYK, going from ProPhoto RGB to CMYK vs. sRGB to CMYK, sorry, big difference and sRGB is substantially inferior in a large number of colors in the CMYK gamut. sRGB is inferior in cyans and  blues/greens where it's really tough to get textural detail in those saturated colors. Oddly, it's red and red yellow/orange where sRGB really suffers in conversion from sRGB > CMYK...images whose colors blockup from sRGB maintain far better color gradations coming from PP RGB.
Yes, the gamut is inferior. We agree about that. But a beginner can survive an inferior gamut for a while. At least he'll get decent display-print matches. The gamut issue will never matter to a photo journalist either. It just hits fashion or landscape photographers and those we can expect will get some training anyway.

Quote
So, if you want the best working space for your hard worked master images that will future proof them for ever expanding gamuts of output color, going sRGB would be very short sighted and very limiting. Which, ironically is one of the big reasons that many photo labs demand sRGB...because they are very short sighted and they want to limit photographers' expectations...
I'll take "really, really works" over "mostly works very nicely but sometimes ends up totally messed up" any day of the week. Just as I prefer to eat a Mc Donald's hamburger rather than some oysters of unknown age and provenance.

Quote
As far as the rest of the 1-4 list...I would also take look at #1. While I agree and use Macs, it's been my experience that in the last few years, Apple (read Steve Jobs and his underlings) have pretty much marginalized ColorSync down to the point where instead of just making things work, it tends to get into everybody's way. The intentionally untagged profile target is just the more recent and obvious issues...print out of Windows is in many respects, easier and less prone to system problems than recent Mac OSs.
It's the hardware I like more, the monitors that come with a Mac are usually *usable* on day one without calibration, and do well with eyeball calibration. All my latest matte notebooks have been decent. We're not going to discuss the reason for this publicly, but it's actually due to  the hard work of the color guys at Apple. The latest 27" iMac even has an IPS panel. AFAIK, all of Apple's add-on monitors are decent if not stellar.  The chances of a "greenhorn" getting a decent cheap monitor for a desktop PC without prior research are close to zero, although they do exist.

Quote
The single biggest mountain to climb relating to color management and Photoshop is the creation and proper use of high quality (and very accurate) display profiles.
Getting even decent profiles has become challlenging. Oh, and btw, have you noticed that almost never does a decent display come with a colorimeter in the box? You're always supposed to order it. Yeah, sure.

Quote
Sadly, it's the display where many photographers tend to "cheap out" and get lower end solutions that can cause all sorts of problems particularly related to display output. Anybody who complains about "dark prints" is prolly not deploying their display and display color management correctly.
Why always blame the user? A lot of the recent "dark print" comments have originated with the Photoshop/Snow Leopard/Apple profiling and printing fiasco. Get out your keyboard and send a nice polite email to Mike Sweet or John Nack or Tom Lianza. Those who are not to "blame" can then show the polite feedback to convince the others that a fix cannot wait until Geriatric Cougar gets released.

Quote
Hey,it could be worse...it could still be 1995 when none of this stuff worked :~)
Indeed, but I have some decent  measuring equipment in the world in this room - a couple of Eyeone Pro units, DTP70, iSIS XL, Barbieri LFP (nice unit less known btw), sundry colorimeters and even some hardware and software prototypes of my own design, and still cannot reliably profile my screen or print a target and make a paper profile from Snow Leopard. I think the biggest obstacle to color management is that no one at the various vendors (OS, displays, printers, Photoshop) ever does a test  *together* with the other vendors, they just spend their time more constructively convincing their clients and bosses that it doesn't work because of the "other guys".


Well Jeff, this has been illuminating: As hard as I try I cannot really disagree about anything you say. However the fact that you and I can make this stuff work doesn't mean we want Joe User to waste his life on it.

Edmund
« Last Edit: November 29, 2009, 08:56:08 am by eronald »
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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #12 on: November 29, 2009, 07:56:48 am »

Quote from: Schewe
The intentionally untagged profile target is just the more recent and obvious issues...

But that is a issue with Epson drivers not the OS or Adobe.
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eronald

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« Reply #13 on: November 29, 2009, 08:39:17 am »

Quote from: DYP
But that is a issue with Epson drivers not the OS or Adobe.

Let me reformulate your post clearly:

 If you -user- have any issues with color management, this is your fault  and yours alone. You cannot pester us, and no else either because we will make sure that no single party can be proven to be wholly responsible for any part of this mess. You are an idiot, you do not know how to use your equipment, you have the wrong equipment, you have the wrong software, you have not read the right books, you have got a wrong version, your horoscope is of the wrong star sign, you are an idiot which is why we will keep selling you stuff that doesn't work and then tell you that it's someone else's fault.

Things actually haven't worked right since Leopard. This was talked about repeatedly at ICC meetings. If execs at Apple, Adobe and Epson genuinely had wanted this problem fixed they would have sat down at one table and have fixed it, and it would already have been done. All the execs really want is apportion blame, avoid having to budget for an engineering fix on the theory "it's their fault so they should fix it", and hope that the software which has this issue will be stale and "unfixable" by the time a fix is decided so that they can make target printing a "feature" in the next OS and software update. So far this strategy has worked for them.

AFAIK there is only one company which really really really wants this fixed, and that is Xrite because their support costs are escalating and amateur photo color management is actually part of their company's mission statement. Apple and Adobe are so huge they don't really care about anything anymore, and Epson printers will work decently with their own media and their own canned profiles so the fact that new profiles can't be made for third party papers is actually a form of lock-in that is advantageous to their bottom line.

Edmund

PS. And let's all repeat the Mantra: Your horoscope is of the wrong star sign, you are an idiot which is why we will keep selling you stuff that doesn't work and then tell you that it's someone else's fault.
« Last Edit: November 29, 2009, 09:30:25 am by eronald »
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Simon J.A. Simpson

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« Reply #14 on: November 29, 2009, 10:21:10 am »

Quote
Case in point, it's really hard to print out a profile target through Photoshop CS4 using Leopard or Snow Leopard and recent Epson printers...the whole color management pipeline relating to intentionally untagged color targets is broken.
Jeff Schewe

Hi Jeff.
Sorry to labour the point but this issue also effects Tiger, and includes Canon printers as well.  There is also some limited evidence (from web postings) to indicate that it also effects HP printers.
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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #15 on: November 29, 2009, 10:41:35 am »

Quote from: eronald
Things actually haven't worked right since Leopard.

Epson printers will work decently with their own media and their own canned profiles so the fact that new profiles can't be made for third party papers is actually a form of lock-in that is advantageous to their bottom line.

Edmund

PS. And let's all repeat the Mantra: Your horoscope is of the wrong star sign, you are an idiot which is why we will keep selling you stuff that doesn't work and then tell you that it's someone else's fault.

This is really not about Leopard. This is about implementing correctly Apple's New Printing Path. We saw this way back with LR 1.3.1 and Tiger. If something is not correct in this path you are going to get double profiling. That is exactly why Epson canned profiles that have a corresponding profile assign in ColorSync work. Your still double profiling but with the same profile which is why you can't send a untagged image through the driver because it will get changed by a profile in ColorSync. Why ColorSync Utility Workaround works is because you assign the same profile in both place but you still double profiling. And, is why you still cannot send untagged, unmanaged targets is because ColorSync is profiling the image.

There are printer drivers that work correctly so I know it can be done, but then here come Adobe with LR3 beta and screws this up, which leads to your question. Does anybody (Apple, Adobe, Printer/Manufactures) really understand what they are doing here? What will happen when other apps move to the new printing path?

Doyle

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Doyle Yoder

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« Reply #16 on: November 29, 2009, 10:44:40 am »

Quote from: SimonS
Hi Jeff.
Sorry to labour the point but this issue also effects Tiger, and includes Canon printers as well.  There is also some limited evidence (from web postings) to indicate that it also effects HP printers.

Is there anyway that you can post a screen capture of you printer driver options under Color Matching, Main/Color etc. I would like to see why your Canon driver do not work correctly when the Canon iPF series driver do.

Are you using Driver Version   10.26.0 Released on   10-09-2009 for your Canon printer?


Doyle

« Last Edit: November 29, 2009, 10:59:33 am by DYP »
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eronald

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« Reply #17 on: November 29, 2009, 02:44:36 pm »

Quote from: DYP
This is really not about Leopard. This is about implementing correctly Apple's New Printing Path. We saw this way back with LR 1.3.1 and Tiger. If something is not correct in this path you are going to get double profiling. That is exactly why Epson canned profiles that have a corresponding profile assign in ColorSync work. Your still double profiling but with the same profile which is why you can't send a untagged image through the driver because it will get changed by a profile in ColorSync. Why ColorSync Utility Workaround works is because you assign the same profile in both place but you still double profiling. And, is why you still cannot send untagged, unmanaged targets is because ColorSync is profiling the image.

There are printer drivers that work correctly so I know it can be done, but then here come Adobe with LR3 beta and screws this up, which leads to your question. Does anybody (Apple, Adobe, Printer/Manufactures) really understand what they are doing here? What will happen when other apps move to the new printing path?

Doyle

Doyle,

Only Mac users at the level of competence found in this forum (eg.  prosumers and small sized business users) are stranded. The high end - professionals with RIPS, and the low end - consumers who do not need to print targets - have no issues. Of course the quasi totality of Adobe Lightroom buyers happen to be prosumers who want to print to inkjet

As to "Does anybody (Apple, Adobe, Printer/Manufactures) really understand what they are doing here? What will happen when other apps move to the new printing path? ", the answers seem to be "Nobody really understood the implications when  Apple made the changes to the print path, but they may be starting to get it now we customers have raised hell" and "It's going to get gory before it gets better".

Just repeat the mantra: Your horoscope is of the wrong star sign, you are an idiot which is why we will keep selling you stuff that doesn't work and then tell you that it's someone else's fault.


Edmund
« Last Edit: November 29, 2009, 02:51:27 pm by eronald »
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Schewe

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« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2009, 04:17:53 pm »

Quote from: eronald
As to "Does anybody (Apple, Adobe, Printer/Manufactures) really understand what they are doing here? What will happen when other apps move to the new printing path? ", the answers seem to be "Nobody really understood the implications when  Apple made the changes to the print path, but they may be starting to get it now we customers have raised hell" and "It's going to get gory before it gets better".


No, there was indeed a group of people who knew EXACTLY what kinda shyte was going to be hitting which fan back in 2006 when we had a "meeting" between Apple, Adobe & Epson engineers and a variety of outside experts such as Chris Murphy, Bruce Fraser (I think Andrew might have been involved) and myself...

WE knew then that the eventual print pipeline for OS X was going to cause some problems for some drivers and applications. When Apple's ColorSync guys stated that they wanted to irradiate all untagged files, even files that were intentionally untagged, the outside experts had a cow...

So, as it stands, in Snow Leopard (and certain Leopard App & driver combinations) there is no such thing as an untagged file...ColorSync will helpfully tag EVERYTHING even if that is undesirable...

This doesn't impact application managed color nor print driver managed color...only the rare case where a color profile target is intentionally untagged.

As far as other problems related to Mac print drivers, there are a lot of issues developing ANYTHING for Mac because Apple has this tenancy changing direction quickly and sometimes undoing what they promised they would do (such as promising 64 bit Carbon then killing it making Photoshop change to Cocoa from Carbon–a project of massive effort coming on the heels of a change forced on the compilers from CodeWarrior to Xcode).

Seriously, Mac users have no idea (in general) just how hard Mac developers (apps and drivers) have to work to get this shyte to "barely work"...and it keeps getting harder, not easier.
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eronald

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« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2009, 04:32:33 pm »

Quote from: Schewe
No, there was indeed a group of people who knew EXACTLY what kinda shyte was going to be hitting which fan back in 2006 when we had a "meeting" between Apple, Adobe & Epson engineers and a variety of outside experts such as Chris Murphy, Bruce Fraser (I think Andrew might have been involved) and myself...

Seriously, Mac users have no idea (in general) just how hard Mac developers (apps and drivers) have to work to get this shyte to "barely work"...and it keeps getting harder, not easier.

The print issues on the Mac were talked about informally during ICC meetings I attended a year ago; everybody was very unhappy, including whoever was representing Apple on that day, but it was clear that the color people's point of view, including their own specialists,  was now considered irrelevant to the direction the company was moving on printing.

Edmund

-- Just repeat the mantra: Your horoscope is of the wrong star sign, you are an idiot which is why we will keep selling you stuff that doesn't work and then tell you that it's someone else's fault.
« Last Edit: November 29, 2009, 04:33:44 pm by eronald »
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