CMS Output/Printer == 'convert to profile' ?

[Gregory C]

I have the profiles for the printer/paper at our local Fuji/Fotomax commercial photo shop. their system might not read embedded profiles though so I believe that I'll need to 'convert' my images to the printer profile rather than just 'assign'.

if I choose a profile for CMS Output/Printer, will the result be the same as "convert to profile"?

regards,
Gregory

[LSI_Rossee]

Dear Gregory,

that is correct. Choose colorsync as internal -> Output and then the profile from your commercial photo lab under output/printers.

The image will be converted to the desired output space and the profile will be embedded also.

But pls do not expect miracles. Just because they created a profile sometime ago does not guarantee color correct output for all times. The whole process needs to be controlled, linearised and calibrated repeatedly.
Also most of the times the profile will resemble sRGB at the most.

Best,

Jan

[Gregory C]

actually, the result was pretty good, much better than my previous attempts.

the profile is not a 'factory' profile. it was created by a company in the USA for a photo shop using the same printer/paper combination. while there might be differences in ink quality or printer heads, etc, the result is very acceptable, far far better than plain old sRGB; at least so far.

I've tested Perceptual and Rel. Colormetric. Rel. Colormetric seems to produce a better result with blacks being black instead of grey which is what's going to happen when the Adobe color space is 'squeezed' or scaled into the smaller printer colorspace.

nice to know that I have the 'convert to profile' option in SF. it'll be useful.

regards,
Gregory

[LSI_Rossee]

nice to know that I have the 'convert to profile' option in SF. it'll be useful.

regards,
Gregory

Greg,
have you noticed the softproof functionality in order to simulate your output process via softproof on your monitor (if the monitor is able to display the gamut of your output device that is).
You can activate this by clicking on the little square RGB icon left to the preview window in the densitometer.

Best,

Jan

[Gregory C]

from the little I understand of colour matching, softproofing would let me see what the image looks like on the output device with the output device's colour range and its colour limitations. for the softproof to be accurate, wouldn't there need to be an assumption that the monitor's colour range is larger than and completely contains the smaller output device's colour range? generally speaking, can LCD monitors display the complete Adobe colour space or only the sRGB colour space?

additionally, for it to be useful, you would need an accurate colour profile for the output device before the softproof actually means anything. right?

[RAG]

Hello Gregory C,

Yes, your monitor is capabable of displaying all of sRGB and Adobe RGB.

[LSI_Rossee]

Hi,

RAG I wish a monitor or LCD was capable of displaying all of AdobeRGB or at least sRGB but as of now there is only one Display available on the market that gets closest to AdobeRGB, the Eizo CG220 that is (no, I am not affiliated with them and I do not get a free display for saying this here in the forum).
The little graph below shows the sRGB (white wireframe) colorspace compared to the colorspace of my already pretty good NEC display. The sRGB is significantly bigger than in almost all colors than my monitor gamut.

bild_1.png

As a matter of fact I would like to see some functionality in the software which would indicate the colors that the monitor can not display besides the indication of clipped colors from the printer profile. I?ll open a feature request for this one

@Gregory
yes the more accurate the ouptput device characterization profile --> aka ICC-profile, the more accurate the softproof with the limitations mentioned above.

Greetings,

Jan

[RAG]

How about LaCie LCD's?

[LSI_Rossee]

Hi,

from checking their website I would say not capable of displaying the AdobeRGB but I haven't used one before.

Best,

JAN

[RAG]

Well then,

I stand way corrected on that note; however the majority of the displays on the market will display a larger gamut than today's desktop inkjet printers, right?

[LSI_Rossee]

Hi,

for a printer the gamut varies greatly from the paper and ink used, as well as the quality of the profiles describing the ink-paper-printer combination. But I will try to answer your question. In a direct scientific comparison the monitor will not be able to reproduce the gamut of today?s inkjet printers completly but from a practical perspective - sort of yes.
This means that when softproofing to your inkjet profile, you will get a pretty good idea of what your image looks like after outputting it. Look at the graph below in whichyou can see the monitor gamut compared to the gamut from my Epson R2400 and Archival Matte paper (white wireframe).

gamut_comparison_2.png

Do you see what I mean?! Large parts are covered by both output devices but some significant ones are not.

Best,

JAN