[JorisMX]

tom perhaps you should to a simple dtp tut for the maxwell workflow and make it a sticky post or something.

I guess not all of the maxwell users have had the luck to work in this field as most are designers or people doing vizualisations.

I've been working in this area for about 4 years professionally now and I guess we do take these things for granted, but they are not!

[tom]

But, the saddest thing is 90% of DTP guys also fail in color management. It's very easy but also that much annoying with a lot of nonsense humor/habit roaming around. I'll think about the tutorial, Joris

[JorisMX]

Let me know if I can help. We have a wonderfull colormanagement workflow at the company I work at.


Nice Porsche btw ... didn't plan on raiding your thread ...Oops..

[big K]

nice Porsche !

and Tom and Joris,
a tut for color management would be more than welcome !
(especially what are the best steps to convert to a cymk profile)

cheers
michael

[JorisMX]

Short answer on that one:

When working in RGB I suggest working in ECI-RGB.V2 and converting to profile (choose ISO Coated v2. and check relative colormetric and black point conversion).

These are both relatively large colorspaces which means the difference in color won't be as drastic as when converting lets say from srgb to iso coated v1.

In europe ISOcoated and meanwhile ISOcoatedV2 are the standard profiles for print.

Anything more detailed about this should be dealt with in a in depth tut. If you have any more qustions feel free to send me a message.

[tom]

Joris is right. Alternatively, you can try Adobe 1998 (or even ProPhotoRGB) as RGB working space (although I agree ECI RGB is slightly more suitable for CMYK conversions) and for printing in US, you should prefer US Sheetfed v2 as a replacement for ISO Coated v2.

[JorisMX]

In case you wonder why you don't have these ECI-RGB.v2.0 and ISOcoated.v2.0 in your list of colorprofiles in Photoshop you will need to download them and copy them into your icc profile dir which differs depending on the OS.

This is the path for OSX users (german OS btw, so MacHD/Library/...)



Here are the links to the ECI profiles

http://eci.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=en% ... t_2008.zip

http://eci.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=en% ... rgbv20.zip

[big K]

thanks for this !

i already had these profiles downloaded for my last printed job.
but good to know that they are the best to work with.

the questions are more about how to convert.
my camera uses the sRGB colorspace (is this a bad thing?)
and my renderings are normally without colormanagement.
is it best to first convert to the ECI RGB and then ISO coated ?
and is it always the best as tom says to "manually" convert to a certain colorspace.
when i work with both should i drop the colorspace of the camera images or better convert to ECI RGB ?
another question would be - is it o.k. to leave the images without colormanagement when i edit them (and then convert them when needed?)
what is the best colorspace for the web (or is it possible to leave them without an a profile) i ask because many of my images go to print and web publishing.

so these are the most burning questions

and sorry for hijacking this thread
michael

[JorisMX]

thanks for this !
my camera uses the sRGB colorspace (is this a bad thing?)

Well IMO its always better to have color management than none at all.

is it best to first convert to the ECI RGB and then ISO coated ?

This is the way I prefer to work. Other people like to do postwork in the final color space.
Advantages are that you really see what you get using ISOc in editing. I prefer doing color adjustment in RGB and convert in the final stage.
There is a nice trick in Photoshop to preview what your ISOcV2 looks like by setting up a soft-proof (try photoshop handbook)

and is it always the best as tom says to "manually" convert to a certain colorspace.

Yes. I always do everything manually, this way you see what you're doing and you see what you get with no surprises afterwards

when i work with both should i drop the colorspace of the camera images or better convert to ECI RGB ?

I don't know how your output looks like but if its fine in sRGB i would convert to eci-rgbV2 then save a PSD like name_date_RGB.PSD and save this when completing postwork.
Then duplicate the file, reduce to background layer and then convert to ISOc or whatever your client demands.

is it o.k. to leave the images without colormanagement when i edit them (and then convert them when needed?)

Perhaps Tom knows a better answer to this, I would say work in eci-rgb that way you always know what you got. Also It is nice to have something set when changing workstations.

what is the best colorspace for the web (or is it possible to leave them without an a profile) i ask because many of my images go to print and web publishing.

sRGB, as Tom mentioned earlier this the profile which most users have for webviewing and therefore they will see more or less (depending on monitor calibration) what you intend your picture to look like

and sorry for hijacking this thread

Me too. Tom, finally open a colormanagement wth maxwell sticky thread, please

[big K]

thanks for all these answers, Joris !
this is very helpful.

[JorisMX]

No Problemo,

now more Porsche plz!

[tom]

I fully agree with Joris' answers above because I'm using the same European workflow for the local jobs I run in Turkey and a slightly different setup for the ones I send to US. For US jobs, I prefer AdobeRGB/US Sheetfed V2 pair rather than ECI RGB/ISO Coated V2. But in the end, both of these RGB Profiles are very close to each other so, mainly the CMYK profile matters and it's primarily about the characteristic of paper to be printed. Coated (Glossy and Matte finish) papers tend to absorb less ink, so they are supporting a larger gamut like the profiles we've suggested. But if you are planning to print on newspaper or others, these profiles won't give the same result.

Btw, know that "color profile" means "color space" means "color gamut". While these are technically more or less equal, their usage in literature show differences. e.g. when talking about an *.icc file you can say it's a color profile but you don't usually say it's a color gamut. Also when you're talking about a color exceeding the gamut, you don't say it's out of profile. In fact, Color Profile is a complete set of definition (usually an icc file) holding color space/gamut information and more.

Back to practical aspect of color management. There are basically 3 important things to know:

1) Source Color Space (Color Space of file to be imported from disk, scanner or camera etc.)

2) Working Color Space (Color Space of graphics application, the kitchen.)

3) Destination Color Space (Color Space to be embedded inside the file to be represented on targeted media/medium.)

So, it's all the time extremely essential having all images saved with proper color profiles. For internet and common purpose usage (viewing on a computer) you should always use sRGB profile. But, if your image has a wider gamut like ECI,Adobe or PhotoRGB etc. I suggest you to keep a copy and not to overwrite.

As we said sRGB is narrow than ECI or Adobe. So, why do we use them as a working space while our incoming file has a narrow gamut. Because when you open a narrow RGB profile into wide RGB profile, you have more flexibility in the post before converting to CMYK. Although this doesn't mean if you have the widest RGB gamut, it's the best. Because, any CMYK is still a narrow color space so you won't want to go far from its limits. This is why ECI's RGB/CMYK do good together. They are intentionally prepared for this purpose.

There are more things to say about color management. So, I decide to go on by answering your questions if any.

[tom]

I forgot to say you can also prefer Coated FOGRA39 profile instead of ISO Coated v2 which is already based on FOGRA39. Because it comes with Photoshop already. You will also see FOGRA27 which is older version of FOGRA39 (http://www.fogra.org/products-en/icc39-40.html). It has slightly narrow and different shaped gamut on blue/violet edges.

[kami]

hi tom
thanks for the tutorial.

sadly I've never understood what's behind color management.
until now, I've always just taken my render, opened it in photoshop and adjusted it until it was looking good.
when I print the image, it always looks different on the print. so I adjust it a few times in PS until the print looks good.

what would be a better approach for me? I'm working at an architecture office and we have no calibrated screens or printers. The image never has to be exactly at a specified color, but I'd be nice to avoid too much differences between the print and the screen output.

thank you,
kami

[tom]

Are you printing it on color laserjet or sending to offset?