OT: Colour Management Mess

[RJK]

I sincerely hope that people working in the hardware and software industry
read this little complaint !

I just bought a new LCD monitor, and so the vast, and VASTLY time consuming
arena of Colour management, and *.icc and *.icm profiles, monitor profiling
etc. has reared its' ugly head again ! ...and I can't find my Spyder
anywhere !

( The only sensible choice, as usual, is to switch off the "automatic"
rubbish in printer driver settings and select *.ICM
....then one has to spend goodness knows how long, digging around in various
areas to ensure that ones graphic is not being fed through "one too many"
colour translation table/s ! )

....and yet another "Gamma Loader" appears in the XP startup folder, ....and
then after struggling with all that, Adobe Photoshop complains that there is
something wrong with my newly created *.icm monitor profile !!!
....serves me right for trying out the "bells and whistles" software that
came bundled with my new monitor !

....so tempting to just bung the memory card into the printer memory card
slot, and bypass the PC altogether !!

It's about time that somebody produced an INTELLIGENT, (and affordable),
Colour Management system, that would ensure that a picture isn't sent
through too many colour translation tables.,

regards, Richard

 

[philo]

I sincerely hope that people working in the hardware and software industry
read this little complaint !

I just bought a new LCD monitor, and so the vast, and VASTLY time consuming
arena of Colour management, and *.icc and *.icm profiles, monitor profiling
etc. has reared its' ugly head again ! ...and I can't find my Spyder
anywhere !

( The only sensible choice, as usual, is to switch off the "automatic"
rubbish in printer driver settings and select *.ICM
...then one has to spend goodness knows how long, digging around in various
areas to ensure that ones graphic is not being fed through "one too many"
colour translation table/s ! )

...and yet another "Gamma Loader" appears in the XP startup folder, .....and
then after struggling with all that, Adobe Photoshop complains that there is
something wrong with my newly created *.icm monitor profile !!!
...serves me right for trying out the "bells and whistles" software that
came bundled with my new monitor !

...so tempting to just bung the memory card into the printer memory card
slot, and bypass the PC altogether !!

It's about time that somebody produced an INTELLIGENT, (and affordable),
Colour Management system, that would ensure that a picture isn't sent
through too many colour translation tables.,

regards, Richard

When I first got my LCD I had to go through some of the same headaches.

I soon realized that I needed to set up a profile so after some trial and
error...

Found that if I ignored all other options and only calibrated the Adobe
Gamma loader
it all worked out fine.

Also...what kind of a printer do you have?
If it's an Epson...you can use their ICC profile for printing.

My GF is the power-user in the house for Photoshop
and has essentially perfect color vision.

By using the Epson ICC profile...when we first got our printer...
she got *perfect* results with the very first print.

 

[RJK]

Hi Philo,

I do use the Epson profiles for my old C82 and slightly newer / old R300,
(set in "Print with Preview" in Adobe Photoshop), and yes, they help a lot,
i.e. what comes out of the monitor quite closely corresponds with what's on
the monitor.

....what I really mean is, even though the rather large field of Colour
Management is interesting e.g. setting up software / settling on paper type
and ink etc.
http://www.normankoren.com/ (...who I'm sure is some sort of photographic
God !)
i.e. http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1A.html is all very
interesting, ...and all this information is all hugely helpful ...i.e. in
the past I've managed to weed out what is of use - and get things set up
.....mostly correctly.

BUT, OOOOooooH ! ..wouldn't it be lovely is someone could produce some
pretty comprehensive, swift, AUTOMATIC, easy to use software, (again -
software that is affordable for the ordinary home user), which could check
out, and help set up ones "colour management system," confirm that an image
file isn't being piped through two colour translation tables instead of one,
on it's way to the printer, and that all settings in the various places are
optimal and correct.

I'm sure that if I won the National Lottery I would rush out and buy a LaCie
full gamut monitor and all manner of other photographic goodies, ....and
bribe Norman Koren to fly to England to set it all up for me but, until
then, ...I'll struggle on !

regards, Richard

 

[Jim]

Replies inline---

I sincerely hope that people working in the hardware and software industry
read this little complaint !

I just bought a new LCD monitor, and so the vast, and VASTLY time
consuming arena of Colour management, and *.icc and *.icm profiles,
monitor profiling etc. has reared its' ugly head again ! ...and I can't
find my Spyder anywhere !

( The only sensible choice, as usual, is to switch off the "automatic"
rubbish in printer driver settings and select *.ICM
...then one has to spend goodness knows how long, digging around in
various areas to ensure that ones graphic is not being fed through "one
too many" colour translation table/s ! )

How hard is it to learn to turn off color management in the printer?
The icc and icm files are all stored in one folder. It isn't real hard to
scroll down the list to get the correct profile

...and yet another "Gamma Loader" appears in the XP startup folder,
....and then after struggling with all that, Adobe Photoshop complains
that there is something wrong with my newly created *.icm monitor
profile !!! ...serves me right for trying out the "bells and whistles"
software that came bundled with my new monitor !

Photoshop no longer supplies Adobe Gamma or Adobe Gamma Loader.

...so tempting to just bung the memory card into the printer memory card
slot, and bypass the PC altogether !!

It's about time that somebody produced an INTELLIGENT, (and affordable),
Colour Management system, that would ensure that a picture isn't sent
through too many colour translation tables.,

regards, Richard

Or, the user could just learn how to manage colors. Norman Koren is a good
reference, as is Ian Lyons, as is Bruce Fraser's books.
I do not own an LCD monitor, but if your Spyder may not be suitable for an
LCD device. CRTs and LCDs work on very different principles.
Jim

 

[RJK]

I've been studying http://www.normankoren.com 's excellent site,
particularly "Colour Management," on, and off, for years - and it was thanks
to this site that I first gleaned the information for setting "ICM" in my 2
Epson printer drivers, and learnt to use an ICM "aware" graphics program
such as Adobe Photoshop - and how to make the odd couple of necessary
settings in Adobe, and I have for several years been able to produce superb
photographic print-out.

My original contention remains. Although there have been some hardware
developments, across the past few years, that vastly reduce a slow-ish
Colour Management learning curve, such as printers with camera memory card
slots - which "bypass" the PC if you like, ...having to spend huge amounts
of time learning about something I'd rather know nothing about, in order to
get a certain type of functionality out of a PC is quite simply ridiculous,
and very annoying.

The terminology for "Colour Management" in XP, and in ICM aware graphics
application, and the terminology regarding ICC and ICM profiles and colour
translation tables, and monitor and printer profiling is at best ambiguous,
and at worst VERY difficult to get to grips with !!!!!!!!

This is a familiar scenario in that, I believe, various industries -
including the hardware and software industries, should make MUCH more effort
to ensure that the end-user doesn't have to spend a CONSIDERABLE number of
hours reading vast amounts of theory to get hardware and software set up
and running properly. ...e.g. photography, I would rather have been working
with, and printing out quality photographs, during the substantial amount of
time I had to spend reading up on how to achieve print-out that closely
matched what I am looking at on the screen !

Okay, my 1st love is PC's - I've been with them since my first Amstrad 1512
/ 8086 8mhz with 2 x 5 1/4" floppy drives and no such thing as a hard disk,
.....until my first 10mb (MB's btw - NOT GB's), Seagate hd on an ISA card !!!
....and I love problem solving PC hardware and software, (both OS and
application software), but, it is VERY annoying when I have to spend lots of
time researching something I'd rather know nothing about, in order to get
something correctly set up in order to get some real USE out of the machine
i.e. graphics !!!

regards, Richard