[Digikam-users] Color Mgmt: Nikon D80; Printer Profile use; GAMMAPage

[Nicolas Vilars]

Hi,

Ari El a écrit :
>   2- I used the application GAMMAPage as a poor man's monitor calibrator,
> which if used properly is supposed to aid setting the monitor to "sRGB
> standard 2.2". Then I set in Digikam's ICC settings "Monitor"=sRGB and
> activated "Use color managed view"... is this correct? (I mean, I'm not even
> sure that what I'm doing makes sense or not)
>   
Might be correct, but... the Digikam team do NOT recommend the use of 
the color managed view option of Digikam.
Instead, you may have a look at Dispwin or Xcalib... see my page for a 
howto (http://linux.vilars.com/)
>   3- I need to make a few large prints; I am going to use a Lab that
> provided me with the color profile of their printer. I loaded this profile
> into Digikam's ICC setting "Soft Proof", is this right? If so, when is this
> profile actually applied ? Is it when I save the image in the ImageEditor in
> tiff format to hand them over to the lab? Can someone shed some light on
> this?  
>   
Well, my guess is that you should not apply the profile if your are 
going to handle your files to a lab. If the lab use profiles for the 
output then they will read yours (say sRGB or Adobe) and apply their 
profile from that (after all how do you now which printer they are going 
to use?). Now the best option is probably to discuss the matter directly 
with your lab...

For a home production, you would have applied the profile and printed 
your file. Soft proofing is for display only... it will render your 
picture as if... but not apply anything to it. To apply you have to 
change the workspace profile to your printer profile and save your file.
>   4- If I understood correctly, the "workspace" is a temporary space used
> while processing. Can someone recommend what to use here? (in this case the
> application is: load the NEFs > crop & adjust > sharpen > save the tiffs for
> the lab)
>   
No, the workspace is your permanent profile. Typically, you want this 
workspace as large as possible because it will allow you more finer 
control over the color. The scheme is as follow (=> means convert into):
 [camera] NEF (no profile) => [Digikam] NEF - nikon input profile => 
[Digikam] NEF - workspace profile => [File] jpg/png/tiff - workspace profile

Nicolas.