Color Profiles novice!

[steelen]

Have got an EOS10D, Photoshop 7 and a Canon Pixma IP5000. Am I right in guessing I should set the EOS to Adobe RGB, the working space in PS7 to Adobe RGB (1988), and the print space in PS7 to the BJP2000 driver?

Been reading up on profiles for hours and my head hurts! Have done the monitor gamma and all that - could someone tell me if the above is an acceptabel way to set things up?

Any advice gratefully received!!

Nick

[tim]

As you know, color management's complex. What profile does the printer expect?

I don't think you'll lose anything by shooting/processing in Adobe RGB, just make sure you convert to sRgb for web work, and make sure your printer accepts whatever format you send to it.

[cmM]

yup, it's best to have your workflow in AdobeRGB since it has a larger gamut, just make sure you convert to sRGB for display on the web and printing (unless your printer can take Adobe RGB)
Like Tim said, color management is quite complex, I though I knew something... I didn't even scratch the surface. I got me a 1000 page book on it though, that should clear things up a bit :).

[chris.bailey]

Profiles and Colour Space are two different things though closely linked. The Colour Space describes the size of the colour gamut and the profiles say how that colour space should best be interpreted by various devices. That interpretation includes how colours that are out of the gamut of the device should be treated i.e. colours that are unable to be displayed are brought into the gamut of that device.

I would set Adobe rgb as the colour space throughout for print work and only convert to sRGB for the web. Set your monitor profile up in windows i.e. Adobe Gamma. I dont know the Pixma but for most printers there are canned profiles for the printer/paper combinations. Use these profiles and turn colour management off in the printer dialogue (or else PS and the printer will both be trying to colour manage the output). In the PS print Colour Management Dialogue set the black point compensation to on and use perceptual intent (these last two will take the printer profile and adjust out of gamut colours based on a perceptual basis which seems best for inkjet, the other settings are more for press based CMYK output).

Thats it. Once set up with profiles for the monitor and printer/paper combination you should get reasonably close to a colour managed workflow. thats is not to say there wont be differences. Your monitor may, for instance, be able to portray shades of green that you printer cannot etc. LCD monitors in particular also have trouble with a true white so you may have to make a bit of a brightness adjustment between screen and print. On my Epson 2200 I tend to increase brightness by 7 on the PS slider just before print. Dont be tempted to adjust the screen brightness as that upsets the monitor profile.

I hope the above makes sense, its a horrible topic to get your head around.

[DReb-MO]

, its a horrible topic to get your head around.

I'll second that. Color management is the most confusing thing I have had to learn or not since picking up digital photography and trying to print myself. Good to know there is always more to learn.

[Jonny]

Colour management - a damn pain in the butt!

The only true way to ensure you get decent prints and to ensure all your web images are being displayed correctly is to calibrate your monitor professionally. And then profile your printer.

You can adjust you display by eye all you like but it will never be bang on as you are only ever setting it to a point that YOU perceive to be good and not the true standard.

best of luck mate, it cost me £150 to get my workflow sorted.

I shoot sRGB and use the sRGB workspace in PS and the print by a profile created specifically for the printer and paper combination i am using.
Most people seem to advocate the use of Adobe RGB but i personally see little value to it and the desaturated, dull images annoy the heck out of me.

[steelen]

Thanks all for the inut - very interesting. I must admit up to now I have been shooting in sRGB and using sRGB in PS, and the pics look good on the screen. Its just when printing out sometimes the colours and flesh tones are a tad more orange / red than on the screen. I presume from what I've read above the most important thing I need is a profile dedicated to the printer?

[Jonny]

Thanks all for the inut - very interesting. I must admit up to now I have been shooting in sRGB and using sRGB in PS, and the pics look good on the screen. Its just when printing out sometimes the colours and flesh tones are a tad more orange / red than on the screen. I presume from what I've read above the most important thing I need is a profile dedicated to the printer?

yes and no.

The most important thing IMHO is to calibrate your display and then your printer. If your display is wrong then everything else will be.

get your display right and then print. If the print is still off then profile your printer.

[steelen]

Thanks - I have discovered my Monitor has a sRGB setting, which aoutmatically sets everything and you cant change it. If I use this, my prints are now much closer to the monitor view, but I still find that the flesh tones are a little too orange, and the greens arent as green as on the screen.

I have read some articles which suggest turning color management off on the printer, having set the print space in PS7 to the printer profile - do you have a view on this? Also, is using ICM a good idea?

Cheers,

Nick

[PacAce]

I shoot sRGB and use the sRGB workspace in PS and the print by a profile created specifically for the printer and paper combination i am using.
Most people seem to advocate the use of Adobe RGB but i personally see little value to it and the desaturated, dull images annoy the heck out of me.
If you are getting dull and desaturated colors from using Adobe RGB, then you're missing an Adobe RGB to sRGB conversion step in your workflow when saving your image files for the web. And if your prints are coming out dull and desaturated as well, then your color management is not set up properly.

[Jonny]

If you are getting dull and desaturated colors from using Adobe RGB, then you're missing an Adobe RGB to sRGB conversion step in your workflow when saving your image files for the web. And if your prints are coming out dull and desaturated as well, then your color management is not set up properly.

Thanks PacAce but its not a 'save for web' thing, i understand all that.
I find that with Adobe RGB i get duller shots straight out the camera and they require a little more post processing to bring the colours out.

[chris.bailey]

If you are colour managed throughout the workflow then that should work for any colour space as long as it has the right tag i.e. if you PS>Assign sRGB to a file that is actually from an aRGB source then all hell breaks loose.

Martin Evenings book on PS has a very clear overview of colour spaces and profiles and having read it now three or four times I have just about got my head around it. He suggests, by the way, that for work destined for print you maintain aRGB rather than sRGB. As sRGB is the smaller colour space converting from aRGB to sRGB for web output works fine but you cannot convert from SRGB to aRGB successfully. He also suggests that as most colour printer are based on a CMYK output that sRGB is deficient in that the smaller gamut of colours means that Magenta will get clipped as the printer makes the adjustment to print three colours RGB to four CMYK.

If you have colour management turned on in PS, it should be turned off in the printer driver.

Summary - if you shoot sRGB STAY in sRGB throughout. If you shoot aRGB stay in aRGB for print and only convert to sRGB for web output.

[PacAce]

Thanks PacAce but its not a 'save for web' thing, i understand all that.
I find that with Adobe RGB i get duller shots straight out the camera and they require a little more post processing to bring the colours out.
If that's the case, then you may NOT have your PS color management policies set up correctly (Color Settings under the Edit menu). You should have all the check boxes for "Profile Mismatches" and "Missing Profiles" checked. What this will do is to make PS prompt you when there are mismatched or missing profiles. If "Missing Profiles" is not checked, PS will assume that any image without a profile will be in the same color space as the working color space of PS. And this may be your problem.

If you are shooting in JPEG format (and I assuming you are), then the Adobe RGB profile will not be embedded in the image. And since you are saying that your image turns dull, then I am going to assume that your Photoshop working color space is defaulting to sRGB. If it were in Adobe RGB, you would NOT see the shift in colors that you say you're seeing.

If your default working space is sRGB, you have two options. The first (and recommended) option is to go back into "Color Settings" and change your default working space to Adobe RGB instead of sRGB. If you don't want to do that (not sure why you wouldn't if you're going to the trouble of shooting in Adobe RGB), then your other option is to assign (not convert) the Adobe RGB profile to the images that were shot in Adobe RGB and then save them with the assinged profile tag embedded in the image. PS or any other color management aware app will then be able to properly display the image without it turning dull and desaturated.

[Jonny]

Leo,

You will have to trust me when i say i have everything set up perfectly.

What i was trying to say is that if i shoot aRGB and my workflow is 100% set up for aRGB then the pics straight from the camera need a little more work to bring out the colours.
I know shoot sRGB and my workflow is 100% sRGB and straight from the camera the pics look brighter and more saturated.

At the end of the workflow in both situations the end result would be the same but i think aRGB needs more work to get there.

Am i making sense?

[PacAce]

Leo,

You will have to trust me when i say i have everything set up perfectly.

What i was trying to say is that if i shoot aRGB and my workflow is 100% set up for aRGB then the pics straight from the camera need a little more work to bring out the colours.
I know shoot sRGB and my workflow is 100% sRGB and straight from the camera the pics look brighter and more saturated.

At the end of the workflow in both situations the end result would be the same but i think aRGB needs more work to get there.

Am i making sense?
No, you are not making sense. And forgive me if I don't trust that you have everything set up perfectly because if you did, you should not see your images getting dull and desaturated. As a matter of fact,if you do shoot in Adobe RGB you may, although not always, see that your images will have more saturated colors than if you shot in sRGB.

But if you are perfectly happy with your workflow the way it is, that's fine with me. I was just trying to clarify things so that other people reading your post didn't get the wrong impression about images shot in Adobe RGB. :)

[cmM]

Actually, what Johny Skyman says makes sense to me, IF you look at the AdobeRGB image in a sRGB environment (like in an IE window), it will look less saturated than a sRGB in the same environment. However, in Photoshop or some other image editing environment that can handle both AdobeRGB and sRGB, will be better, obviously, since its gamut is larger.

[chris.bailey]

I have just tried this and shot the same picture in aRGB and sRGB and RAW and then converted the RAW to aRGB and sRGB tiffs. On screen there is little to choose between any of them though skin tones look a little more natural in aRGB cf sRGB but in print the sRGB images do look to have a greater degree of saturation though perhaps un-naturally so (Spyder calibrated screen and Epson canned profiles for the 2200). There is not a great deal in it (as one would expect with a colour managed workflow). This seems at odds with what Johnny is suggesting Um?

[steelen]

OK so here's where we are:
-Monitor set to sRGB
-Picture = sRGB
-Working Space = sRGB
-Print Space = ip5000 SP2 (canon's profile for their Photo Paper Plus Glossy)
P-rinter Paper in driver set to Photo Paper Plus Glossy (have also tried Other Photo Paper)
-Color management set to none

and still my prints have a reddish cast. I have spoken to Canon supprt who say that this is a known problem when not using Canon paper. I have bought some Canon paper and still the same. I am now considering returning the printer. I got better colors with my Deskjet 930c, though not as fine.

Unless anyone can see something I'm doing wrong?

[PacAce]

OK so here's where we are:
-Monitor set to sRGB
-Picture = sRGB
-Working Space = sRGB
-Print Space = ip5000 SP2 (canon's profile for their Photo Paper Plus Glossy)
P-rinter Paper in driver set to Photo Paper Plus Glossy (have also tried Other Photo Paper)
-Color management set to none

and still my prints have a reddish cast. I have spoken to Canon supprt who say that this is a known problem when not using Canon paper. I have bought some Canon paper and still the same. I am now considering returning the printer. I got better colors with my Deskjet 930c, though not as fine.

Unless anyone can see something I'm doing wrong?
Would it be possible for you to post a sample of the image which prints with a reddish cast? If the image looks ok to the rest of the world, then you'll know it's a printer issue. However, if we see a reddish cast on your images as well, then it will point to your monitor profile as the culprit.

[steelen]

me and the missus I'm afraid!! Not a great pic, its a very brown picture, but I'm using it deliberately to test flesh tones.

When I print, all the flesh tones get a slightly orangy cast. The background has a very sligh greenish tint on the screen, but is full on brown on print. The flesh tones have a slight pinkness on my nose and my wifes right forearm, this disappears.

Tell me what you think.

[steelen]

So you know - have changed the intent to Absolute Col and have got the nearest yet. Much better than Perceptual, and better that Relative Col.

Still slightly more brown than the screen, but the first presentable print i've got. Spose I need to decide if the difference is acceptable.:(

[PacAce]

I printed the picture on my i9900 printer on Photo Paper Plus Glossy. I printed it twice. First with Intent set to "Perceptual" and "Use Black Point Compensation" turned on. I then printed it using "Relative Colorimetric" and, again, with Black Point compensation checked. The print with the perceptual intent looks more like the screen image (with the pinkish arm of yor wife) than the other one (no pinkish color on arm) but they're close. Do you recall which intent you specified when you did your prints.

If you want to PM me your address, I can mail you the two prints so you can compare it with yours. Depending on the light you're viewing the prints under, you may get a slight yellowish cast. I usually view my prints in the kitchen with the bright overhead lights on.

One thing I found about my printer (and maybe this is true with all Canon printers or printers in general) is that skin tone is the hardest to match with the screen.

[PacAce]

So you know - have changed the intent to Absolute Col and have got the nearest yet. Much better than Perceptual, and better that Relative Col.

Still slightly more brown than the screen, but the first presentable print i've got. Spose I need to decide if the difference is acceptable.:(
Oops. Didn't see this one before I replied previously. Interesting that your relative colorimetric is better than perceptual when it's the opposite for me. :confused:

[steelen]

Have tried a number of different prints now - all better in absolute. Whilst the others are OK with the change in color in Relative or Perceptual - (you would't really know unless you compared with the screen) The only one that comes close to matching is Absolute - in fact the difference is quite startling in the blues. -

Very strange!!!?!?!?

Nick

[PacAce]

Have tried a number of different prints now - all better in absolute. Whilst the others are OK with the change in color in Relative or Perceptual - (you would't really know unless you compared with the screen) The only one that comes close to matching is Absolute - in fact the difference is quite startling in the blues. -

Very strange!!!?!?!?

Nick
Just printed one in Absolute Colorimetric and, yes, you are right. Absolute does look like it matches the screen very closely. However, the problem is that when you actually take it out and look at it under normal light (the kitchen in my case) it looks rather pale compared to the other pictures. What it boils down to, I guess, is which you prefer when viewing them under whatever lighting you consider as normal. :)

[steelen]

Hmm - think I'll have to wait and have a look in daylight - gone midnight here.

Thanks for you help Leo - will let you know tomorrow!!

[chris.bailey]

Absolute is intended for pre-press work and for output intended for CMYK seperations and will clip out of gamut colours from the colour space as it retains colour numbers. Both perceptual and relative colourmetric will bring out of gamut colours back into the destination colour space but they do it using slightly different algorithms. If you have a four colour printer, rel col may well work a bit better. If Absolute gives better output that is indicative of a problem earlier on in the colour management process as the clipped absolute output gives a better match to an already clipped colour space.

Take an aRGB file. The source of that (camera or scanner) may actually capture more colours that that but they are clipped into the aRGB colour space. When you bring that file into photoshop in a colour managed environment then an aRGB colour space file is being displayed in you monitor colour space according to the monitor profile. Though it may have been profiled, if the monitor colour space clips a large part of the gamut and if you then go on to print to a device with a wider gamut, there will be significant differences between the monitor and print. Some of the problems suggested in this thread suggests that some people may be working on monitors that are past their best and though profiled, make such a hash of the source file that getting any sort of colour match is going to be impossible. As sRGB has a smaller gamut, there is a better chance that the monitor space will display it correctly or more correctly.

[steelen]

Thanks Chris,
looking in daylight, the best results are indeed in Perceptual on the Canon paper. The Absolutes have funny whites. THe HP Premium Plus paper cant seem to get anything near as good. Guess I will have to stick to the Canon paper, though this may be a bit limiting.

REf the monitor, its a new Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 which is great. It has a setting that allows it to be forced to sRGB, which basically sets the color temp to 6500 and sets the brightness and contrast. If I use this setting, my shots do get a lot browner, and closer to the end result on the canon paper.

The one positive I can say for the printer is that with all the testing I am now on my 3rd box of paper, and the ink levels still haven't moved yet.

[chris.bailey]

Steelen

That is a nice monitor and should be up to the job and being new helps. Have you profiled it even using Adobe Gamma? If not any profile that comes with it could be way off the mark. 6500 should be fine. Does it also have a Gamma setting. If so (with a PC) that should be set to 2.2.

The Pixma is a CMYK device so the very best results will be obtained from an aRGB colour space using the specific profiles for the printer and paper combination in the PS print dialogue and then turning off printer colour management. Behind the scenes, PS converts the RGB colour space to CMYK to control the ink flow from the print nozzles as percentages. Having print colour management on and PS colour management on will really screw this bit up. CMYK and sRGB colour spaces are not really compatible and a combination of the above could well explain why some of your prints are off tone as part of the gamut has been clipped out.

[steelen]

Thanks Chris,
I have profiled the monitor with Adobe Gamma.

If I set PS working space to aRGB, what should I do with all my current shots, which are in sRGB? do I convert them to aRGB, assign them aRGB, or leave them as they are?

By the way m8 - you're over 1000 posts now!:)

cheers,

Nick

-

[chris.bailey]

Nick

I have an S60 which has an sRGB colour space and I preserve the embedded space when I work on them i.e. I leave them alone. Your profiled monitor will display an sRGB file in its own colour space and as long as the source space in the printer output is set as sRBG and you use the profile for the Pixma and paper combo it should be ok. Dont assign sRGB to an aRGB profile or vice versa. You could convert but there is no point as the info for the larger aRGB space is not present in the sRGB file.

Adobe Gamma will get you part way but a lot depends on the ambient lighting when you do it.

cheers

Chris

ps 1057 posts, I really really should get out more!!

[IainB]

Summary - if you shoot sRGB STAY in sRGB throughout. If you shoot aRGB stay in aRGB for print and only convert to sRGB for web output.
My 20D is set on aRGB, PS7 and my Philips monitor are also set to aRGB. My G1 is sRGB. When I view a G1 shot in PS7, it appears brighter and more vibrant than when viewed in Windows Explorer. When I upload a shot to the forum, it also appears duller and darker than in PS7. Can you give advice on how I should treat these G1 shots? You speak of converting to sRGB. Should I set PS7 to sRBG for these shots before processing?

[IainB]

Further too what I just posted, I have discovered that if I set PS7 Color settings/RGB to 'monitor RGB' the G1 picture in PS immediately appears the same (less vibrant and darker) as it does to me when viewed on this forum. I thought I had set the monitor to aRGB but it was in fact the 'Display' under 'settings' in control panel... I clearly need to read a primer on this topic, but helpful bits of advice welcomed in the meantime!

[cmar]

OK so here's where we are:
-Monitor set to sRGB
-Picture = sRGB
-Working Space = sRGB
-Print Space = ip5000 SP2 (canon's profile for their Photo Paper Plus Glossy)
P-rinter Paper in driver set to Photo Paper Plus Glossy (have also tried Other Photo Paper)
-Color management set to none

and still my prints have a reddish cast. I have spoken to Canon supprt who say that this is a known problem when not using Canon paper. I have bought some Canon paper and still the same. I am now considering returning the printer. I got better colors with my Deskjet 930c, though not as fine.

Unless anyone can see something I'm doing wrong?


Just because you set your monitor to sRGB does not mean it is accurately displaying colors. If you do not use a hardware color calibration and profileing on your monitor, you are taking shots in the dark