Photoshop Users - Color Management

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Amy McCray

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
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I just participated in a Webinar on PS Color Management. It was put on by Creative Techs and was very informative. They may develop this into a multiple session format in the near future.

One of their recommendations was a company/website which has a newsletter on color management. It looks to be a great resource.

The link is:
http://www2.chromix.com/colornews/?-session=SessID:CF76812B09cad1E3C2KvH3BB546D
 
Ahh Amy, that brought back memories.
I spent a number of years as the Director of Color Management Products at Eastman Kodak and was a member of the original ICC Profile Consortium.

It's interesting to see that people are still having much the same mis-understanding as they did in the early 90s!

I'm glad I'm framing pictures.
 
How about that, Cliff! Oh my gosh yes, confusion about profiles abounds. It's probably even worse now that there are so many different printers, monitors, etc. all which complicate the lists of profiles to choose from.

I was hanging in there pretty well during the class this afternoon, then all of a sudden I either had an ADD attack or hit the proverbial brick wall, but it was all over but the cryin'! Shwoosh, right over my head. Thankfully I "got" the basics. Will keep working on it though. There's so much to know!
 
I'm no expert but I can't seem to figure out what all the problems are. Get a decent printer, decent monitor, and decent profiler and you're in business. I did all of the above and have no problems with color at all.
 
Jay, not trying to be contrary, but I'll bet if I could get one of the guys that used to work for me to tune your system you'd be amazed at what a difference it makes.

Also, there are some VERY interesting things you can "pre-test" on your monitor relative to gamut restrictions if your system is completely tuned and calibrated.

I have no doubt that you have what we used to call "good enough" color which works for many people.

If you were trying to, say, do proofs for magazine ads or billboards you'd find a VERY different "eye on your consumer." It's actually quite amazing what a slight difference in a profile can do to correct blown out highlights or blocked shadows.

When you are converting color from one color space to another the way that out of gamut colors are mapped into the "new" gamut space can make a huge difference.

I should add that making reproductions of artist's work (possibly of more interest to framers) has the same critical eye factor.

Most (all?) of the artist's mediums have a larger and definitely a different gamut than the digital devices you're using to reproduce them.

The first critical area is input (scanner or camera). How a profile uses the available gamut of the reading device to map actual colors from the original immediately forces you to deal with different areas of detail and definition in the image. and it can get more complicated from there if you actually care about the detail and color fidelity from original to reproduction.

Maybe an example ... first, I hope you take as a given that ALL colors and ALL detail can not be mapped from a continuous tone image (like a watercolor or oil) to digital. Therefore you must decide what's important. If you are reproducing portraits for example, you would worry about a much wider range of "fleshtones" so that the facial detail is preserved. If you were capturing very high key (bright and lots of highlights) images, you might be more concerned about mapping colors in the brighter area of the gamut.

This can all be done with ICC profiles.
 
Color management is relatively simple if you're viewing your photos on your own monitor or printing them on your own printer.

It gets immensely more complex when you actually want to share them in some fashion - especially if the sharees are color pissants.

I'm wading through Adobe's Classroom in a Book for CS4 and I'd actually forgotten what an amazingly tedious way that is to learn anything.

The Lightroom 2 book is staring at me, awaiting its turn. Just kill me now.
 
Ron! I think you would love this free live webinar 10 week course I've been attending. Here's the link to sign up. http://creativetechs.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=af872ba88a454e16a24cbee2d&id=bbff18db96

It's held every Thurs. (1:00 pm our time) and if you can't listen to it when it's broadcast - I'm sure you can't just take a 2 hr. break from work - you can buy the downloads for all 10 sessions for $50. It's really worth the $50 based on what I've seen this far.

Oh, it's geared toward Mac users, but don't worry, the concepts are all the same with only a difference being some of the keyboard shortcuts. (i.e.: Alt instead of ⌘)
 
Ron Eggers said:
I'm wading through Adobe's Classroom in a Book for CS4 and I'd actually forgotten what an amazingly tedious way that is to learn anything.
Click to expand...

I more or less learned Photoshop and Illustrator with the CIB series and I thought them extremely well done, and not at all tedious. I couldn’t wait to tackle the next lessons and try to figure out an immediate use for the stuff I had already learned.

I think the brilliant thing about them is that you can pace yourself at your own speed and, if you have trouble with something, go back and do it again until it sinks in.

I’d recommend them to anyone.

One of the most useful books in my library is Professional Photoshop by Margulis (Wiley Press). It goes over in great detail about how to make color corrections. Now, it makes sense! Before it was trial and error and “Oops, that’s not quite right, but I don’t know why.”
 
Cliff Wilson said:
If you were trying to, say, do proofs for magazine ads or billboards you'd find a VERY different "eye on your consumer."
Click to expand...

Show of hands, who is doing this? Aren't you over complicating this just a tad for almost all users?

I stand corrected. Let me rephrase. For 99 out of 100 people a decent monitor, a decent printer (with decent profiles) and a decent calibrater and you will have almost no problems at all printing.

I chat with probably 30 photographers in a typical month about photography. Almost all of them are having color problems. Almost none of them have bought or learned how to use the three items that will likely cure all their problems.
 
Jay H said:
Show of hands, who is doing this? Aren't you over complicating this just a tad for almost all users?

I stand corrected. Let me rephrase. For 99 out of 100 people a decent monitor, a decent printer (with decent profiles) and a decent calibrater and you will have almost no problems at all printing.

I chat with probably 30 photographers in a typical month about photography. Almost all of them are having color problems. Almost none of them have bought or learned how to use the three items that will likely cure all their problems.
Click to expand...

The one thing i would add to you 3 items is a profiler. I may be out of the norm here but I do alot of large format printing to do for photographers and I must say that most of them do not know color management. Knowing htat they need to profile the papers they use. I try to stick to the same company paper manufacturer so I have my paper profiles and my monitor calibrated. This was when the photographer is looking over my shoulder (which I only let a few) they can see what they are going to get before I print it out. And since i have 3 different printers it makes it more important to profile the papers with the printers.
 
I couldn’t wait to tackle the next lessons and try to figure out an immediate use for the stuff I had already learned.
Click to expand...

That's my approach to most tools. I'll buy, figure out how to use it and then figure out what to use it for (to justify the purchase.)

My issue with the Classroom in a Book process for learning Photoshop is that there is an awful lot in the book (just like in Photoshop) that I will absolutely never use. I suppose I could skip those lessons but I'm pretty sure I'd be lost in the subsequent lessons if I did that.

What I really want to do in Photoshop is open a photo I've already taken, think about how it could be improved and then learn the process that might help me do that. There are a couple of books - some of them from Adobe - that take that approach but, ultimately, I want to have a look at the Photoshop features that I won't use so I'll know they're there if I ever DO need them.

Of course, by that time I will have forgotten all about them.

In my day job, they have a very practical approach to training and learning. I've had about 15 weeks of full-time classroom training with full recognition that we'll learn about 5% of what we'll actually need to know. Everything from that point forward is taught on a need-to-know basis and additional training is conducted, sometimes apparently spontaneously, as regulations and products change.

It's a continuous and fluid process.
 
My one big battle in controlling color is copying old black and white.

Photographic prints in the last century up until color took over were called "black and white" But were usually brown and cream. The high tones were cream because that's the color of photo paper that was popular. The low tones were brown as this was popular and so the labs "toned" the blacks to various browns. And then the pictures have aged and moved to yellow or sometimes red.

Move ahead to today and our systems can handle black and white very easily but customers want prints that look like the old and so coping black and white has to be done in color and that can be a battle.

In the "white" there is no density so if printed on a modern white paper it's not suitable. I now have a collection of files of various "paper colors" which I print. Then I put the paper back in and print the image. Often works quite well.
 
Bandy

where did you get your paper? - I trust its satin or glossy rather than plain bond which is real dull & "papery"
 
Bandsaw said:
In the "white" there is no density so if printed on a modern white paper it's not suitable. I now have a collection of files of various "paper colors" which I print. Then I put the paper back in and print the image. Often works quite well.
Click to expand...

If your capturing in color then there should be no "blown out" areas of the paper that would be white. If the origional has turned then you should be able to capture that new color instead of white. Now if you're copying and printing b/w I go to image-levels and bring the white down from 255 to 250 so that the entire image has some ink sprayed on the white paper. I also bring the blacks up to 5 to elminate super strong black colors that seem unnatural.
 
Another way to adjust the “warmth” of the old black and white images is to set up some Pantone Duo, Tri, or Quad colors in an “Action”. I have about 20 of them for various “moods”.

For instance, for a Sepia tone, I convert the scanned image into Grayscale then call up the following window, then convert it back into RGB.

PantoneSepia.jpg


For a Warm Gray, I use Black, Pantone 607 and Pantone 722.

At that point you can fine tune the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness with the appropriate adjustment window.
 
Thanks for the ideas.

The way my system is calibrated I can do a straight through, no adjustment, scan to Photoshop and print on the Epson and get a great print from a color original.

But the scanner, Photoshop, and/or the printer just don't seem to recognize an old black and white print - the results are completely random.
 
I use Corel Photopaint, so don't know the equivalent Adobespeak for the following actions, but I hope readers get the gist of the actions.


If one is not too fussed about getting "hyperaccurate" results, a quick and easy way to put a soft black 'n' white or sepia tint onto an old photograph is to first desaturate the image, then add a layer above, Flood fill the new layer with a "yellowy-brownish" colour (preferably a midtone), then set the merge mode for the layer to "Soft Light." Similar effects can be added with "normal" or "overlay" merge modes, and tweaking the layer transparency setting. (I find this method easier than using duotone, etc.)
 
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