| Curmudgeonly Color Management | |||||
| When labs started using color magagement, everyone thought it would automatically give them perfect color. Boy were they wrong! The purpose of color management is to achieve consistant color from one device to another. It does not necessarily make the color right. Making a neutral grey in a normal scene can be done in curves with the grey eyedropper (yes there are other ways, this is just a favorite). Calibrate your monitor. If your going to skip this, don't bother with the rest. Macs have built in calibration in displays (formerly monitors control panel), use it, it's one freebie that works! Older Windows, good luck. For you they developed elaborate colorimeter packages. Set your color temperature around 5000k. Don't blame us for the color that comes from you correcting files outdoors on a sunny day. The recomended viewing environment for judgement is a significantly dimmed room. Profiles, snakeoil and other urban terrors As early adopters of Photo CD, with built in ICC profiles, we are sympathetic to your discomfort & confusion about profiles. The good news is all that time we've made beautiful prints without anyone else doing anything different. So don't worry so much. Some profiles work well and on a variety of things, some not at all. The Offset printers in the CMYK world must rely on profiles heavily. To profile for the Fuji, convert & preview in srgb. HR 500 input profiles are available at http://www.kodak.com/ Color match rgb is good for output. Using your monitor profile (calibrated of course) will work. Yes, you can build your own profiles. It's been my great misfortune to have made some. It's a great way to spend even more of your life in front of a computer. Color spaces For us start and stay in RGB. Why squash your color into the smaller CMYK space? Digital cameras All digital cameras are still struggling to some extent with rendering color. If they weren't, how would the manufacturers be able to sell you all that expensive software? Closing rant You would think that since scanning technology is over 50 years old, they would have this all worked out by now! |
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