Glad I could help. I posted in a hurry yesterday 'cause I was on the way out of the house, I hope the reply didn't come across as curt.
Anyway, if you're really interested in using ACR the Reichmann/Schewe tutorial should be a good place to start. I haven't seen it, but I have both of their Lightroom tutorials and Schewe really knows his way around ACR/Lightroom.
I'll add another: Their From Camera to Print tutorial http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml , it takes you through the entire process from start to finish with color management basics and processing in both CS3and Lightroom.
The great thing about digital photography today is that all these wonderful resources are available. The downside is that our craft has yet to advance to the point that we don't need to go through all this just to be able to get a decent print to put in the family album.... But the state of the art is advancing at an amazing rate, especially when you consider that digital photo printing didn't even exist twenty years ago and we didn't really have affordable digital cameras until around the turn of the century.
Glad I could help. I posted in a hurry yesterday 'cause I was on the way out of the house, I hope the reply didn't come across as curt.
Anyway, if you're really interested in using ACR the Reichmann/Schewe tutorial should be a good place to start. I haven't seen it, but I have both of their Lightroom tutorials and Schewe really knows his way around ACR/Lightroom.
I'll add another: Their From Camera to Print tutorial http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml , it takes you through the entire process from start to finish with color management basics and processing in both CS3and Lightroom.
The great thing about digital photography today is that all these wonderful resources are available. The downside is that our craft has yet to advance to the point that we don't need to go through all this just to be able to get a decent print to put in the family album.... But the state of the art is advancing at an amazing rate, especially when you consider that digital photo printing didn't even exist twenty years ago and we didn't really have affordable digital cameras until around the turn of the century.
It's a great time to be a photographer!
Just my $.02 worth,
Bill
You didn't come across as curt
I've thought about Andrew Rodneys book for some time, but I was concerned it would be way over my head, but the luminous site seems more step by step visually with the process which seems to work best for me with all this new information.
I ordered my monitor calibrator yesterday. The Eye One. I'm getting excited for it to arrive since I've put my editing on the back burner till it arrives.
Thanks Bill....I'll let you know how the calibration of my monitor goes...hopefully it goes good.
Colormunki vs i1display2
Quick question regarding calibration tools. So it is time for me to spend a little cash on calibrating my monitor properly. There a a billion options out there but after doing a fair amount of reading I think I will go for the Colormunki or the i1display2. However I am slightly confused about what software one needs to get on top of the colorimeters. It appears the Colormunki comes with everything included for proper calibration. Software appears to come with the i1display2 but I also see EZ color packages out there. Does one need to get EZ color or is the Match software that comes with the i1display2 enough? It looks like the Colormunki option will end up costing less than going the i1display2 way if I also need to purchase EZcolor software. Been trying to get info from X-rite but no luck. Thanks for your help!
I just received my i1display 2 and had to download the driver from their site for my Vista. I then calibrated using the easy setup...so simple, but I don't know how good yet. I'll know more after my sample photos I ordered from smug arrive.
I'm looking for info about how to do a good print.
I find just a little "mistake" in your comment. But not a 100% mistake.
Monitors can show only 16.7 million of colors so far, printers can print out 100 million of colors since CMYK has a wider gamut than RGB. Monitors are RGB, which are made and shown by luminance instead pigment. The available colors in any monitor so far are mostly the saturated ones becuase the more saturation, the more bright. Pigments are not allowed to produce same saturated colors than a monitor just because one is pigment made and the other one light made. Vivid colors always will be shown better in the monitor.
Now, I have a question.
It has sense using the same profile from monitor in the printer? I mean, we shoot in RAW and 14 bpc etc, which is greater than what we see in the monitor, (in fact, a 8 bpc image has much more tonal values when printed than when it's shown in the monitor) and even greater than the printer. Why reducing all the information from our RAWs when printing using a monitor profile in the printer, which is even more reduced than the printer's/RAW's gamut it self?
I'm looking for info about how to do a good print.
I find just a little "mistake" in your comment. But not a 100% mistake.
Monitors can show only 16.7 million of colors so far, printers can print out 100 million of colors since CMYK has a wider gamut than RGB. Monitors are RGB, which are made and shown by luminance instead pigment. The available colors in any monitor so far are mostly the saturated ones becuase the more saturation, the more bright. Pigments are not allowed to produce same saturated colors than a monitor just because one is pigment made and the other one light made. Vivid colors always will be shown better in the monitor.
Now, I have a question.
It has sense using the same profile from monitor in the printer? I mean, we shoot in RAW and 14 bpc etc, which is greater than what we see in the monitor, (in fact, a 8 bpc image has much more tonal values when printed than when it's shown in the monitor) and even greater than the printer. Why reducing all the information from our RAWs when printing using a monitor profile in the printer, which is even more reduced than the printer's/RAW's gamut it self?
I would appreciate a reply a lot.
Thanks in advance,
Mart
I think you are a little bit confused here.
First off, most monitors can show more colors than can be printed. It's possible that the printer might have a few colors that can't be shown on screen, but it is more likely that the printer colorspace is smaller than the monitor. That is certainly true of my 30" HP monitor and my Epson printer.
Second off, I don't think you understand how monitor and printer profiles work. Your image is in a colorspace. Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that it's in sRGB. That is an industry standard definition for colors such that an RGB value of (200,5,29) represents a known standard shade of red.
Now, when you want to display this image in accurate colors on your monitor, some piece of display software (let's say we're using Lightroom) must take that sRGB image and convert it to the monitor's colorspace (which is different than sRGB) so that that RGB value of (200,5,29) will still come out the perfect shade of red that it is supposed to be. The monitor profile is a recipe for how to display colors accurately on that monitor. The image itself is not changed at all. The software that is displaying the image does a color conversion using the monitor profile "on the fly" as it is displaying the image.
Now, suppose you want to print that image. The printer also has a profile that describes how it can display colors. Some piece of software that is going to do the printing takes the sRGB color values from your image and must convert them to the proper values for the printer such that the RGB value in the image of (200,5,29) will actually come out the right color on the printer. Because the printer is not an sRGB device, you can't just send (200,5,29) to the printer and get the right red. Instead, the software has to use the printer profile as the recipe for how to produce accurate colors on the printer and do some numeric conversions on the color before sending it to the printer.
If the monitor profile is accurate and the monitor is capable of producing the desired color, your image will be accurately displayed on the monitor. If the monitor is not capable of producing the desired color, then the software will try to "map" the desired color into something that the monitor actually can produce to "get as close as possible". The same is true for printers. Since the printer cannot always produce all the colors in your image, the software doing the printing may do some "mapping" to try to reproduce a nice looking image, even though the colors aren't reproduced exactly. There are a number of different techniques for dealing with these "out of gamut" colors, but that is the subject of another discussion.
First off, most monitors can show more colors than can be printed. It's possible that the printer might have a few colors that can't be shown on screen, but it is more likely that the printer colorspace is smaller than the monitor. That is certainly true of my 30" HP monitor and my Epson printer.
Second off, I don't think you understand how monitor and printer profiles work. Your image is in a colorspace. Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that it's in sRGB. That is an industry standard definition for colors such that an RGB value of (200,5,29) represents a known standard shade of red.
Now, when you want to display this image in accurate colors on your monitor, some piece of display software (let's say we're using Lightroom) must take that sRGB image and convert it to the monitor's colorspace (which is different than sRGB) so that that RGB value of (200,5,29) will still come out the perfect shade of red that it is supposed to be. The monitor profile is a recipe for how to display colors accurately on that monitor. The image itself is not changed at all. The software that is displaying the image does a color conversion using the monitor profile "on the fly" as it is displaying the image.
Now, suppose you want to print that image. The printer also has a profile that describes how it can display colors. Some piece of software that is going to do the printing takes the sRGB color values from your image and must convert them to the proper values for the printer such that the RGB value in the image of (200,5,29) will actually come out the right color on the printer. Because the printer is not an sRGB device, you can't just send (200,5,29) to the printer and get the right red. Instead, the software has to use the printer profile as the recipe for how to produce accurate colors on the printer and do some numeric conversions on the color before sending it to the printer.
If the monitor profile is accurate and the monitor is capable of producing the desired color, your image will be accurately displayed on the monitor. If the monitor is not capable of producing the desired color, then the software will try to "map" the desired color into something that the monitor actually can produce to "get as close as possible". The same is true for printers. Since the printer cannot always produce all the colors in your image, the software doing the printing may do some "mapping" to try to reproduce a nice looking image, even though the colors aren't reproduced exactly. There are a number of different techniques for dealing with these "out of gamut" colors, but that is the subject of another discussion.
Perffect... Let me see if I understand.
I have done a test, after reading your comment by lowering the resolution of a gradient to 15 DPI, so the image gets smaller and by zooming in, I can see the pixels which compose the shades of grey. I passed my mouse over each pixel and the value shown in the info palette was 0;1;2;3;4;5 etc, till 256 (some tonal values were repeteated). I did a bigger canvas and applyed the same gradient and at 16bpc, I did the same than before and I got exactly the same results. So I drew the conclusion that every single pixel in our monitor shows a shade/tone/density of grey, which belongs to an specific value from the total values tonal range (256).
I printed that image, in order to see if the low resolution file will have the same "low resolution" in its shades of greys shwon in the monitor, but happened the opposite: by each printed pixel, the shade of grey was wider than the shown in the monitor, which lets me think that "gamut resolution" (or depth) is not affected by the document's resolution and it's wider than the shwon by the screen.
I mean that I was expecting one shade of grey per pixel when printing out the gradient, same like I saw in the monitor, but it was the opposite. I just saw the "squares" with a wide gamut inside.
The same happens with a posterized image which is at its 100% zoomed (actual pixels) size/view in the monitor (so it's not some kind of moiré effect due the monitor's screen). Rarely it can be seen some posterization in a full sized image, but sometimes there is, but, when printing, the posterization just isn't there, and I'm talking about very noticeable and solid posterization (like the one which looks like patterns, preferably in the sky, instead random patterns or noise). This also makes me think that the gamut of a printer is wider than the shown by the monitor.
I also have been thinking and testing about how a printer creates the different grey of shades, something I already knew, but I found that the dynamic range of the printer works in the other way around than digital sensors. It works more like film than a digital sensor because, in the print, the more dense areas of dots are located in the begining of the shadows and not in the highlights. I already know that neither a 12 bits RAW file can be printed out, and think about this: for a constant resolution print I think it would be needed one cartridge per shade of grey (that's why the dots gets more spread, in order to avoid such amount of cartridges, hoever, ilusionism do great things, such as interpolation for one side and spreading for the other one). As you can see, the printer works opposite than a digital sensor.
Where I'm pointing with this, besides the investigation (and I would like to read your opinion). I'm pointing that you may be right in your statement, because I was thinking a lot, and testing a lot. I don't have no one in Argentina who can explain me this kind of stuff, so I just use a loupe, a flashlight and some prints.
Due that printer has a very low dots density in the highlights and maybe, a flat deep density in the shadows (I don't have a microscope, but I will try it by using my camera) your statement could be true.
However, a printer prints more than the 256 shades of grey than a monitor can show, since it's based in a 24bpc depth (32bpc plus alfa).
It's clear that a printer can simulate more shades of grey (I would like to know how much) by spreading the dots over the white paper and it is using the same black ink to generate the "variety of shades", just like a very precise aerograph.
Furthemore, the sRGB profile has the smallest gamut between the most popular color profiles.
It sounds quite logic, but you also say that printer color spaces are smaller than the sRGB. I would like to see a graphic chart showing what you say in order to do more tests and analizys since I don't know where to get them and I have been looking for lot of websites. By seeing that, my analizys will be closed but new questions will arrive.
(By the way, "It's possible that the printer might have a few colors that can't be shown on screen", I said that the printer cannot print highly saturated colors because that kind of saturated color are made by pure light, those colors belongs 100% to the digital world).
sRGB is the web standard color profile, but in photography and printing firstly was the TIFF format due the way it keeps the individuality of each channel that composes the pixel, but that's another topic. Why the sRGB is now used in printer shops? I guess it's because most digital devices comes with that profile and at the end of the day, the standard just means that, the standard, which doesn't means it's good. The only digital devioces which comes with other profiles (widers than sRGB) are the professional digital cameras.
I don't use sRGB for printing and I don't use JPEG files, another standard, because those formats are smaller than ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB 1998 and TIFF. If you think about making a sweet grey scale print, you will understand what I mean, and I'm poiting a bit toward the film and chemical process. I'm poiting to obtain the subtle shades of greys, even the very contasty images has smoother transitions between black and white when shooting/editing and printing. sRGB is not capable of such thing, nor printers with 2 black inks due the dot spreading.
I preffer Photoshop to do the colorimetric rendering intent when printing than do it before printing. I guess the mapping you say has to be better in that way, and mostly because the TIFF Format.
I know that piece of software you say and how it works, I actually teach about these things, but I also learn, for example, what you explain me about the color emulation "on the fly", like you say. But the problem is that emulation is very limnited by the monitor gamut, which is always the same (RGBA). I always think in the time when the monitors will be able to show 16bpc images or 32 bpc ones at more than 72/96 PPI, same with printers. Imagine a liquid screen, it doesn't has pixels, so it doesn't has gaps or steps!
I would also like to talk aout the techniques for dealing with those out of gammut colors, at least, in what consists those techniques.
Thank you very much for taking the time to replying. I would appreciate a complete feedback from you, if you don't mine
I have read your posts regarding printing with an inkjet printer and getting your prints - B&W or color _ to match your screen. As you obviously know from reading and experience, this can be challenging at times.
You need a carefully calibrated monitor, software that is fully aware of color spaces like Lightroom or Photoshop ( or a few others ) and the proper printing profile for your printer, paper, and whether the image is to be color or B&W.
The best book I have seen covering this topic is by Uwe Steinmuller and Juergen Gulbins, published by Rocky Nook "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" I think you will find this answers many of your questions and helps you determine the answers for yourself.
They include links to a series of images and graphics that include stepped gray scales, and how to adjust the various parameters to achieve success at printing. Page 79 describes how to find the absolute black and white point that your own printer is capable of printing discernably, a very useful task to do and understand. I can actually print 5,5,5 and 252,252,252, and discern them on my prints I make on my Epson Stylus 3800.
One other task I would suggest is to purchase a few prints from Smugmug so have to compare to your own prints and see if they match closely as well.
It sounds quite logic, but you also say that printer color spaces are smaller than the sRGB. I would like to see a graphic chart showing what you say in order to do more tests and analizys since I don't know where to get them and I have been looking for lot of websites. By seeing that, my analizys will be closed but new questions will arrive.
Here's an interesting article that has a bunch of color space graphs that might help you see visually how some printers compare to other color spaces. You should know that it's a printer/paper combination that creates a capability to display color and to accurately print color to a printer, you have to have an ICC Profile for your particular printer and paper combination and have the right software that can use it.
Here's an interesting article that has a bunch of color space graphs that might help you see visually how some printers compare to other color spaces. You should know that it's a printer/paper combination that creates a capability to display color and to accurately print color to a printer, you have to have an ICC Profile for your particular printer and paper combination and have the right software that can use it.
I see... I think I will shoot my head... In my country the available paper is about 3 kind of different grams in the Epson paper (not differnt kind of surfaces and chemical composition) which 24 sheets costs 60 dollars and the paper I can afford (there are not more options), which is Foto Jet, Folex Imaging....... I usually don't do prints, nor in shops. People from shops here don't know neither the 10% of what I know... I feel very sad. All what I have learnt was self taught and I want to grow but my intelligence has limits and I need teachers in order to learn more than the lazo tool (that's what you can learn here) In Argentina nobody teachs Lightroom or Capture NX excepts me. I have also disertations in some schools and I was attempting to be part of the Nikon Team in my state, but due economical problems, they decided not to open the school yet. However, I know I WANT MORE KNOWLEDGE!!! I have read lot of hard to find websites, I read and read and I just can deduce the rest. There are too much forums where people only express their subjective ideas of "what they think they think", you know, ambiguous "reasonings" and such, no proofs of what they say... I feel intelectualy lonely. Thanks God I have a very smart girlfriend so we talk a lot about these things, in fact, I was talking her about your reply and I was anxious to read it, and I found another guy who also knows what he says and he recommended me a book, but not available in my country and I don't know how to buy though Internet. I'm not pesimist, I just live in a third world country with tons of ignorants, delinquents and arrogant people (and the common people whom I have a normal felling toward them). Man... How old are you? I'm 28... and I feel I'm losing my time while I could be in Europe or USA learning all this stuff, and analizing papers and buying the most adecuated to my needs and such... You know, I could buy a Nikon D700 and a Apple Cinema Display thanks to a work I do for a guy in California, retouching pix... He may could buy me the books I need and send them to my home... There are lot of obstacles and I'm too perfeccionist and I don't want to understand all these stuff at my 45 years old!!! I want it now! BECAUSE I WAS WISHING THIS INFO SINCE YEAR 2005!!! I have a huge print, about 1,50 metters in the largest side I found in the streets, people here drops trash to the streets. Seems it is a big photograph, taken by some kind of medium format film camera because the image has not patterns and says Kodak in the back. That's the best thing I could achieve in order to teach to my pupils the difference between patterns and no patterns and such... I have been looking the life's cost in the UK, food is pretty cheap, I just need Wi Fi, water, gas and electricity. I have been looking for a home in England, in the middle of the nothing, a little and old home, I dont need more. I already have some freelance jobs, I don't care cars, clothes, discos, restaurants and such. I just want to learn more and more, and I have my lovely D700... I'm getting crazy and idiot in my damn country.
Thanks for listening and for the info, I'm reading it with tears in my eyes, actually.
First off, most monitors can show more colors than can be printed. It's possible that the printer might have a few colors that can't be shown on screen, but it is more likely that the printer colorspace is smaller than the monitor. That is certainly true of my 30" HP monitor and my Epson printer.
Second off, I don't think you understand how monitor and printer profiles work. Your image is in a colorspace. Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that it's in sRGB. That is an industry standard definition for colors such that an RGB value of (200,5,29) represents a known standard shade of red.
Now, when you want to display this image in accurate colors on your monitor, some piece of display software (let's say we're using Lightroom) must take that sRGB image and convert it to the monitor's colorspace (which is different than sRGB) so that that RGB value of (200,5,29) will still come out the perfect shade of red that it is supposed to be. The monitor profile is a recipe for how to display colors accurately on that monitor. The image itself is not changed at all. The software that is displaying the image does a color conversion using the monitor profile "on the fly" as it is displaying the image.
Now, suppose you want to print that image. The printer also has a profile that describes how it can display colors. Some piece of software that is going to do the printing takes the sRGB color values from your image and must convert them to the proper values for the printer such that the RGB value in the image of (200,5,29) will actually come out the right color on the printer. Because the printer is not an sRGB device, you can't just send (200,5,29) to the printer and get the right red. Instead, the software has to use the printer profile as the recipe for how to produce accurate colors on the printer and do some numeric conversions on the color before sending it to the printer.
If the monitor profile is accurate and the monitor is capable of producing the desired color, your image will be accurately displayed on the monitor. If the monitor is not capable of producing the desired color, then the software will try to "map" the desired color into something that the monitor actually can produce to "get as close as possible". The same is true for printers. Since the printer cannot always produce all the colors in your image, the software doing the printing may do some "mapping" to try to reproduce a nice looking image, even though the colors aren't reproduced exactly. There are a number of different techniques for dealing with these "out of gamut" colors, but that is the subject of another discussion.
Really good explanation John. I have saved it for future use when this subject comes up for discussion. Although (I think) I have a reasonable grasp of the processes, it is not always easy to put the key points in a succinct fashion in the way you have.
I have read your posts regarding printing with an inkjet printer and getting your prints - B&W or color _ to match your screen. As you obviously know from reading and experience, this can be challenging at times.
You need a carefully calibrated monitor, software that is fully aware of color spaces like Lightroom or Photoshop ( or a few others ) and the proper printing profile for your printer, paper, and whether the image is to be color or B&W.
The best book I have seen covering this topic is by Uwe Steinmuller and Juergen Gulbins, published by Rocky Nook "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" I think you will find this answers many of your questions and helps you determine the answers for yourself.
They include links to a series of images and graphics that include stepped gray scales, and how to adjust the various parameters to achieve success at printing. Page 79 describes how to find the absolute black and white point that your own printer is capable of printing discernably, a very useful task to do and understand. I can actually print 5,5,5 and 252,252,252, and discern them on my prints I make on my Epson Stylus 3800.
One other task I would suggest is to purchase a few prints from Smugmug so have to compare to your own prints and see if they match closely as well.
Hi mate,
Thank you very much for your support and your comprehensive feeling. I have bneen looking those books, but they're just in paper, so I will see if I can buy those by using a client who lives in California since I don't know how to buy through Internet.
About the prints, believe me or not, I would preffer printing something made by myself, since I have taken hundred of good photos (will post something here) since year 2005 (year in which I started taking pix and dealing with all this stuff) and I just have 4 printed photos hanging from my wall because I don't want to print my stuff till having all my stuff calibrated. I put lot of effort in my photos and I don't want them printed with defects. If I have to wait to some "16 bits printer", if that's would be possible in some years (since pattern spreading seems the only way so far, so the depth of pix are quite compromised). It should be a printer specially designed for grey scaled images. I think it should have around 2 cartridges for the sahdows, like 4 for midtones and like 8 for lights and highlights. So resolution will be constant instead pattern spreading. I also would like 16 bit monitors (not those with leds, they are building even brighter monitors, all is going more and more away from what it can be printed!) with liquid screens, so no pixels at all, no matrix. Why monitor fabricants doesn't make a 32 bits monitor, for example? Why!? Cameras already exceed the screen and printer limits! I think this is quite serious! Why photographers are so quite? This is just like industrial revolution: the possibility for auto-sustainable eco-buildings and non pollution machinery was able to be build like 40 years ago but people seemed confortable with our Co2 friend! And still is that way...
I have been quite sad yestarday, after reading a link who passed me Jfiriend and about the books you mention because I'm living in a country which doesn't let me grow up. Just imagine that I am a private teacher in this matter of digital devices and such. I also have been art director from a 3D company, but his owner was so untidy that I left it (but I met some cool persons). Plus, in Argentina, people usually robs (like printing at 15 DPI instead 300), so I work only for some frends here, elders and people from first world countries. I mean, I'm a freelancer.
Also, printer shops here has no idea about printing. I asked in the most important places what's kind of profile they use, and if they can lend me the paper which says how much magenta, cyan, yellow and black they use for printing, in order to balance my pix before going there and print and all of them just got like "uh!?" In the whole state the are just 2 persons who knows how to calibrate the whole equipment, but they live 700 kilometers away from my state, plus, I cannot afford their prices. However, I teach this things as far as I know and I met a pupil, who's obsessive 100% about this matter, just like me, who has bought the EyeOne thingie. A few days ago I bought an Apple Cinema Display and I'm just stunned about how the images looks in this monitor! No body has Macs around here, but this new friend who had bought a MacPro few weks ago, so I will touch for first time in my whole life, a Machintosh!!! The price of that Mac here is equal to 2 years and half of hard working, 8 hours per day and 7 days a week without spending any cent, so it's impossible to buy one for everyone here, excepts for high end publicity agencies.
I also cannot afford Epson paper (and no one here): 24 sheets of glossy paper is equals to 16 hours of hard working, and sum the inks and sum that the printer's range is poorly less than 8 bpc... It's bad... The entery month is not enough to make some prints.
However, thanks to my client in California (and a possible one from the U.K.) I will be able to buy "high quality" stuff, starting for lenses for the D700 I bought, flashes and such.
In first world countries, a guy with 20 years old already knows how to use flashes and surely, owns a couple. I'm 28 years old and I did photographs using mere 500 watts tungsten lamps (also my apartment is quite dark, no ambient light). If you like, you can check some of my personal works here: www.mart1980.deviantart.com
It was a pleasure reading your message, mate, same with jfriend... I will dig this topic even if I'm digging my tomb...
There's a bit of misinformation circling about here.
Displays (which are emissive devices) don't necessary have "larger" or "smaller" gamuts than a print. You have to define what print process first. The fact is, the shape of a display color space and that of nearly any printer is just different. Some colors fall in, some fall out of gamut. See "Fitting round pegs in square holes" below.
We have wide gamut display options today as well (if you want to send a bit more money). They have gamuts that closely approach or exceed Adobe RGB (1998).
All the working spaces we deal with (from sRGB to ProPhoto and everything in between) are based on a color space that behaves like an emissive display, not a reflective output device! There is no such thing as an sRGB printer. The shapes of printer gamuts and display gamuts are quite different. These RGB working space are theoretical (there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB).
If you shoot Raw, you've shot without any color space as Raw is Raw (essentially grayscale data). Your Raw converter will have a color space, hopefully a big honking one, that is used to process this data into a full color image, after which you can, depending on the converter, select any encoding color space (sRGB, ProPhoto RGB, you name it). The color space used in Adobe Raw products is very similar to ProPhoto RGB (it has the same color primaries but uses a different Tone Response Curve people often incorrectly call "gamma"). If you shoot Raw, and you use say an Adobe Raw converter, you'd want to select ProPhoto RGB as an encoding color space if your goal is to preserve all the colors the capture device and the Raw converter could contain.
Gamut mismatch (fitting round pegs in square holes)
It IS true that the wider the granularity in a color space, the harder it is to handle subtle colors. This is why wide gamut displays that can't revert to sRGB (current LCD technology doesn't allow this.) are not ideal for all work (ideally you need two units).
There are way, way more colors that can be defined in something like ProPhoto RGB than you could possibly output, true. But we have to live with a disconnect between the simple shapes of RGB working space and the vastly more complex shapes of output color spaces to the point we're trying to fit round pegs in square holes. To do this, you need a much larger square hole. Simple matrix profiles of RGB working spaces when plotted 3 dimensionally illustrate that they reach their maximum saturation at high luminance levels. The opposite is seen with print (output) color spaces. Printers produce color by adding ink or some colorant, working space profiles are based on building more saturation by adding more light due to the differences in subtractive and additive color models. To counter this, you need a really big RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB again due to the simple size and to fit the round peg in the bigger square hole. Their shapes are simple and predictable. Then there is the issue of very dark colors of intense saturation which do occur in nature and we can capture with many devices. Many of these colors fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) and when you encode into such a space, you clip the colors to the degree that smooth gradations become solid blobs in print, again due to the dissimilar shapes and differences in how the two spaces relate to luminance.
Labs that make you funnel your images into sRGB are using a half backed, at best color management scheme. Their devices do not print sRGB, their gamuts are larger (depending on the technology, not but a huge factor). They don't allow you to soft proof and convert based on your preferred rendering intent and then post edit. They should just admit they don't work with modern color management and forget confusing users with profiles and such.
Oh, in terms of display and working space gamut compared to a modern output device, the Epson K3 inks have a great deal of colors that exceed Adobe RGB (1998)! The new HDR inks, even more. What that means is, you've got capture devices and output devices that exceed the gamut potential of Adobe RGB (1998), hence the reason many are advising the use of ProPhoto RGB as an encoding space (do so in 16-bit). If you must deal with these consumer labs, you can always convert that master image to sRGB and send off to print, retaining the full gamut (in ProPhoto) for demanding output on modern output devices.
As for reading, here's a long but good piece on rendering Raw to final print:
There's a bit of misinformation circling about here.
Displays (which are emissive devices) don't necessary have "larger" or "smaller" gamuts than a print. You have to define what print process first. The fact is, the shape of a display color space and that of nearly any printer is just different. Some colors fall in, some fall out of gamut. See "Fitting round pegs in square holes" below.
We have wide gamut display options today as well (if you want to send a bit more money). They have gamuts that closely approach or exceed Adobe RGB (1998).
All the working spaces we deal with (from sRGB to ProPhoto and everything in between) are based on a color space that behaves like an emissive display, not a reflective output device! There is no such thing as an sRGB printer. The shapes of printer gamuts and display gamuts are quite different. These RGB working space are theoretical (there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB).
If you shoot Raw, you've shot without any color space as Raw is Raw (essentially grayscale data). Your Raw converter will have a color space, hopefully a big honking one, that is used to process this data into a full color image, after which you can, depending on the converter, select any encoding color space (sRGB, ProPhoto RGB, you name it). The color space used in Adobe Raw products is very similar to ProPhoto RGB (it has the same color primaries but uses a different Tone Response Curve people often incorrectly call "gamma"). If you shoot Raw, and you use say an Adobe Raw converter, you'd want to select ProPhoto RGB as an encoding color space if your goal is to preserve all the colors the capture device and the Raw converter could contain.
Gamut mismatch (fitting round pegs in square holes)
It IS true that the wider the granularity in a color space, the harder it is to handle subtle colors. This is why wide gamut displays that can't revert to sRGB (current LCD technology doesn't allow this.) are not ideal for all work (ideally you need two units).
There are way, way more colors that can be defined in something like ProPhoto RGB than you could possibly output, true. But we have to live with a disconnect between the simple shapes of RGB working space and the vastly more complex shapes of output color spaces to the point we're trying to fit round pegs in square holes. To do this, you need a much larger square hole. Simple matrix profiles of RGB working spaces when plotted 3 dimensionally illustrate that they reach their maximum saturation at high luminance levels. The opposite is seen with print (output) color spaces. Printers produce color by adding ink or some colorant, working space profiles are based on building more saturation by adding more light due to the differences in subtractive and additive color models. To counter this, you need a really big RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB again due to the simple size and to fit the round peg in the bigger square hole. Their shapes are simple and predictable. Then there is the issue of very dark colors of intense saturation which do occur in nature and we can capture with many devices. Many of these colors fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) and when you encode into such a space, you clip the colors to the degree that smooth gradations become solid blobs in print, again due to the dissimilar shapes and differences in how the two spaces relate to luminance.
Labs that make you funnel your images into sRGB are using a half backed, at best color management scheme. Their devices do not print sRGB, their gamuts are larger (depending on the technology, not but a huge factor). They don't allow you to soft proof and convert based on your preferred rendering intent and then post edit. They should just admit they don't work with modern color management and forget confusing users with profiles and such.
Oh, in terms of display and working space gamut compared to a modern output device, the Epson K3 inks have a great deal of colors that exceed Adobe RGB (1998)! The new HDR inks, even more. What that means is, you've got capture devices and output devices that exceed the gamut potential of Adobe RGB (1998), hence the reason many are advising the use of ProPhoto RGB as an encoding space (do so in 16-bit). If you must deal with these consumer labs, you can always convert that master image to sRGB and send off to print, retaining the full gamut (in ProPhoto) for demanding output on modern output devices.
As for reading, here's a long but good piece on rendering Raw to final print:
I have read your posts regarding printing with an inkjet printer and getting your prints - B&W or color _ to match your screen. As you obviously know from reading and experience, this can be challenging at times.
You need a carefully calibrated monitor, software that is fully aware of color spaces like Lightroom or Photoshop ( or a few others ) and the proper printing profile for your printer, paper, and whether the image is to be color or B&W.
The best book I have seen covering this topic is by Uwe Steinmuller and Juergen Gulbins, published by Rocky Nook "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" I think you will find this answers many of your questions and helps you determine the answers for yourself.
They include links to a series of images and graphics that include stepped gray scales, and how to adjust the various parameters to achieve success at printing. Page 79 describes how to find the absolute black and white point that your own printer is capable of printing discernably, a very useful task to do and understand. I can actually print 5,5,5 and 252,252,252, and discern them on my prints I make on my Epson Stylus 3800.
One other task I would suggest is to purchase a few prints from Smugmug so have to compare to your own prints and see if they match closely as well.[/quote]
Hello Mate,
First of all, thank you very much for reading and for replying. I find quite a lot of nice people here who is willing to help by using technical and logical reasonings, thing which surprises me since I have been in lot of forums and members usually use too much colloquial languaje mixed with prepotency and arrogance just because they don't know how to reply or refute x statement or just becuase the statement is above their heads. I could name a bunch, but that's not ethic and that is another topic. However, I just wanted to say and explain why I'm so happy here I also must introduce my self in some "say hi" section, but I'm too busy reading and replying the bunch of huge replyes I have received and I don't like delaying the reply because is not ethic as well...
Okay!
Due my furstration, my girlfriend went to a cool Developing Shop today in order to probe me that those shops are not so bad as I though, 'cause I already had been there and I know they don't know what's a color profile. 1 year ago, I did a journey through all the printing shops and developing shops in my state, in order to find the best one, I do surveys, personal surveys in order to detect the perfect shop and none of the shops know what's a color profile or a photocolorimeter. I printed 4 photos in one of the "most quality" places and they have done an ugly job, avoiding their incompetence by saying that my monitor was too bright (I have it calibrated and profiled), for example. I was in a hurry that day, so I didn't crush their shop, which name is "Dicky" ... There were a couple of tourist there and they were making fun of the name of the shop JAjajaA
Anyway!
I have an Apple Cinema Display of 20 inches and it looks fantastic. I was familiarized with very cheap LCD monitors like the Viewsonic which cost no more than 150 dollars. Now I have a good work as a freelancer so I can buy something better. I don't know what are the capabilities of this monitor, but superficially, images looks nicer than with the old monitor, even like in 3D.
How can I know the gamut of my monitor? I used a grey scale image and for example, in my old monitor the grey scale shows some gasp, the apple one shows a very smooth gradient. Yes, I know it's a primitive way, but's the only I have. If you have the answer to go pro, please, I would like to read it I'm also a bit aware of contrast aspect ratio and how is involved with the gamut, as far as I deduct.
You say that LCD cannot revert to sRGB, I don't get that point, nor why I should have 2 units, and what kind of unit? LCD + CRT, maybe? Why?
I also don't get this point "is no such thing as an sRGB printer. The shapes of printer gamuts and display gamuts are quite different. These RGB working space are theoretical (there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB)". Specially "(there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB)".
Your message is a bit confusing, but I'm trying to understand it.
The shops here are managed by incompetent people. Publicity and adds in Argentina are bought to Europe or USA and just to a couple of agencies in Buenos Aires which most of the 80% of their productions are printed overseas. Sames happens with food. Argentina has lot of vegetables goods, which are sell to the exterior, then, the foreing countries sell the product inside a bottle with packaging. In few words, we have the goods, you pack it, we buy it. So foolish, but well, that's why Argentina is a thrid world country, and is getting worst, another topic, sorry.
As conclusion, I understand that you say there are wide gamut printers, but not for the public?
Well... I'm a bit confused... I also would like to know how developing labs can develope digital photos wityh chemicals (that I was told). I will search it in google, but if you have some link, will be appreciated and read.
Now I'm going to read the links you passed me I want to go to the whole deepness of all this stuff...
Thanks a lot for your attention and help, buddy
Øuantum³
By the way, I just remembered a case where I went to a "High Quality" Develop Photo Shop and I send them photos in ProPhoto RGB, I told them the thing about the profile and how to render it and such. At the end of the day, they showed me the photos, some of them were good (the "Fitting round pegs in square holes", as you say) but some others they told me "We have had to make them black and white because neither in sepia we could develope this photos!!! We are confused, we hope it's okay for you". I just said, it'0s becuase the color profile of the picture... Grabbed the pix and went to the client's house. Luckily, the client liked the pix...
There's a bit of misinformation circling about here.
Displays (which are emissive devices) don't necessary have "larger" or "smaller" gamuts than a print. You have to define what print process first. The fact is, the shape of a display color space and that of nearly any printer is just different. Some colors fall in, some fall out of gamut. See "Fitting round pegs in square holes" below.
We have wide gamut display options today as well (if you want to send a bit more money). They have gamuts that closely approach or exceed Adobe RGB (1998).
All the working spaces we deal with (from sRGB to ProPhoto and everything in between) are based on a color space that behaves like an emissive display, not a reflective output device! There is no such thing as an sRGB printer. The shapes of printer gamuts and display gamuts are quite different. These RGB working space are theoretical (there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB).
If you shoot Raw, you've shot without any color space as Raw is Raw (essentially grayscale data). Your Raw converter will have a color space, hopefully a big honking one, that is used to process this data into a full color image, after which you can, depending on the converter, select any encoding color space (sRGB, ProPhoto RGB, you name it). The color space used in Adobe Raw products is very similar to ProPhoto RGB (it has the same color primaries but uses a different Tone Response Curve people often incorrectly call "gamma"). If you shoot Raw, and you use say an Adobe Raw converter, you'd want to select ProPhoto RGB as an encoding color space if your goal is to preserve all the colors the capture device and the Raw converter could contain.
Gamut mismatch (fitting round pegs in square holes)
It IS true that the wider the granularity in a color space, the harder it is to handle subtle colors. This is why wide gamut displays that can't revert to sRGB (current LCD technology doesn't allow this.) are not ideal for all work (ideally you need two units).
There are way, way more colors that can be defined in something like ProPhoto RGB than you could possibly output, true. But we have to live with a disconnect between the simple shapes of RGB working space and the vastly more complex shapes of output color spaces to the point we're trying to fit round pegs in square holes. To do this, you need a much larger square hole. Simple matrix profiles of RGB working spaces when plotted 3 dimensionally illustrate that they reach their maximum saturation at high luminance levels. The opposite is seen with print (output) color spaces. Printers produce color by adding ink or some colorant, working space profiles are based on building more saturation by adding more light due to the differences in subtractive and additive color models. To counter this, you need a really big RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB again due to the simple size and to fit the round peg in the bigger square hole. Their shapes are simple and predictable. Then there is the issue of very dark colors of intense saturation which do occur in nature and we can capture with many devices. Many of these colors fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) and when you encode into such a space, you clip the colors to the degree that smooth gradations become solid blobs in print, again due to the dissimilar shapes and differences in how the two spaces relate to luminance.
Mmmhhh, I've read you reply for 5 times now and my conclusion is:
Doesn't matter which color profile has an X foto, monitor will convert it to its own color profile, in order to show it the best possible in X display. In that proces, some colors fall in, some out (and I guess it getworst while editing a pic). So, becuase we edit a cristal cup through a broken glass, the cristal glass will not the same at the end of the day because all its color data has been changed by using a broken glass, same when converting from a profile to another.
When you say "fitting round pegs in square holes" you mean we're not working in some standard. For example, if I use ProPhoto, I must use a Monitor and printer that is able to hadle the same profiles, otherwhise, desviations will occur, some of them quite a lot. However, if I like how the image looks after editing and knowing I'm editing colors through an sRGB glass, I must convert it to the monitor's (with all it's deviations) profile in order to match what I had seen in it with the final print, becuase at the end of the day, the dysplay is our eye.
This is like taking photos with sunglases, I think.
Am I right?
By the way, I was reading a lot tonight and I found a printer called IRIS, which has a constant DPI. The past night I was thinking about that, Printers usualy doesn't print at 300 DPI, in the highlights, I think they go close to 3 dots per inch, just before the whitness of the paper.
I also found that some papers are prepared to be printed in profiles like ProPhoto.
I have read your posts regarding printing with an inkjet printer and getting your prints - B&W or color _ to match your screen. As you obviously know from reading and experience, this can be challenging at times.
You need a carefully calibrated monitor, software that is fully aware of color spaces like Lightroom or Photoshop ( or a few others ) and the proper printing profile for your printer, paper, and whether the image is to be color or B&W.
The best book I have seen covering this topic is by Uwe Steinmuller and Juergen Gulbins, published by Rocky Nook "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" I think you will find this answers many of your questions and helps you determine the answers for yourself.
They include links to a series of images and graphics that include stepped gray scales, and how to adjust the various parameters to achieve success at printing. Page 79 describes how to find the absolute black and white point that your own printer is capable of printing discernably, a very useful task to do and understand. I can actually print 5,5,5 and 252,252,252, and discern them on my prints I make on my Epson Stylus 3800.
One other task I would suggest is to purchase a few prints from Smugmug so have to compare to your own prints and see if they match closely as well.
Hello Administrator,
Yes, I have been reading many web sites, seeing many charts and such... I have discovered, if I'm right and doing a brief (the whole thing can be found in this topic) that editing a picture in ProPhoto by using a monitor which looks more like sRGB is like taking photos with sun glases.
I have been talking with my client in CA, so they will send me the book
In the test I did, I found (by using a looupe and deduction) my printer cannot recognice values of blacks below 24 and above 240, more or less. Below 24 there is a flat black area, but without a mircroscope I cannot be sure. I could do the trick of m,acroi photograhy by turning the lense of my camera, but I don't want to expose its back, since it's a very expensive camera. But I already have done the same when exploring the pixels in the screen, in the year 2005 in order to probe to my teacher was worng or giving incomplete information.
I did a digital imaging course in the best school in my state and country, but they never thought I would take a macro pic of my monitor and ask about this kind of stuff... I was almost expulsed because of my hungry of knoledge. They called me to an empty classroom an they told me "you do hard questions we don't know how to reply and you put us in shame before the other pupils". They also thought I was doing it with bad intentions... It happened to me the same thing in every school I was (music composition school, English school, theatre and painting arts).
You know, in the more expensive school in my country, teachers says things like: "The alfa modifies the opacity of an object", end of the explaniation. At least, they could say "The Alfa Channel"...
Well...
Will keep reading... And I will post something new right now
Thanks for all the support, and I have also thank to the site, but want to keepo learning and expoerienting with this site. It's not the same saying hello than givin an explaniation about my happines since I belongs to Digital Grin, you know, and I need more experiences here
Comments
Anyway, if you're really interested in using ACR the Reichmann/Schewe tutorial should be a good place to start. I haven't seen it, but I have both of their Lightroom tutorials and Schewe really knows his way around ACR/Lightroom.
I'll add another: Their From Camera to Print tutorial http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml , it takes you through the entire process from start to finish with color management basics and processing in both CS3and Lightroom.
Andrew Rodney's book, Color Management for Photographers: Hands on Techniques for Photoshop Users http://www.amazon.com/Color-Management-Photographers-Techniques-Photoshop/dp/0240806492/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226923815&sr=1-1 is another great resource. It goes pretty deep into CM theory but it's easy enough to skim through and hit the high spots. Definitely a must-have for your photo bookshelf.
The great thing about digital photography today is that all these wonderful resources are available. The downside is that our craft has yet to advance to the point that we don't need to go through all this just to be able to get a decent print to put in the family album.... But the state of the art is advancing at an amazing rate, especially when you consider that digital photo printing didn't even exist twenty years ago and we didn't really have affordable digital cameras until around the turn of the century.
It's a great time to be a photographer!
Just my $.02 worth,
Bill
You didn't come across as curt
I've thought about Andrew Rodneys book for some time, but I was concerned it would be way over my head, but the luminous site seems more step by step visually with the process which seems to work best for me with all this new information.
I ordered my monitor calibrator yesterday. The Eye One. I'm getting excited for it to arrive since I've put my editing on the back burner till it arrives.
Thanks Bill....I'll let you know how the calibration of my monitor goes...hopefully it goes good.
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
Quick question regarding calibration tools. So it is time for me to spend a little cash on calibrating my monitor properly. There a a billion options out there but after doing a fair amount of reading I think I will go for the Colormunki or the i1display2. However I am slightly confused about what software one needs to get on top of the colorimeters. It appears the Colormunki comes with everything included for proper calibration. Software appears to come with the i1display2 but I also see EZ color packages out there. Does one need to get EZ color or is the Match software that comes with the i1display2 enough? It looks like the Colormunki option will end up costing less than going the i1display2 way if I also need to purchase EZcolor software. Been trying to get info from X-rite but no luck. Thanks for your help!
Paul Zizka Photography: zizka.smugmug.com
The Blog - Twitter - Facebook
The Colormunki will also do print profiling. If that's something you need, it's the best deal on a profiling package out there.
Bill
www.Dogdotsphotography.com
Exactly what I needed to know Bill. Will go for eyeOne then. Thanks a lot.
Paul Zizka Photography: zizka.smugmug.com
The Blog - Twitter - Facebook
I'm looking for info about how to do a good print.
I find just a little "mistake" in your comment. But not a 100% mistake.
Monitors can show only 16.7 million of colors so far, printers can print out 100 million of colors since CMYK has a wider gamut than RGB. Monitors are RGB, which are made and shown by luminance instead pigment. The available colors in any monitor so far are mostly the saturated ones becuase the more saturation, the more bright. Pigments are not allowed to produce same saturated colors than a monitor just because one is pigment made and the other one light made. Vivid colors always will be shown better in the monitor.
Now, I have a question.
It has sense using the same profile from monitor in the printer? I mean, we shoot in RAW and 14 bpc etc, which is greater than what we see in the monitor, (in fact, a 8 bpc image has much more tonal values when printed than when it's shown in the monitor) and even greater than the printer. Why reducing all the information from our RAWs when printing using a monitor profile in the printer, which is even more reduced than the printer's/RAW's gamut it self?
I would appreciate a reply a lot.
Thanks in advance,
Mart
I think you are a little bit confused here.
First off, most monitors can show more colors than can be printed. It's possible that the printer might have a few colors that can't be shown on screen, but it is more likely that the printer colorspace is smaller than the monitor. That is certainly true of my 30" HP monitor and my Epson printer.
Second off, I don't think you understand how monitor and printer profiles work. Your image is in a colorspace. Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that it's in sRGB. That is an industry standard definition for colors such that an RGB value of (200,5,29) represents a known standard shade of red.
Now, when you want to display this image in accurate colors on your monitor, some piece of display software (let's say we're using Lightroom) must take that sRGB image and convert it to the monitor's colorspace (which is different than sRGB) so that that RGB value of (200,5,29) will still come out the perfect shade of red that it is supposed to be. The monitor profile is a recipe for how to display colors accurately on that monitor. The image itself is not changed at all. The software that is displaying the image does a color conversion using the monitor profile "on the fly" as it is displaying the image.
Now, suppose you want to print that image. The printer also has a profile that describes how it can display colors. Some piece of software that is going to do the printing takes the sRGB color values from your image and must convert them to the proper values for the printer such that the RGB value in the image of (200,5,29) will actually come out the right color on the printer. Because the printer is not an sRGB device, you can't just send (200,5,29) to the printer and get the right red. Instead, the software has to use the printer profile as the recipe for how to produce accurate colors on the printer and do some numeric conversions on the color before sending it to the printer.
If the monitor profile is accurate and the monitor is capable of producing the desired color, your image will be accurately displayed on the monitor. If the monitor is not capable of producing the desired color, then the software will try to "map" the desired color into something that the monitor actually can produce to "get as close as possible". The same is true for printers. Since the printer cannot always produce all the colors in your image, the software doing the printing may do some "mapping" to try to reproduce a nice looking image, even though the colors aren't reproduced exactly. There are a number of different techniques for dealing with these "out of gamut" colors, but that is the subject of another discussion.
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
Perffect... Let me see if I understand.
I have done a test, after reading your comment by lowering the resolution of a gradient to 15 DPI, so the image gets smaller and by zooming in, I can see the pixels which compose the shades of grey. I passed my mouse over each pixel and the value shown in the info palette was 0;1;2;3;4;5 etc, till 256 (some tonal values were repeteated). I did a bigger canvas and applyed the same gradient and at 16bpc, I did the same than before and I got exactly the same results. So I drew the conclusion that every single pixel in our monitor shows a shade/tone/density of grey, which belongs to an specific value from the total values tonal range (256).
I printed that image, in order to see if the low resolution file will have the same "low resolution" in its shades of greys shwon in the monitor, but happened the opposite: by each printed pixel, the shade of grey was wider than the shown in the monitor, which lets me think that "gamut resolution" (or depth) is not affected by the document's resolution and it's wider than the shwon by the screen.
I mean that I was expecting one shade of grey per pixel when printing out the gradient, same like I saw in the monitor, but it was the opposite. I just saw the "squares" with a wide gamut inside.
The same happens with a posterized image which is at its 100% zoomed (actual pixels) size/view in the monitor (so it's not some kind of moiré effect due the monitor's screen). Rarely it can be seen some posterization in a full sized image, but sometimes there is, but, when printing, the posterization just isn't there, and I'm talking about very noticeable and solid posterization (like the one which looks like patterns, preferably in the sky, instead random patterns or noise). This also makes me think that the gamut of a printer is wider than the shown by the monitor.
I also have been thinking and testing about how a printer creates the different grey of shades, something I already knew, but I found that the dynamic range of the printer works in the other way around than digital sensors. It works more like film than a digital sensor because, in the print, the more dense areas of dots are located in the begining of the shadows and not in the highlights. I already know that neither a 12 bits RAW file can be printed out, and think about this: for a constant resolution print I think it would be needed one cartridge per shade of grey (that's why the dots gets more spread, in order to avoid such amount of cartridges, hoever, ilusionism do great things, such as interpolation for one side and spreading for the other one). As you can see, the printer works opposite than a digital sensor.
Where I'm pointing with this, besides the investigation (and I would like to read your opinion). I'm pointing that you may be right in your statement, because I was thinking a lot, and testing a lot. I don't have no one in Argentina who can explain me this kind of stuff, so I just use a loupe, a flashlight and some prints.
Due that printer has a very low dots density in the highlights and maybe, a flat deep density in the shadows (I don't have a microscope, but I will try it by using my camera) your statement could be true.
However, a printer prints more than the 256 shades of grey than a monitor can show, since it's based in a 24bpc depth (32bpc plus alfa).
It's clear that a printer can simulate more shades of grey (I would like to know how much) by spreading the dots over the white paper and it is using the same black ink to generate the "variety of shades", just like a very precise aerograph.
Furthemore, the sRGB profile has the smallest gamut between the most popular color profiles.
It sounds quite logic, but you also say that printer color spaces are smaller than the sRGB. I would like to see a graphic chart showing what you say in order to do more tests and analizys since I don't know where to get them and I have been looking for lot of websites. By seeing that, my analizys will be closed but new questions will arrive.
(By the way, "It's possible that the printer might have a few colors that can't be shown on screen", I said that the printer cannot print highly saturated colors because that kind of saturated color are made by pure light, those colors belongs 100% to the digital world).
sRGB is the web standard color profile, but in photography and printing firstly was the TIFF format due the way it keeps the individuality of each channel that composes the pixel, but that's another topic. Why the sRGB is now used in printer shops? I guess it's because most digital devices comes with that profile and at the end of the day, the standard just means that, the standard, which doesn't means it's good. The only digital devioces which comes with other profiles (widers than sRGB) are the professional digital cameras.
I don't use sRGB for printing and I don't use JPEG files, another standard, because those formats are smaller than ProPhoto RGB or Adobe RGB 1998 and TIFF. If you think about making a sweet grey scale print, you will understand what I mean, and I'm poiting a bit toward the film and chemical process. I'm poiting to obtain the subtle shades of greys, even the very contasty images has smoother transitions between black and white when shooting/editing and printing. sRGB is not capable of such thing, nor printers with 2 black inks due the dot spreading.
I preffer Photoshop to do the colorimetric rendering intent when printing than do it before printing. I guess the mapping you say has to be better in that way, and mostly because the TIFF Format.
I know that piece of software you say and how it works, I actually teach about these things, but I also learn, for example, what you explain me about the color emulation "on the fly", like you say. But the problem is that emulation is very limnited by the monitor gamut, which is always the same (RGBA). I always think in the time when the monitors will be able to show 16bpc images or 32 bpc ones at more than 72/96 PPI, same with printers. Imagine a liquid screen, it doesn't has pixels, so it doesn't has gaps or steps!
I would also like to talk aout the techniques for dealing with those out of gammut colors, at least, in what consists those techniques.
Thank you very much for taking the time to replying. I would appreciate a complete feedback from you, if you don't mine
Øuantum³
I have read your posts regarding printing with an inkjet printer and getting your prints - B&W or color _ to match your screen. As you obviously know from reading and experience, this can be challenging at times.
You need a carefully calibrated monitor, software that is fully aware of color spaces like Lightroom or Photoshop ( or a few others ) and the proper printing profile for your printer, paper, and whether the image is to be color or B&W.
The best book I have seen covering this topic is by Uwe Steinmuller and Juergen Gulbins, published by Rocky Nook "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" I think you will find this answers many of your questions and helps you determine the answers for yourself.
They include links to a series of images and graphics that include stepped gray scales, and how to adjust the various parameters to achieve success at printing. Page 79 describes how to find the absolute black and white point that your own printer is capable of printing discernably, a very useful task to do and understand. I can actually print 5,5,5 and 252,252,252, and discern them on my prints I make on my Epson Stylus 3800.
One other task I would suggest is to purchase a few prints from Smugmug so have to compare to your own prints and see if they match closely as well.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Here's an interesting article that has a bunch of color space graphs that might help you see visually how some printers compare to other color spaces. You should know that it's a printer/paper combination that creates a capability to display color and to accurately print color to a printer, you have to have an ICC Profile for your particular printer and paper combination and have the right software that can use it.
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
I see... I think I will shoot my head... In my country the available paper is about 3 kind of different grams in the Epson paper (not differnt kind of surfaces and chemical composition) which 24 sheets costs 60 dollars and the paper I can afford (there are not more options), which is Foto Jet, Folex Imaging.......
Thanks for listening and for the info, I'm reading it with tears in my eyes, actually.
Really good explanation John. I have saved it for future use when this subject comes up for discussion. Although (I think) I have a reasonable grasp of the processes, it is not always easy to put the key points in a succinct fashion in the way you have.
Anthony.
Hi mate,
Thank you very much for your support and your comprehensive feeling. I have bneen looking those books, but they're just in paper, so I will see if I can buy those by using a client who lives in California since I don't know how to buy through Internet.
About the prints, believe me or not, I would preffer printing something made by myself, since I have taken hundred of good photos (will post something here) since year 2005 (year in which I started taking pix and dealing with all this stuff) and I just have 4 printed photos hanging from my wall because I don't want to print my stuff till having all my stuff calibrated. I put lot of effort in my photos and I don't want them printed with defects. If I have to wait to some "16 bits printer", if that's would be possible in some years (since pattern spreading seems the only way so far, so the depth of pix are quite compromised). It should be a printer specially designed for grey scaled images. I think it should have around 2 cartridges for the sahdows, like 4 for midtones and like 8 for lights and highlights. So resolution will be constant instead pattern spreading. I also would like 16 bit monitors (not those with leds, they are building even brighter monitors, all is going more and more away from what it can be printed!) with liquid screens, so no pixels at all, no matrix. Why monitor fabricants doesn't make a 32 bits monitor, for example? Why!? Cameras already exceed the screen and printer limits! I think this is quite serious! Why photographers are so quite? This is just like industrial revolution: the possibility for auto-sustainable eco-buildings and non pollution machinery was able to be build like 40 years ago but people seemed confortable with our Co2 friend! And still is that way...
I have been quite sad yestarday, after reading a link who passed me Jfiriend and about the books you mention because I'm living in a country which doesn't let me grow up. Just imagine that I am a private teacher in this matter of digital devices and such. I also have been art director from a 3D company, but his owner was so untidy that I left it (but I met some cool persons). Plus, in Argentina, people usually robs (like printing at 15 DPI instead 300), so I work only for some frends here, elders and people from first world countries. I mean, I'm a freelancer.
Also, printer shops here has no idea about printing. I asked in the most important places what's kind of profile they use, and if they can lend me the paper which says how much magenta, cyan, yellow and black they use for printing, in order to balance my pix before going there and print and all of them just got like "uh!?" In the whole state the are just 2 persons who knows how to calibrate the whole equipment, but they live 700 kilometers away from my state, plus, I cannot afford their prices. However, I teach this things as far as I know and I met a pupil, who's obsessive 100% about this matter, just like me, who has bought the EyeOne thingie. A few days ago I bought an Apple Cinema Display and I'm just stunned about how the images looks in this monitor! No body has Macs around here, but this new friend who had bought a MacPro few weks ago, so I will touch for first time in my whole life, a Machintosh!!! The price of that Mac here is equal to 2 years and half of hard working, 8 hours per day and 7 days a week without spending any cent, so it's impossible to buy one for everyone here, excepts for high end publicity agencies.
I also cannot afford Epson paper (and no one here): 24 sheets of glossy paper is equals to 16 hours of hard working, and sum the inks and sum that the printer's range is poorly less than 8 bpc... It's bad... The entery month is not enough to make some prints.
However, thanks to my client in California (and a possible one from the U.K.) I will be able to buy "high quality" stuff, starting for lenses for the D700 I bought, flashes and such.
In first world countries, a guy with 20 years old already knows how to use flashes and surely, owns a couple. I'm 28 years old and I did photographs using mere 500 watts tungsten lamps (also my apartment is quite dark, no ambient light). If you like, you can check some of my personal works here: www.mart1980.deviantart.com
It was a pleasure reading your message, mate, same with jfriend... I will dig this topic even if I'm digging my tomb...
See you later, and thank you very much
Mart
Displays (which are emissive devices) don't necessary have "larger" or "smaller" gamuts than a print. You have to define what print process first. The fact is, the shape of a display color space and that of nearly any printer is just different. Some colors fall in, some fall out of gamut. See "Fitting round pegs in square holes" below.
We have wide gamut display options today as well (if you want to send a bit more money). They have gamuts that closely approach or exceed Adobe RGB (1998).
All the working spaces we deal with (from sRGB to ProPhoto and everything in between) are based on a color space that behaves like an emissive display, not a reflective output device! There is no such thing as an sRGB printer. The shapes of printer gamuts and display gamuts are quite different. These RGB working space are theoretical (there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB).
If you shoot Raw, you've shot without any color space as Raw is Raw (essentially grayscale data). Your Raw converter will have a color space, hopefully a big honking one, that is used to process this data into a full color image, after which you can, depending on the converter, select any encoding color space (sRGB, ProPhoto RGB, you name it). The color space used in Adobe Raw products is very similar to ProPhoto RGB (it has the same color primaries but uses a different Tone Response Curve people often incorrectly call "gamma"). If you shoot Raw, and you use say an Adobe Raw converter, you'd want to select ProPhoto RGB as an encoding color space if your goal is to preserve all the colors the capture device and the Raw converter could contain.
Gamut mismatch (fitting round pegs in square holes)
It IS true that the wider the granularity in a color space, the harder it is to handle subtle colors. This is why wide gamut displays that can't revert to sRGB (current LCD technology doesn't allow this.) are not ideal for all work (ideally you need two units).
There are way, way more colors that can be defined in something like ProPhoto RGB than you could possibly output, true. But we have to live with a disconnect between the simple shapes of RGB working space and the vastly more complex shapes of output color spaces to the point we're trying to fit round pegs in square holes. To do this, you need a much larger square hole. Simple matrix profiles of RGB working spaces when plotted 3 dimensionally illustrate that they reach their maximum saturation at high luminance levels. The opposite is seen with print (output) color spaces. Printers produce color by adding ink or some colorant, working space profiles are based on building more saturation by adding more light due to the differences in subtractive and additive color models. To counter this, you need a really big RGB working space like ProPhoto RGB again due to the simple size and to fit the round peg in the bigger square hole. Their shapes are simple and predictable. Then there is the issue of very dark colors of intense saturation which do occur in nature and we can capture with many devices. Many of these colors fall outside Adobe RGB (1998) and when you encode into such a space, you clip the colors to the degree that smooth gradations become solid blobs in print, again due to the dissimilar shapes and differences in how the two spaces relate to luminance.
Labs that make you funnel your images into sRGB are using a half backed, at best color management scheme. Their devices do not print sRGB, their gamuts are larger (depending on the technology, not but a huge factor). They don't allow you to soft proof and convert based on your preferred rendering intent and then post edit. They should just admit they don't work with modern color management and forget confusing users with profiles and such.
Oh, in terms of display and working space gamut compared to a modern output device, the Epson K3 inks have a great deal of colors that exceed Adobe RGB (1998)! The new HDR inks, even more. What that means is, you've got capture devices and output devices that exceed the gamut potential of Adobe RGB (1998), hence the reason many are advising the use of ProPhoto RGB as an encoding space (do so in 16-bit). If you must deal with these consumer labs, you can always convert that master image to sRGB and send off to print, retaining the full gamut (in ProPhoto) for demanding output on modern output devices.
As for reading, here's a long but good piece on rendering Raw to final print:
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf
Another piece on color spaces on the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_colspace.pdf
Author "Color Management for Photographers"
http://www.digitaldog.net/
I have read your posts regarding printing with an inkjet printer and getting your prints - B&W or color _ to match your screen. As you obviously know from reading and experience, this can be challenging at times.
You need a carefully calibrated monitor, software that is fully aware of color spaces like Lightroom or Photoshop ( or a few others ) and the proper printing profile for your printer, paper, and whether the image is to be color or B&W.
The best book I have seen covering this topic is by Uwe Steinmuller and Juergen Gulbins, published by Rocky Nook "Fine Art Printing for Photographers" I think you will find this answers many of your questions and helps you determine the answers for yourself.
They include links to a series of images and graphics that include stepped gray scales, and how to adjust the various parameters to achieve success at printing. Page 79 describes how to find the absolute black and white point that your own printer is capable of printing discernably, a very useful task to do and understand. I can actually print 5,5,5 and 252,252,252, and discern them on my prints I make on my Epson Stylus 3800.
One other task I would suggest is to purchase a few prints from Smugmug so have to compare to your own prints and see if they match closely as well.[/quote]
Hello Mate,
First of all, thank you very much for reading and for replying. I find quite a lot of nice people here who is willing to help by using technical and logical reasonings, thing which surprises me since I have been in lot of forums and members usually use too much colloquial languaje mixed with prepotency and arrogance just because they don't know how to reply or refute x statement or just becuase the statement is above their heads. I could name a bunch, but that's not ethic and that is another topic. However, I just wanted to say and explain why I'm so happy here
Okay!
Due my furstration, my girlfriend went to a cool Developing Shop today in order to probe me that those shops are not so bad as I though, 'cause I already had been there and I know they don't know what's a color profile. 1 year ago, I did a journey through all the printing shops and developing shops in my state, in order to find the best one, I do surveys, personal surveys in order to detect the perfect shop and none of the shops know what's a color profile or a photocolorimeter. I printed 4 photos in one of the "most quality" places and they have done an ugly job, avoiding their incompetence by saying that my monitor was too bright (I have it calibrated and profiled), for example. I was in a hurry that day, so I didn't crush their shop, which name is "Dicky"
Anyway!
I have an Apple Cinema Display of 20 inches and it looks fantastic. I was familiarized with very cheap LCD monitors like the Viewsonic which cost no more than 150 dollars. Now I have a good work as a freelancer so I can buy something better. I don't know what are the capabilities of this monitor, but superficially, images looks nicer than with the old monitor, even like in 3D.
How can I know the gamut of my monitor? I used a grey scale image and for example, in my old monitor the grey scale shows some gasp, the apple one shows a very smooth gradient. Yes, I know it's a primitive way, but's the only I have. If you have the answer to go pro, please, I would like to read it
You say that LCD cannot revert to sRGB, I don't get that point, nor why I should have 2 units, and what kind of unit? LCD + CRT, maybe? Why?
I also don't get this point "is no such thing as an sRGB printer. The shapes of printer gamuts and display gamuts are quite different. These RGB working space are theoretical (there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB)". Specially "(there's nothing that "produces" ProPhoto RGB)".
Your message is a bit confusing, but I'm trying to understand it.
The shops here are managed by incompetent people. Publicity and adds in Argentina are bought to Europe or USA and just to a couple of agencies in Buenos Aires which most of the 80% of their productions are printed overseas. Sames happens with food. Argentina has lot of vegetables goods, which are sell to the exterior, then, the foreing countries sell the product inside a bottle with packaging. In few words, we have the goods, you pack it, we buy it. So foolish, but well, that's why Argentina is a thrid world country, and is getting worst, another topic, sorry.
As conclusion, I understand that you say there are wide gamut printers, but not for the public?
Well... I'm a bit confused... I also would like to know how developing labs can develope digital photos wityh chemicals (that I was told). I will search it in google, but if you have some link, will be appreciated and read.
Now I'm going to read the links you passed me
Thanks a lot for your attention and help, buddy
Øuantum³
By the way, I just remembered a case where I went to a "High Quality" Develop Photo Shop and I send them photos in ProPhoto RGB, I told them the thing about the profile and how to render it and such. At the end of the day, they showed me the photos, some of them were good (the "Fitting round pegs in square holes", as you say) but some others they told me "We have had to make them black and white because neither in sepia we could develope this photos!!! We are confused, we hope it's okay for you". I just said, it'0s becuase the color profile of the picture... Grabbed the pix and went to the client's house. Luckily, the client liked the pix...
Just a little example of thousand...
Well... Will read the links
Mmmhhh, I've read you reply for 5 times now and my conclusion is:
Doesn't matter which color profile has an X foto, monitor will convert it to its own color profile, in order to show it the best possible in X display. In that proces, some colors fall in, some out (and I guess it getworst while editing a pic). So, becuase we edit a cristal cup through a broken glass, the cristal glass will not the same at the end of the day because all its color data has been changed by using a broken glass, same when converting from a profile to another.
When you say "fitting round pegs in square holes" you mean we're not working in some standard. For example, if I use ProPhoto, I must use a Monitor and printer that is able to hadle the same profiles, otherwhise, desviations will occur, some of them quite a lot. However, if I like how the image looks after editing and knowing I'm editing colors through an sRGB glass, I must convert it to the monitor's (with all it's deviations) profile in order to match what I had seen in it with the final print, becuase at the end of the day, the dysplay is our eye.
This is like taking photos with sunglases, I think.
Am I right?
By the way, I was reading a lot tonight and I found a printer called IRIS, which has a constant DPI. The past night I was thinking about that, Printers usualy doesn't print at 300 DPI, in the highlights, I think they go close to 3 dots per inch, just before the whitness of the paper.
I also found that some papers are prepared to be printed in profiles like ProPhoto.
The website was in spanish, but I can put the link here: http://www.artgoritmo.com.mx/giclee.htm
And: http://pixsylated.com/2008/05/why-your-photos-look-lousy/
That I have read.
Hello Administrator,
Yes, I have been reading many web sites, seeing many charts and such... I have discovered, if I'm right and doing a brief (the whole thing can be found in this topic) that editing a picture in ProPhoto by using a monitor which looks more like sRGB is like taking photos with sun glases.
I have been talking with my client in CA, so they will send me the book
In the test I did, I found (by using a looupe and deduction) my printer cannot recognice values of blacks below 24 and above 240, more or less. Below 24 there is a flat black area, but without a mircroscope I cannot be sure. I could do the trick of m,acroi photograhy by turning the lense of my camera, but I don't want to expose its back, since it's a very expensive camera. But I already have done the same when exploring the pixels in the screen, in the year 2005 in order to probe to my teacher was worng or giving incomplete information.
I did a digital imaging course in the best school in my state and country, but they never thought I would take a macro pic of my monitor and ask about this kind of stuff... I was almost expulsed because of my hungry of knoledge. They called me to an empty classroom an they told me "you do hard questions we don't know how to reply and you put us in shame before the other pupils". They also thought I was doing it with bad intentions... It happened to me the same thing in every school I was (music composition school, English school, theatre and painting arts).
You know, in the more expensive school in my country, teachers says things like: "The alfa modifies the opacity of an object", end of the explaniation. At least, they could say "The Alfa Channel"...
Well...
Will keep reading... And I will post something new right now
Thanks for all the support, and I have also thank to the site, but want to keepo learning and expoerienting with this site. It's not the same saying hello than givin an explaniation about my happines since I belongs to Digital Grin, you know, and I need more experiences here