I'm in Color Management HELL!! PLease advise...

[Don]

I seem to remember McCartney saying that's why he started playing that
way too. Whether he still does or not I have no idea, its almost 30
years since I last spoke to him.

Ooooh! Name dropping! ;o)

You can't just leave us hanging now... Dish! Tell us more!

Don.

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Ooooh! Name dropping! ;o)

You can't just leave us hanging now... Dish! Tell us more!

He is/was a neighbour and personal friend of a couple of my mates at
university.

 

[Don]

He is/was a neighbour and personal friend of a couple of my mates at
university.

Oh, so you're a "scouser"... ;o)

For our friends in the colonies that's British slang for a
native/inhabitant of Liverpool.

Don.

 

[false_dmitrii]

http://www.silverace.com/dottyspotty/issue13.html

Some of these points seemed a bit silly.

Quite sadly, no product on this planet in existence today can
properly match what you see in print vs. what you see on the monitor.
This is not a fault of the products, but instead physical, absolute
reality -- the printer can make colors that no monitor can produce; the
monitor can produce colors that no printer can produce.

Agreed up to this point.

This means, quite simply, that if you want a product to help you
match what you see on the screen to the print exactly, you can't.

This does not mean you cannot use a color calibration & management
tool to help you match and edit colors. Rather, you must still use your
judgement to adjust what you see on the screen to what you want to print.

Color calibration does produce the benefit where you can rely on a
stable, consistent output where images viewed on it don't look too pink
one day, then too blue another day. In commerical press applications
where thousands of books and publications must be printed to match in
color, color management and calibration products are a must.

Still on the right track, with exceptions....

BUT, for the home consumer today, such devices are not necessary,
and the marginal benefits are usually not worth the hundreds of dollars
spent on the products and time required to use them.

Why?

Simple! The introduction of sRGB gamut, LCD monitors, and sRGB
calibrated scanners, printers, and monitors.

So the best way to get the most from your photo captures and prints is
to squeeze them down coming and going?

The most critical device is the monitor. If you see something with
a slight color cast on a monitor, your eye quickly adjusts for this and
you soon lose awareness of this color cast. (You can try this by looking
at a white piece of paper indoors, then walking outdoors into bright
sunlight and noting the color of the paper with a slight color cast in
the first few moments.)

Luckily, almost all LCD montiors today are calibrated to the sRGB
color gamut, and even without further calibration and management, they
closely match the expected colors (usually with 90-95%+ accuracy, even
for cheap LCD monitors). If you use a LCD monitor, you can expect most
colors to be true and accurate to your images (usually, digital camera
images and scanner scans that also use the sRGB gamut).

Hooray for LCDs. Now we're squeezing the contrast as well. And if
one is unhappy with their $100s CRT's colors, they should just spend
$100s more on an LCD in place of a display CMS.

Because the print color gamut and monitor color gamut will
physically never match, you won't see significant improvements by using
a 3rd party color calibration and management device, and you could
achieve excellent print results on your own - since in either case, you
still must make the subjective judgement regarding how you must adjust
what you see on the screen to produce the print you would like.

This is generally correct, in that subjective judgment matters as much
as anything. But what if your supplied printer, scanner, monitor, and
camera sRGB profiles are all a bit off from one another? How about
when they drift apart over time? Then you'll have to make those
subjective judgments over and over. And if you don't like the
particular conversion compromises of the manufacturers, you're stuck.
At least a custom profile offers the user the opportunity to set up
and automate her own subjective conversion preferences.

The idea behind color management is to keep the devices as close to
the color standards as possible while still preserving as much of the
color data (both absolute values and color relationships) between
conversions as the user deems necessary. It can't offer WYSIWYG
(unless perhaps you restrict the input and output to a common gamut),
but that doesn't mean the solution is to throw it all out and let
randomly inaccurate supplied sRGB profiles take over. Color
management isn't for everyone, it's prohibitively expensive, and it
still needs broader software support, but to offer uncalibrated sRGB
as an equivalent or superior solution seems ridiculous. It's a
one-size-fits-all compromise that will still show color drift between
uncalibrated devices, hidden only by the reduced overall color range.

Do I have this correct?

false_dmitrii

 

[Kennedy McEwen]

Oh, so you're a "scouser"... ;o)

For our friends in the colonies that's British slang for a
native/inhabitant of Liverpool.

Nope - McCartney hasn't lived in Liverpool for years.