Basic colour management questions

Hi,
I am a biology PhD student and I am reasonably proficient in using computers for everything except when it comes to colour management. I frequently encounter people at Uni who struggle when working on posters etc. because the colours do not print the way they looked on their monitors. I try to explain that most computer monitors are not calibrated correctly.
Anyway, I have my monitor calibrated, the area where I run into trouble is when assigning colour profiles. For example, I need to scan some photos using a flat bed scanner, and I don't know which colour profile to assign it. Should I assign it the calibrated profile that I created or will this only work on my computer. I need to be able to share these images and know that they will look the same on other computers.
I also don't understand what is meant by converting to a working space. I have an Apple PDF about Tiger colour management but it is a bit too technical for me.
Basically I was hoping someone could explain the basics to me or point me towards a good article.
One last question, the scanner I use is a very old UMAX Astra 2100U scanner that does not work in OS X. I have to boot up in Windows and scan there then go back to OS X. Am I likely to run into problems taking the picture between the two OSes?
Thank-you in advance,
Ben

Ben_ wrote:
What is the point of using profiles other than these two. For example, I know most digital cameras embed their own profile. Is there an advantage to using this over say Adobe RGB or should I always convert these images to Adobe RGB or sRGB?
Scanner & camera profiles have two main purposes AFAICT: in colour-managed environments where the original file is sent to a printer or displayed on a monitor, the profile will enable the output to be adjusted for the idiosyncracies of the imaging device; and when opening a file for editing, the device profile will (in theory at least) allow a more accurate conversion to the program’s working space.
If I was editing an image that I planned to print, why would I use Adobe RGB rather than convert the image to CMYK mode? Or is the colour mode (CMYK vs RGB) separate from the colorsync profile?
Yes, there are various CMYK profiles as well: some are for particular printers, while others (like SWOP, Standard Web Offset Printing) attempt to encapsulate typical commercial printing environments. I work in prepress, where CMYK is always the eventual destination—but a printer that uses six or more colours of ink can often represent a larger portion of the RGB gamut than a four-colour press can, for example producing more vivid blues than would be possible in CMYK.
Another issue is that CMYK images that have been optimized for prepress often look somewhat dull or ‘washed out’ on a monitor, especially one that has a high colour temperature (as is typical outside a prepress environment). If the image been tagged with an appropriate CMYK profile, the display may be able to compensate to some extent, but conversion from RGB to CMYK very frequently results in some ‘shoehorning’ of a wide range of colours into a narrower one.

Similar Messages

CS4 Colour Management question(s)

Ok, here goes...
My team of designers create adverts in InDesign that are to appear in either a newspaper OR a glossy magazine.
We employ an Ad Tracking system that provides a blank InDesign template for them to work from.
The Ad Tracking system knows if the advert is for newsprint or glossy and provides a template where the CMYK Working Space is either ISOnewspaper26v4 or ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) respectively.
We only ever place CMYK images into these adverts. These images have been converted in Photoshop using the same ICC Profiles (depending on destination) as above. Profiles are not included in the images.
We then output a PDF with "No Colour Conversion" and "Don't Include Profiles" in the output settings.
We have been working this way for years but I would like to introduce an RGB workflow where we can place RGB images in InDesign and output a PDF that is not yet specifically for Newsprint or Glossy.
I don't want InDesign to convert to a profile but our Ad Tracking system can route this "generic" PDF through a system called Asura from One Vision that does the conversion to Newsprint or Glossy using the relevant output ICC Profile.
My questions...
1. Am I correct in thinking that the RGB and CMYK values of the placed images will not change in the PDF exported from InDesign?
2. How are placed images affected by the Working Space?
3. Does "Emulate Adobe InDesign 2.0 CMS Off" give a non-specific document?
I have watched both David Blatner's and Chris Murphy's titles on Colour Management on Lynda.com and thought I had a reasonable grasp of basic colour management until I came to think about changing workflow.
Any help would be greatly appeciated.
Thanks
Simon.

Thanks Rob, well explained.
Just a couple more questions if you don't mind...
How would you create an InDesign document with no profile assigned?
and
Does it matter if a document has a Glossy profile assigned and the exported PDF is then converted to Newsprint downstream? Is this just a case of the downstream conversion needing to know what profile was assigned to the document and the placed images?
Thanks again.
Simon.

Perennial colour management question (browser srgb)

Howdy folks,
I wish I knew why my photos get banding and crushed blacks in the colour managed browsers, but the exact same image looks fine in the color managed applications - bridge and photoshop.
Chrome and firefox do this:
Eeek! Green in my skies!
Photoshop does this:
and IE displays the colours incorrectly but without banding!
I've wondered about this for year. I thought at one point it might be a monitor profile setup issue, but it happens on both my monitors, I've changed systems and graphics cards.
Heres the whole image:
Here in chrome that sky has bands of purple and green (or at least turquoise). Anyone else seeing that?

Hi again all,
I've finally found some time yesterday to investigate this further and re-calibrate my monitor.
I nuked the previously created ICC monitor profile (so that there was none applied) and set to work with my Lacie Blue Eye device and the Lacie Blue Eye Pro software package. I set my preferred settings to 6500K, Gamma 2.2, 120cd/m2 and put the monitor into 'Standard' colour preset. I ran a test on those settings and while the colour and gamma levels were close-ish, the Lum was in the mid-high 200s...way too bright. (No wonder I felt like I was getting a tan sitting in front of the monitor. LOL!) DeltaE scores were okay but not great... Time for the manual calibration.
Set the monitor into 'Custom' colour preset and fired up the Lacie calibration software for the full calibration. Can't remember exactly how far the brightness and contrast controls had to come down, but from memory it was about 30 and 50 respectively. The RGB levels ended up in the high 80s each from memory. Ran the calibration, applied the newly created profile (double checked it was applied in Control Panel | Colour Management). Ran another test report with the Lacie software and got colour, gamma and lum results 0-1% from target, and average dE scores of 0.4, max dE of 0.7.
RAW files in LR and PS CS4 appear the same, sRGB jpeg exports viewed in Windows Photo Viewer and Firefox appear the same, IE is still a bit out, but that's expected/known.
I took the (exported jpeg) images to another computer with a cheapy (uncalibrated) LCD monitor and the results were perfectly fine when viewed in Windows Photo Viewer.
Having greatly reduced the brightness of my monitor I should hopefully reduce the likelihood of having issues with prints coming back too dark. Of course I know I can get hold of the printer profiles from my lab and softproof the images in CS4 when it comes to that anyway.
Thank you all for your input and feedback on this matter. Everything seems to be resolved now.
Chris

Yet another colour management question

Hi folks,
I've read several of the very detailed colour management posts/threads here already but haven't found the answer(s) I'm looking for. So I'm hoping that some of the experts might be able to spare me some time and input...
I am running a Windows 7 (32bit) environment with a Dell u2711 Ultrasharp display attached. I let the monitor warm up for close on 30 minutes and ran an 'Easy' calibration with a Lacie eye-one device using the Gretag Macbeth 3.6 software. (I guess I could have used the 'Advanced' calibration option but thought I'd save myself some time and was always pleased with the results on my older Sony CRTs.)
I'm running LR3.2 and CS4. Viewing RAW images in LR the skin tones are way too saturated, but when I export the images as sRGB JPEGs the results look very pleasing when viewed in Windows Photo Viewer (far less saturated). If I open the same image in IE, it looks identical to the way it looks in LR. (I don't have Firefox installed so haven't compared that). If I open the image in CS4 by default it looks the same as it does in Windows, but if I change the Proof Setup to Monitor RGB it matches what I am seeing in LR and IE.
I'm guessing this is somehow related to the new wider gamut range that this monitor can display (compare to my previous CRTs). I read in one of Jao's posts that LR is always right and other non-managed apps will do weird things on high-end displays. IE is not colour managed so why would it display colours very similar to what I'm seeing in LR, when the standard Windows image viewer is displaying colour far less saturated (which seems to be the opposite to what others are experiencing)?
I generally always export as sRBG jpeg as the images usually go online, but this set is going to a client who will most likely be taking them for printing as well as viewing on a PC.
Looking forward to your input on this.
Kind regards,
Chris

Hi again all,
I've finally found some time yesterday to investigate this further and re-calibrate my monitor.
I nuked the previously created ICC monitor profile (so that there was none applied) and set to work with my Lacie Blue Eye device and the Lacie Blue Eye Pro software package. I set my preferred settings to 6500K, Gamma 2.2, 120cd/m2 and put the monitor into 'Standard' colour preset. I ran a test on those settings and while the colour and gamma levels were close-ish, the Lum was in the mid-high 200s...way too bright. (No wonder I felt like I was getting a tan sitting in front of the monitor. LOL!) DeltaE scores were okay but not great... Time for the manual calibration.
Set the monitor into 'Custom' colour preset and fired up the Lacie calibration software for the full calibration. Can't remember exactly how far the brightness and contrast controls had to come down, but from memory it was about 30 and 50 respectively. The RGB levels ended up in the high 80s each from memory. Ran the calibration, applied the newly created profile (double checked it was applied in Control Panel | Colour Management). Ran another test report with the Lacie software and got colour, gamma and lum results 0-1% from target, and average dE scores of 0.4, max dE of 0.7.
RAW files in LR and PS CS4 appear the same, sRGB jpeg exports viewed in Windows Photo Viewer and Firefox appear the same, IE is still a bit out, but that's expected/known.
I took the (exported jpeg) images to another computer with a cheapy (uncalibrated) LCD monitor and the results were perfectly fine when viewed in Windows Photo Viewer.
Having greatly reduced the brightness of my monitor I should hopefully reduce the likelihood of having issues with prints coming back too dark. Of course I know I can get hold of the printer profiles from my lab and softproof the images in CS4 when it comes to that anyway.
Thank you all for your input and feedback on this matter. Everything seems to be resolved now.
Chris

Basic color management questions

Having difficult understanding some concepts in color management - would appreciate any guidance to further understand it.
What is the difference in backgrounds between additive and subtractive process color systems?
How is white formed differently in additive and subtractive process systems?
How are the non-process colors like orange formed differently in the additive and subtractive process systems? What colors from each system forms an orange?
Why is the difference in the process of color formation of major concern with the use of computers in the preparation of materials for 4-color process color printing?
Why is the difference in the process of color formation of major concern with the use of computers in the preparation of materials for 4-color process color printing?

Sarah,
Deep subject, so this will only touch the surface.
What is the difference in backgrounds between additive and subtractive process color systems?
How is white formed differently in additive and subtractive process systems?
RGB blends "light" to generate colors. CMYK blends "inks". Starting with RGB and light.....pure white blends high levels of red, green and blue wavelengths in approximate equal amounts, which we perceive as white. In Photoshop parlance, using 8-bit, this translates to 255R, 255G, 255B. When we see an object, we are actually seeing the light that reflects from that object, not the object itself. So, a bright white object reflects most of the visible light spectrum and reaches our eye, which the brain interprets to be white. A black object "absorbs" light so nothing is reflected to the eye.
To print, you need inks on paper, not light. If you were to use red, green and blue inks, you'd have a big problem printing colors like yellow. So, they devised the subtractive color process (RGB is additive, ie, adding all three lights together gives you white). They took the opposite colors of Red, green and blue, which are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. In theory, you should be able to create the same spectrum of colors with the CMY subtractive colors that you can with the RGB additive colors, but in practice, that is not the case, for at least two reasons. The CMY inks are not pure and as intense as the RGB primaries, and second, you have to apply these inks to paper, which drastically limits dynamic range. To deal with the ink purity problem, (and to give better type), they add Black to the CMY mix, for four inks....Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. To get white, you rely on the paper alone, without any ink. In theory, pure black would be either 100C, 100M, 100Y, or it could be 100K (black), or it could be 100% each of CMYK. But, these three do not give the same results, due to ink purity, ink limits, paper, process, etc.
How are the non-process colors like orange formed differently in the additive and subtractive process systems? What colors from each system forms an orange?
Why is the difference in the process of color formation of major concern with the use of computers in the preparation of materials for 4-color process color printing?
In the CMYK world, orange is a mixture of Yellow and Magenta inks, with more yellow than magenta. For example, 52M, 94Y gives a fairly vibrant orange. Again, hue, saturation and brightness are dictated by the mix percentages, paper, ink limits, ink purity, etc. In the RGB world, this same color is defined as 255R, 143G, 33B (depending on the "flavor" (color spaces) of RGB and CMYK you are using. There is a relationship between RGB and CMYK, and this example is no exception. When red is maxed out at 255, cyan is the opposite, in this case zero. In this orange color, Green is 143, near the middle of the range, and so is its opposite, Magenta, which is near the middle of its range, at 52. Blue is 33, at the very low end of its range, and its opposite, Yellow, is near the top of its range at 94. Since this is a bright color, there is no black ink used at all. If it were a darker orange, there would probably be some black in as well.
Some colors can be created in RGB that cannot be duplicated in CMYK. The opposite is also usually true, that there are colors in CMYK that cannot be duplicated in RGB (depending on the color space you use). If your intended output is a monitor, the internet, email, or a printer that needs "light" you would generally use RGB. If the intent is to "print" the job, on a press, inkjet, laser, etc, then CMYK is generally used. Even if you send an RGB file to your inkjet, the printer driver translates the RGB colors to CMYK in the background before output. Most, if not all, printers use CMYK subtractive inks for printing, These can generate a large portion of the printable spectrum. Some printers add light cyan and light magenta inks, or even red, green, blue, orange, and other colors to help extend the color gamut of the printer so it can achieve colors that would be "out of gamut" using CMYK alone.
Another difference is that CMYK is a four color process, unlike RGB, which is three color. A given color has only ONE definition when defined in RGB, HSB, L*a*b*, or other 3 component color schemes. With CMYK, many colors can be created using different mixes of CMYK, which adds complexity, but also offers opportunities and flexibility, especially on press.
Like I said at the beginning, this is a very deep and complex subject, and this only touches on the basics.
Lou

Basic project management question

HI,
In the "Projects and Events" top level of the Libraries pane, there is a pre made "folder" called Projects. The icon is a purple square with a star. This is identical to all the others which I assume are Events. I I click on an "Event" all the clips are revealed in the pane to the right. But if I click on the tiny trinagle, nothing is revealed. I don't understand this.
Now my real question: If I click on the triangle for the pre made Projects fodler, it reveals 4 collections called: Complete, Incomplete etc. Also their icons look like a strange blue page. I made these and they seem to have come from the previous verions of FCP X. When I reveal the contents of Incomplete, what I want to do is move a project, by dragging, to the Complete collection. Instead of moving it though, it copies it. The only way to get rid of the project in the Incomplete collection is by moving it to the trash, but this really does delete it everywhere!
I find the new version very hard to understand. All I want is to group project according to their being complete or not, or some other catagory, but I canno figure it out.
Any help?
Cheers

Because the changes to the 10.1 library model were so substantial there has been a huge amount of info on updating and they way this model affects organization put out by Apple and many training organizations.
Here is a very good document by Apple; it gets right into the files created by updating. There are other docs by Apple as well as articles and free video tutorials by trainers easily found by a search.
The short answer is events live in libraries and projects live in events. Left to its own devices, the first time 10.1 is launched it will update the projects and events it sees on connected drives and make a library for each drive. The disclosure triangles reveal collections. If there are no collections, nothing will show when opened.
HTH.
Russ

Illustrator and Blending modes. Colour managing question.

Let's say i make 2 circles with 2 different fill colours. Then i intersect and blend them with multiply. Is there any way to save the colour resulting on the intersection?
Thank you!

Duplicate the 2 circles.
Object > Flatten Transparency.
Select the intersection colour and add it to your swatches.
Get rid of the duplicated objects.

My problem is that after printing the first photo or picture, when I come to print a second, both the Colour Management and Epson Colour Controls are greyed out and showing No Colour Management

I have recently purchased a Mac computer (updated to Maverick) to go with my Epson Stylus Photo RX500 printer which has given excellent service with my old Windows computer. However, when trying to print pictures or photos via Photoshop Elements 11, the best results I can get are using the Colour Management and Epson Colour controls in the printing options box.
My problem is that after printing the first photo or picture, when I come to print a second, both the Colour Management and Epson Colour Controls are greyed out and showing No Colour Management, The only way I can reset the controls is to shut down the printer and computer and restart.
Could there may be a setting somewhere that I need to adjust please? I have been in touch with Epson and they say that the Epson Colour controls are part of the Photoshop Elements software but a post on the Adobe forum brought no results and I am unable to contact Adobe.
<Edited by Host>

Hello Garry. Thanks for the reply. I guess I should have used a different title from "How do I post a question?" That should come after trying to resolved the colour settings first. However, to answer your question, after experimenting with all the different settings in Photoshop Elements and Epson software, I now start with PSE11 Colour settings then click "no colour management" then after clicking Print, I choose "More Options/Colour Management/Colour Handling/Printer Manages Colour" then I choose "Page Setup/Layout/Colour Matching" which then shows Epson Colour Controls but I also choose "Layout/Colour Management" which then shows "Colour Controls/Mode" I then of course choose an Epson printer profile depending on the paper I am using. I get good results but as I said, the Colour Matching and Colour Controls are then greyed out. Hope that makes sense.

Colour Management - who does what - Some thoughts now the smoke is clearing

First up, thanks very much to everyone who contributed their ideas and expertise to my recent query here, when I was seeking help for a problem with colour management issues when printing a magazine I edit. I have a ton of suggestions to work through and study but the smoke is slowly clearing and it raises some interesting points which I think are worth recounting.
First of all, I have been editing short run magazines now for 25 years, at first part time and later on a professional contract basis. I am not a trained graphic designer nor a trained printer. I did start out training as a graphic designer, many years ago but gave it up for a career in IT (as a networking specialist). That was full time until 10 years ago, although I did some freelance writing and editing in my spare time.
And yes, I did start originally with scissors and cut and paste, and moved on through black and white with spot colour and Pagemaker software to full colour and InDesign today. One thing which may be different about my experience to most of yours is that I am a PC user and always have been. All my editing and graphics work has always been done on a PC - Pagemaker was our DTP package of choice for a long time and we supplemented this with Corel-Draw (which has a range of graphics handling options). All my software is legal and I always register it and keep it up to date. I have used the same graphic designer for quite a few years now and whenever we upgrade our software he goes and gets trained on the latest release.
Around 10 years ago I was offered the chance to edit a specialist short run magazine (not the current one). This was a chance I took and gave up the day job and became a full time freelance. Editing is not my main or only source of income. I am also a freelance writer and photographer and heritage consultant and I have a specialist image library.   I sell my own sell my work - articles and pictures - to the national and local press. I also write books (non fiction) on commission. The magazine editing is really an extension of my interest in historic landscapes. I have never had any complaints, or problems, with the freelance work, photos and archived images I sell. Clients include national newspapers here in the UK, national magazine groups and my books are available in national bookstore chains. I supply my work digitally, naturally, and it includes photos I have taken myself and items which I have scanned into my library of historical images and store on line. No reported colour management issues there.
I have always enjoyed a good relationship with my publishers and printers because I seek to be as professional as possible, which means delivering my stuff on time, to the required standard so that minimum intervention is required from them. This does assume that I have a clear brief from them on what they need from me.
Recently this approach has not been enough to avoid colour management issues with the short run magazine I currently edit. I have been wondering when and where things went astray and date it back to the upgrade to InDesign two years ago. However it may have its roots in my earlier decision to use PCs not Macs for my work.
Until 4 years ago I had used the same printers for magazine editing for many years. They were a well respected firm specialising in short run magazines. They were not far from where I live and work and if there was a problem I would go over and discuss it with them. They were happy, and competent, to handle Pagemaker files generated on a PC and convert my rgb images to cmyk if there was any concern about the colour balance. On a few occasions I paid them to scan a photo for me. However 4 years ago the owner decided to retire and shut up shop. I needed to find a new printers and it had to be someone who specialised in short run magazines and could meet the budget of the charity I edit for. Also someone who could handle copy generated using Pagemaker running on a PC. I chose a printers I had used briefly in the past where I knew some of the staff and was promised PC based Pagemaker would not be a problem. I even got this in writing. I started to send them proofs generated using Pagemaker v7 on my PC.
I soon found that although they had agreed they could handle Pagemaker on a PC in fact they had only a few PC based clients and were using a single ageing PC running Pagemaker to proof their work. In fact nearly all their jobs were Quark based. I was also told we had to supply CMYK images although not given any further requirement so I now did the conversions from rgb to CMYK using my PhotoPaint software. (There are quite a few settings in Corel for the conversion but there was no guidance by the printer on which to use so to be honest it did not occur to me that it might be a problem).
Now of course I understand that the drive to get customers to supply CMYK images was a Quark driven requirement back in the late 1990s. I did not and do not use Quark so knew nothing for this. I did have some early colour problems and font incompatibilities with the new printers and was pressured by their senior Graphic Designer (who designed for their own contract clients) to upgrade to InDesign and provide them with a .pdf, which I was assured would solve all my problems. The .pdf would be the same as the final printed magazine because "it would not require any further intervention by the printers".
I expect you are collectively throwing up your hands in horror at this point, but I think he was speaking genuinely. The creation of a .pdf using InDesign, is widely promoted as the ultimate answer to all printing issues.   I have encountered it recently with a lot of printers' salesmen and my friend, who edits a learned journal, has just been told the same thing by her printers, to get her to upgrade to ID. Incidentally she also uses a PC.
So we upgraded our design process in house to InDesign and our graphic designer went on a course, two courses in fact. When we came to produce our first .pdf using ID, the printers' Senior Graphic designer came on the phone and talked our designer through the ID Export function. I think he may at that time have told him to create a preset profile with MPC and the defaults, but to be honest I don't recall. We were never sent anything in writing about what settings we needed to match theirs. I continued to have intermittant colour management problems but put this down to my photos. Things came to head with the most recent issue where the colours were badly out on the cover, supplied by a press agency and taken by a professional photographer. The printers seemed to have little or no idea about possible causes.
Initially I thought that part of the underlying cause must lie in some mismatch between what I was sending the printers and what they expected to receive so I asked them to specify what I should send. All they said was use Profile preset as MPC setting and accept the defaults which accompany it.
So I came on here looking for a solution. A lot of people were keen to offer their own experience which I really appreciate. However the messages could be conflicting. Some of you suggested it was the underlying cover photo which was at fault, some that it was my monitor which needed better calibration.
Many of you here said that part of the problem, if not the whole problem, was the way I was generating my CMYKs for the printer and I should use Photoshop to do this. You also mentioned a number of possible colour management settings which I should try.
At times the advice seemed to change tack. There were suggestions that the colour management issues I had were nothing to do with the printers, that it was up to me not them. Quite a lot of you said I needed to be better informed about Colour Management issues. I agree, but I had never had any previously (maybe good luck, maybe good support from my previous printer) so I was not even aware that I needed to be better informed. Some of you mildly chastised me for not finding out more and doing more to manage my own colour management with the switch to ID. To which I can only say if I had needed to train up, I would have done. I did not realise I needed to. Nor was my designer aware of the issues as colour management was not really covered on his ID courses which were about typesetting and design.
Some of you even seemed to hint that unless I was prepared to use an expensive high end printer or effectively retrain as a print specialist or get my graphic designer to do so, then I probably shouldn't be in the magazine editing game at all. OK maybe that is a bit harsh but you get the drift.
The fact is that printing is much more accessible these days to all sorts of people and in particular to people with PCs. My brother lives in a large village in an isolated area and produces a village magazine which has been a great success. It is in black and white with spot colour but he would like to move to an all colour issue. He is a bit nervous of the colour management issues as he has no experience of graphic design and is his own designer using a low end entry level design package. He too uses a PC. The printers reps all tell him the same thing they tell me, that all he needs to supply is a .pdf using InDesign.
Somewhere I feel a black hole has developed, maybe back in the 1990s with Quark 4.11. A lot of printers standardised on that, and set up a work flow and prepress dependent on CMYK images as provided by the clients. They assumed the the clients would doing their own colour management. This approach also assumes everyone is using Quark on a Mac with the full range of Adobe software. When it became possible to generate .pdfs using InDesign, this was held out to users as the Holy Grail of magazine printing, even though their workflows and prepress were still based on Quark 4.11 principles. Any underlying colour management issues the clients now have to tackle themselves.
So now we have the situation in which I find myself, having to learn from scratch a good deal about colour management issues so that I can tell the printers what is needed for my magazine. Meanwhile all the printing salesmen, the ones I encounter anyway, are still busy pushing the InDesign to .pdf as the "be all and end all" solution. Some re-education is needed for all parties I think.

I am glad to see that the sun is peeping through the clouds.
I apologise for my Aussie-style straight talk earlier, but as I said before it was not directed personally at you but in the direction of others whom you epitomize, repeating a conversation I have had many times over the last 10 years or so where respectable, well-meaning photographers, designers and other contributors refuse to accept that colour management is being thrust upon them.
It is a simple fact of life, there is this 'new' thing that has butted into the very root of our trades and changed the most basic principles of printing and photography. We expect that this kind of thing does not happen but the industry we now work in is not the same one we trained in twenty years ago.
Many printers are still struggling with the same conflict, so many tradespeople cannot accept this change.
This is exacerbated by the fact that colour management is so complicated to learn and implement and confounded by the fact that the default settings and a clumsy workflow often yield acceptable results with incorrect, generic settings, hence the old 'use InDesign and make a PDF and it will be ok' route.
When the chain of colour management includes the photographer, the photographer's client, the designer, the other designer maybe, the prepress person, and the platemaker, and a single incorrect click by any one of those can kill the CM it is not surprising that in the end when someone is looking back to see where it fell over they usually never find out.....   They will meet someone who says ' I never touched it, I simply opened the file and scaled it and closed it'. And that person will be a reputable photographer or designer (and CLIENT) who has no idea they just broke it. So what do we do? We go with the generic setting that seems to yield adequate results therefore avoiding the confrontation.
You need to understand the situation of the printer who took his business through the 'early' days of colour management, we had all kinds of very reputable sources supplying incorrect files, we did not have the expertise yet to be able to address the entire workflow, it would have meant training photographers and designers all through the best design houses and national institutions, because they blamed the printer. Only in the last few years have I seen these people coming around to the fact that they bear responsibility for implementing their own cm and maintaining it through their own work.
Sadly, many high end sources are still not there, and I mean HIGH end! Probably the ones that don't even visit this forum because they want to keep blaming the printer... They tend to live with the poor quality reproductions and just pull up the worst ones and fiddle with those and try to avoid the 'elephant in the room'.
I am sorry to say that it was not practical for a printer to reject mismanaged files for fear of losing clients who would happily accept less than perfect results in order to avoid the painful truth that was being told to them. The best thing we could do was to gently make those clients aware that their workflow was imperfect and hope to show them how we could help... Many print shops do not have someone knowledgeable enough or patient enough to do this, or the boss does not understand the issue either and tries to work around it to keep his jobs flowing in the expectation that all those experts in the chain will eventually tame the thing.
The many experts on this holy forum are waaaaayyyy ahead of the printing industry in general and photographers and designers in general in their understanding of colour management workflow. I have seen first hand how reputable local industry people and trainers alike are spreading misinformation and bad techniques, when I discovered these forums back in about 2002 I found that they opened up a whole new galaxy of knowledge and facts that actually worked and made sense, unlike what I had been told locally.... This forum taught me what the Adobe text books did not, the Tech' teachers did not, local 'experts' did not!
I tell all interested people to join these forums and learn to discriminate between the good and bad information.

How do I fix colour picker to work across different colour-managed monitors?

Hey everyone!
I'm assuming this problem I'm having stems from having colour-calibrated monitors, but let me know if I'm wrong!
To preface, this is the setup I have:
Windows 7
3 monitors as follows, all have individual colour profiles calibrated using the Spyder 3
Cintiq 12WX
Dell U2410
Dell 2409WFP
Photoshop CS6 - Proofed with Monitor RGB, and tested with colour-managed and non-colour-managed documents
I usually do most of my work on the Cintiq 12WX, but pull the photoshop window to my main monitor to do large previews and some corrections. I noticed that the colour picker wouldn't pick colours consistently depending on the monitor the Photoshop window is on.
Here are some video examples:
This is how the colour picker works on my Dell U2410: http://screencast.com/t/lVevxk5Ihk
This is how it works on my Cintiq 12WX: http://screencast.com/t/tdREx4Xyhw9
Main Question
I know the Cintiq's video capture makes the picture look more saturated than the Dell's, but it actually looks fine physically, which is okay. But notice how the Cintiq's colour picker doesn't pick a matching colour. It was actually happening the opposite way for a while (Dell was off, Cintiq was fine), but it magically swapped while I was trying to figure out what was going on. Anyone know what's going on, and how I might fix it?
Thanks for *any* help!
Semi-related Question regarding Colour Management
Colour management has always been the elephant-in-the-room for me when I first tried to calibrate my monitors with a Spyder colourimeter years ago. My monitors looked great, but Photoshop's colours became unpredictable and I decided to abandon the idea of calibrating my monitors for years until recently. I decided to give it another chance and follow some tutorials and articles in an attempt to keep my colours consistent across Photoshop and web browsers, at least. I've been proofing against monitor colour and exporting for web without an attached profile to keep pictures looking good on web browsers. However, pictures exported as such will look horrible when uploaded to Facebook. Uploading pictures with an attached colour profile makes it look good on Facebook. This has forced me to export 2 versions of a picture, one with an attached colour profile and one without, each time I want to share it across different platform. Is there no way to fix this issue?
Pictures viewed in Windows Photo Viewer are also off-colour, but I think that's because it's not colour managed... but that's a lesser concern.

I think I've figured out the colour management stuff in the secondary question, but the weird eyedropper issue is still happening. Could just be a quirk from working on things across multiple monitors, but I'm hoping someone might know if this is a bug/artifact.
Going to lay out what I inferred from my experiments regarding colour management in case other noobs like me run into the same frustrations as I did. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - the following are all based on observation.
General Explanation
A major source of my problems stem from my erroneous assumption that all browsers will use sRGB when rendering images. Apparently, most popular browsers today are colour-managed, and will use an image's embedded colour profile if it exists, and the monitor's colour profile if it doesn't. This was all well and good before I calibrated my monitors, because the profile attached to them by default were either sRGB or a monitor default that's close to it. While you can never guarantee consistency on other people's monitors, you can catch most cases by embedding a colour profile - even if it is sRGB. This forces colour-managed browsers to use sRGB to render your image, while non-colour-managed browsers will simply default to sRGB. sRGB seems to be the profile used by Windows Photo Viewer too, so images saved in other wider gamut colour spaces will look relatively drab when viewed in WPV versus a colour-managed browser.
Another key to figuring all this out was understanding how Profile Assignment and Conversion work, and the somewhat-related soft-proofing feature. Under Edit, you are given the option to either assign a colour profile to the image, or convert the image to another colour profile. Converting an image to a colour profile will replace the colour profile and perform colour compensations so that the image will look as physically close to the original as possible. Assigning a profile only replaces the colour profile but performs no compensations. The latter is simulated when soft-proofing (View > Proof Colors or ctrl/cmd-Y). I had followed bad advice and made the mistake of setting up my proofing to Monitor Color because this made images edited in Photoshop look identical when the same image is viewed in the browser, which was rendering my images with the Monitor's colour profile, which in turn stemmed from yet another bad advice I got against embedding profiles . This should formally answer Lundberg's bewilderment over my mention of soft-proofing against Monitor Colour.
Conclusion and Typical Workflow (aka TL;DR)
To begin, these are the settings I use:
Color Settings: I leave it default at North American General Purpose 2, but probably switch from sRGB to AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB so I can play in a wider gamut.
Proof Setup: I don't really care about this anymore because I do not soft-proof (ctrl/cmd-Y) in this new workflow.
Let's assume that I have a bunch of photographs I want to post online. RAWs usually come down in the AdobeRGB colour space - a nice, wide gamut that I'll keep while editing. Once I've made my edits, I save the source PSD to prep for export for web.
To export to web, I first Convert to the sRGB profile by going to Edit > Convert to Profile. I select sRGB as the destination space, and change the Intent to either Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric, depending on what looks best to me. This will convert the image to the sRGB colour space while trying to keep the colours as close to the original as possible, although some shift may occur to compensate for the narrower gamut. Next, go to Save for Web. The settings you'll use:
Embed Color Profile CHECKED
Convert to sRGB UNCHECKED (really doesn't matter since you're already in the sRGB colour space)
and Preview set to Internet Standard RGB (this is of no consequence - but it will give a preview of what the image will look like in the sRGB space)
That's it! While there might be a slight shift in colour when you converted from AdobeRGB to sRGB, everything from then on should stay consistent from Photoshop to the browser
Edit: Of course, if you'd like people to view your photos in glorious wide gamut in their colour-managed browsers, you can skip the conversion to sRGB and keep them in AdobeRGB. When Saving for Web, simply remember to Embed the Color Profile, DO NOT convert to sRGB, and set Preview to "Use Document Profile" to see what the image would look like when drawn with the embedded color profile

A Colour Management tutorial from an amateur

Archiving at the end of a long project I came across a document I assembled at the start when I wanted to teach myself about colour management. I spent several weeks reading, experimenting and putting together these notes, but it all came to nought. To quote from the notes:
…I chose not to use colour management when printing my books on a Xerox iGen3. I converted the InDesign files to PDF with all colour management turned off, and asked the printer to print ‘direct’. The iGen RIP converted RGB images to CMYK, and CMYK images were printed as per the colour numbers. Using certain colour settings for my monitor, and for Photoshop and InDesign, I was able to obtain a very close match between what was on screen and what was on paper without the need for profiles…
I've asked a fair few questions here over the years, and this forum has been a great help, but I rarely offer anything in return. Well, here's a little something that some people might find useful. A mob of information about colour management, collated from various sources with my tuppence worth here and there to make it flow. It was put together before my InDesign days when I used Pages, so forgive the mediocre layout.
Colour Management (450k) can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/?86edp6742ac6zlv (If Peter Spier is reading this: Peter, that's a hot link now; I've upgraded my Mediafire account so there are no more banners).
If anyone visits here in the future and that link doesn't work (which will happen if I upload a new version), try this one, a link to the folder: http://www.mediafire.com/?an9n0o36nymwv
Please let me know if there are any gross errors in the PDF and I'll fire up Pages and correct them.

geoffseeley, Welcome to the discussion area!
1) amber light keeps flashing but internet works - is this a problem?
I believe that indicates that you do not have wireless encryption enabled. If you enabled wireless encryption, the light should turn green.
3) how does iTunes work through the extreme box? am i supposed to plug my home cinema into the extreme box somehow?
The AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) has no special features to support video/audio directly. iTunes has nothing to do with the AEBS.
The AirPort Express (AX) has an audio out port for streaming music from iTunes.

Colour management warning for dual display users

For those of you who require a colour managed workflow and have more than one display, be very careful in Mountain Lion. It appears to have a bizarre bug where images loaded and shown on the primary display (e.g. in Preview) are initially rendered with the colour profile from the secondary display, or something along those lines. Dragging the display window to the secondary display and back again sorts things out. I've filed a bug report.
If your two (or more) monitors have the same colour profile, you won't have a problem. The only workaround I can see is to set your least important display(s) to all have the same profile as your (probably calibrated, if these things matter to you) primary display, at least until (if?) the bug gets fixed.
If you want to see it for yourself, set your two displays to differing profiles - e.g. NTSC (1953) on the primary and Wide Gamut RGB on the secondary. Then load an image into Preview - something with lots of shades of red "works" well for the colour profiles mentioned. Take a screenshot of the Preview window as a reference. Move the window to the secondary display; note the colour shift as it gets re-rendered. Now drag it back to the primary display. It'll look quite different compared to the screenshot you took earlier, despite the fact it's the same image being shown by the same application on the same display in the same window... All you did was drag the window between two monitors and back again.
It doesn't seem to matter if the image in question has a colour profile embedded in it or not. When comparing with your screenshot, feel free to drag the screenshot between the monitors too - after all, it'll be suffering the same rendering bug! You'll still see a different result; in fact it may even be magnified by the accumulated rendering errors.
Preview isn't the only application affected; I've seen identical issues under harder to replicate circumstances in Safari, for example.
Given this fault and others I've seen with colour rendering in Lion, plus several new bugs found in Mountain Lion, I'm afraid that if a colour managed workflow is important to you - well - Snow Leopard or Windows...?! Ugh, what a mess

I've encountered many of the same woes with color management being a graphic designer, but here's my issue:
Have a 15" (Early 2011) Macbook Pro. It is turned on with me hooked up to my Dell U2410 and display open for a dual display configuration. The Dell is my primary monitor.
I then unplug my MBP to use it around the house. I go to plug it back into the Dell for my dual monitor. I notice that the color on the Dell looks good, but now the MBP has a very blue color temperature. Like moving from the preconfigured 'Color LCD' profile to 'sRGB' which definitely shifts to a blue color on the MBP.
I check the color profiles in System Settings and the Color profiles are correct. 'Dell U2410' for my Dell and 'Color LCD' for my MBP. But as I said, it's much bluer than standard. I try to change the color profiles around on the MBP and no matter which I select it's always the same color with no shifts I would expect to see.
Only solution I have found is to restart my computer. Upon restarting all is well again in the world.
It's pretty annoying having to restart my computer everytime I plug it back into my workstation with Dell and keyboard.
Related note: USB does not work when I plug things back and again have to restart to fix this.

Colour management of spot colour channels

Hello
I have some single layer images using cmyk (black only) + Pantone Process Blue U that will eventually be printed on a sheetfed offset press. A ballpark estimate would suffice for this low budget book, so I thought I'd give soft proofing a try. I'm therefore interested in understanding Photoshop's implementation of colour management for spot colour channels so as to have a less vague idea of the approximations this workflow involves.
Moreover, I'm stuck on exporting to pdf to let the client evaluate my conversions of the original rgb scans. Photoshop seems to layer an Euroscale Uncoated v2 overprinting image on top of a spot coloured image whose alternate colour space is "Calibrated RGB". What baffles me is that the pdfs display consistently in Acrobat 8 and 9 but rather differently from the Photoshop document.
Here come my questions:
1) Am I right in saying that these programs still don't support colour profiles involving spots? If so, are Adobe people willing to comment on the relevant intricacies?
2) Which colour profiles and colour conversions do Photoshop and Acrobat use to display such documents?
3) Which software tools will allow me to convert the Photoshop documents to an output profile for hard proofing?
4) Short of alternatives, when only K is needed and as long as each spot colour bears a decent resemblance to a cmy primary, how well will the profiling software deal with a cmyk target printed substituting the inks on press?
Thank you very much for your help.
Giordano

As far as I know …
1) Photoshop uses the Spot setting from your Color Settings (Edit – Color Settings) to display spot channels (and one can use gray-profiles or the K-channel of CMYK-profiles for that); the Solidity one can set manually, but one should bear in mind that even a 100% solid spot channel does not knock out the process channels.
As for the actual physical properties of the color and its mixing with the other colors I’m afraid Photoshop produces a pretty rough simulation – profiles for more than four colors are considerably more complicated and would, if I’m not mistaken, preclude much of Photoshop’s functionality.
2) If you pass unprofiled Files between programs they will be displayed using the programs’ respective Color Settings.
And your screen profile will be employed in the process naturally … but you might want to read up on color management if you want to know more about all that.
As to why the display differs between Acrobat and Photoshop it would appear that Acrobat use the RGB-setting for displaying spots and not an extra setting like Photoshop.
3) Photoshop is capable of separating files – but I may not understand what you’re driving at.
4) Epson-proofers using the latest generation of inks for example have a fairly wide gamut and should be able to simulate a lot of Pantone colors, so you might want to contact your provider to make sure if such a workaround is necessary at all.

Yet another colour management thread

Here is a warm, saturated image worked on in lightroom, converted to adobe RGB on export, converted to SRGB on output from photoshop. (srg profile not embedded).
Its far too saturated and red
Here is the same image with the adobe rgb tagged.
and as srg with the profile embedded.
Now my understanding is that in IE all of these will display the same (and they do, i've tested it), and they all look like the oversaturated red one. I also understand that the gamut of your monitor will affect just how red they actually appear.
Windows also displays them all the same - the uber red version.
So the question is - how the frick are we supposed to supply these to our clients? Bearing in mind they all have different monitors, browsers, OS's. I've just had the client on the phone complaining about the saturation and it just sounds like so much ******** waffling about gamut and colour managed browsers.
Are you to just avoid warm saturated images? Is there an application that we can distribute with the images that will display them correctly? Because if I leave them on a DVD I have no control over what viewer will mangle the colour management.
I'd love some feedback on how other photographers deal with this issue.
EDIT: and joy of joys, adobe obviously strips out the colour managment when these are posted - because the 2nd two look correct in the edit window, but the same as the first when I post it

I clearly see the differences in you screen shot, although my version of IE seems to obey the color profiles I embed in our imagery.
I deal with color management like others in this thread - I use calibrated monitors, I profile using sRGB (the lowest common denominator tag for general digital distribution IMO) and advise my clients to do the same (calibrate!). Some commercial clients require CMYK, in that case I edit completly in sRGB and only convert to CMYK when creating final delivery imagery. I use Adobe PS default CMYK settings and I specify this up front in contractual agreements. I have yet to get many complaints that cannot be explained by failure to understand the huge variations in hardware and software that a viewer of digital images might encounter. This allows me to do the best I can and you gotta just let the rest go .

Colour Profile Question - Press PDF

Hi
I've got a quick question regarding colour profiles.
I've designed an A5 flyer for a client and I have my CS3 suite colour settings set to Adobe 1998 for RGB and Euro Coated for CMYK. The client has decided that this flyer is now to be printed on uncoated paper. So, should I be converting or assigning the working/document CMYK profile to Euro uncoated?
Also on output for press I have a PDF export setting which I use for creating press pdf's which is set to 'No Colour Conversion' and 'Don't include profiles', so in fact does the above matter at all?
I'm totally confused, any help appreciated!
Thanks

I think you are guessing correctly, they may have some control which will work ok for them at a certain level.
You could convert in ID, which will alter the appearance and that will change the output file. Or you could manually adjust the colour/saturation to taste and let the printers go through their usual process and end up with better job.
They probably 'run to density' on press, so you are taking some of their control. Most printers at least calibrate their equipment to a standard, such as Euroscale and then suggest that clients use that when preparing files. That is what I guess when a printer does not have a custom profile.
What they are saying to you is that they are calibrated and their approximate appearance is based on Euro Coated on coated stock at a particular ink density measured at the press.
Uncoated stock looks desaturated, so if you increase your saturation and reduce your Total Ink, you can control the look at their desired press density.
This is not correct colour management, but reflects real world conditions in many commercial 'jobbing' printers in my experience.

Basic colour management questions

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for