Using colour profiles

[EricLawrie]

The range of color spaces/colour profiles on the market is wide and varied.

I have heard that for scanning, photoshop work and printing of colour slides, ColourMatchRGB and Adobe 1998 RGB are two of the best.

Any comments on whether or not one is better than the other for scanning > photoshop > printing?

Regards,

Eric Lawrie

[ianders1]

Eric,

These are the two most commonly used color spaces, and you'll get great results with both of them. If your doing mostly print work (i.e. sending files to a CMYK press or at least converting to CMYK) ColorMatch is better because its smaller color gamut more closely matches CMYK's. For print work, though it's best to use Silverfast's wonderful Plug 'n Play CMYK scans. To do this, make sure you have the same ICC profile selected in both PhotoShop and Silverfast, and then click on the little CMYK striped cube above the letters "CMYK" in the densitometer window for an accurate CMYK preview.

If you're doing mostly sending files to printers with large color gamuts (i.e. Epson's Photo printers of Iris printers) you will find AdobeRGB 1998 or BruceRGB will work best.

Also, if you'll be sending files to the web, it's usually best to scan them into AdobeRGB, do any additional color/image corrections, and then convert to sRGB before saving.

Lastly, for the ultimate in image quality, scan them in as RAW 48-Bit scans, open them in HDR (which I can't afford just yet!) and process them in there, saving them out as CMYK, AdobeRGB 1998, or sRGB.

Hope this helps,

-Ian (the other one!)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ianders1 on 2001-09-18 21:48 ]</font>

[EricLawrie]

Ian "the other one"!

Your reply is most helpful. Many thanks.

Eric Lawrie