Color Problems

[Chazs]

Here's my problem....

I'm creating a coffee-table-picture-album of my dads paintings. Here are my steps

1. I used an S-40 in RAW mode, natural light, and tripod.

2. Converted RAW to 8-bit TIFF with Canon's converter (used camera settings for the conversion. Don't think I made any additional settings).

3. Used Photoshop7 to crop (no color adjustment).

4. Printed on a Canon S820D printer with glossy photo paper.

My problem is matching the color to the original oil print. I've "tried" to calibrate my monitor (LCD flat panel), but still unsure if it's correct. Also, a little confused on all the available ICC profiles.

The monitor's rendition is just slightly warmer than the original. By decreasing the red channel a few percentage points makes it nearly identical. But then, printing to the Canon printer, the final print is QUITE warm. I'll have to back off the reds and yellows a lot more, and push the cyans, to make the print look like the original. It'll most likely make the monitor image weird looking.

Soooo.... is there a way to calibrate all three, the monitor AND the printer, to match the actual painting? Or, do you think much of the color shift is the RAW conversion, and can be fixed there?

I'd like to find a "global" fix or work flow so I don't have to tweek-print-tweek-print 45 pictures.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. :)

[stopbath]

Since your working with natural light, perhaps shoot a white card before each session. Since the sun's colour cast changes throughout the day, you'll need periodic references if you spread out the work.

Then, you take the reference card shot, and 'neutralize it.' Take those changes, and do the same on the painting photograph.

This should give you good whites without allowing the monitor to mislead you.

Not all paper or plastic is true white. Some may have infrared or ultraviolet properties the camera can see but you won't. Some may only appear white, but may be pink or brown next to other whites...

Even Kodak grey cards can have different tones in the white.

[dmalek]

flat panels are hard to calibrate unless you would own a dedicated calibration device.

i've usually had the same problem (with a non LCD screen).

now i use my monitor ICC profile as reference, therefore i convert my pics from the camera ICC profile to my monitor profile.

as I both print and post to the web, i embed the monitor profile in the pics.

for printing with a LCD i think trying a few prints and adjust monitor brightness and contrast and gamma to SEE accurate colors is the only solution i see to your problem. ambient light in your room is also important. an idea is to use settings than would convert the ICC color space used for screen display to the printer's color space. you might have problem with colors that exist in one colorspace and not in the other one. personnally i have problems with magenta colors.

another idea is to adjust the histogram for levels manually, and increase saturation a little if you have greens (from trees or grass) or blue skies. because even if your print colors are accurate maybe the print would look too soft as compared to film prints with high saturation (kodak gold like). i think trying to render film colors to the viewer is also something to consider. because color is subjective

i'm not sure i'm of any help

[walkien]

Try this in PS7
1. press and hold the "control" and "shift" key, then press "K", will bring you the color setting menu.
2. Within "Working Spaces" box, change the RGB to "Adobe RGB (1998)".

Hope this will help