color management

[photowriters]

Who can help me understand color management in the digital world?

I've searched the Internet and read everything I can get my hands on and printed much of it for future reference. I am not a dummy when it comes to photography. I majored in photojournalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and although most of my work has been in black and white, I understand color from the standpoint of the necessity for accurate exposure and the importance of color temperature and balance. Nevertheless, something about digital color management escapes me.

I understand that that:

• Each digital camera/sensor has a different profile.
  The monitor that you use must be calibrated for accurate color.
  The software/icc profile you use will impact what you see in a print.
  That you must match the printer to its icc profile.
  Etc.

But something still escapes me. If I print locally, I can tweek things until I am satisfied, but if I let someone else print my digital image files, and I have the correct icc profile for the printer/paper combination that they use, I am not sure what I have to do with the digital image files, if anything, to get the image I want.

If have edited an image file to the point that I am satisfied with what it looks like on a calibrated monitor using the imbedded icc profile of the camera, is there anything else that I must do to get the color I want in a print other than selecting the icc profile for the printer/paper combination?

FYI the software I use for editing/correcting the raw image is Nikon's Capture NX. Its image management software is not as elegant as Adobe Lightrooms, but its editing tools are easier to use IMHO. I also have Photoshop for specialized editing down to the pixel level.

[srwatters]

In order to adjust for the printer/paper used in the final output, you can 'soft proof' your digital image. Photoshop has the ability to soft proof. In this way you can go back and forth between what you see on your screen and what the software believes the image will look like given the paper/printer icc profile you've supplied. It is just an approximation, but it will be much closer than simply using aRGB or sRGB standards.

I've found that on most inkjet systems, I can't get the deep blacks that you can with traditional silver based chemistry. There are plenty of other gamut issues when printing colors.

Best of luck. I am happy with my process as I've described above.

[jamesw]

I second Scott on this one. I just made some expensive metallic prints and I soft proofed them first and for the first time ever I got very close to "what you see is what you get."

Download and put the printer/paper profile where the instructions tell you.

In Photoshop go to View - Proof Colors and select the profile.

Suddenly the picture on your monitor will look different. Correct it (I use curves) back to what you hope to get and then go to Edit - Convert to Profile.

Scott: You can get some pretty awesome blacks using Mpix and their metallic paper. Maybe not as good for the type of photos you print though.

James

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by photowriters

Who can help me understand color management in the digital world?

I've searched the Internet and read everything I can get my hands on and printed much of it for future reference. I am not a dummy when it comes to photography. I majored in photojournalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and although most of my work has been in black and white, I understand color from the standpoint of the necessity for accurate exposure and the importance of color temperature and balance. Nevertheless, something about digital color management escapes me.

I understand that that:

• Each digital camera/sensor has a different profile.
  The monitor that you use must be calibrated for accurate color.
  The software/icc profile you use will impact what you see in a print.
  That you must match the printer to its icc profile.
  Etc.

But something still escapes me. If I print locally, I can tweek things until I am satisfied, but if I let someone else print my digital image files, and I have the correct icc profile for the printer/paper combination that they use, I am not sure what I have to do with the digital image files, if anything, to get the image I want.

If have edited an image file to the point that I am satisfied with what it looks like on a calibrated monitor using the imbedded icc profile of the camera, is there anything else that I must do to get the color I want in a print other than selecting the icc profile for the printer/paper combination?

FYI the software I use for editing/correcting the raw image is Nikon's Capture NX. Its image management software is not as elegant as Adobe Lightrooms, but its editing tools are easier to use IMHO. I also have Photoshop for specialized editing down to the pixel level.

I really suggest if you want to get a handle on Color Mangement get the following two books and you'll be on the way to understanding what you can do and why you do it.

Real World Color Management



Color Management for Photographers

Color management takes time and practice...

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by johnastovall

Real World Color Management

Color Management for Photographers

If I were to get just one of these books, which one would you recommend?

[jeffkohn]

Originally Posted by JohnT

If I were to get just one of these books, which one would you recommend?

Not wanting to speak for John, but I would suggest the Andrew Rodney book. It's going to be more targeted to digital photographers, while the Fraser book goes into really nitty gritty stuff you may not care about, and also has a broader target audience that includes for instance those targeting CMYK presses. You should check out the TOC of each book and see which one looks like it would be more useful to you.

[billbunton]

The second, Andrew Rodney's book. Andrew certainly knows as much as Bruce (they were great friends), but Andrew's book is written more toward the photographer who wants to know enough about color management to understand what and why. Bruce's will teach you all the deep dark theory too :-)

[JohnT]

Thanks, guys. Sounds like Rodney's book is for me, but I will check the TOC for confirmation.