[Digikam-users] A few thoughts about color management

[John Bestevaar]

Hi Rinus
Yes i have reluctantly come to the same conclusion. Years ago as a 
visual arts student ( Dip.Fine Art ) they taught us a bit about how 
humans see color. It was something of a revelation to me to find out 
that every *person* has their own color perception profile, genetically 
and experientially determined.
Cheers johnB

On 02/10/11 03:17, sleepless wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> A few thoughts about color management to share. Moving from windows to 
> Ubuntu brings enough changes to workflow to need a lot of adjustments 
> and a heap of dimes for tests prints.
>
> Why color management is doomed to fail:
> Every surrounding has its own light quality and if we talk about 
> outdoor photography the light changes continuously. Your lens does 
> some little tricks with the light before it is projected on your 
> sensor, which does its own tricks on the light. The camera 
> manufacturer applies some profile to make the best of it. Then you 
> export it to your computer, which displays your picture according the 
> ideas of your your screen cards manufacturer and the profiles used at 
> that stage and then forwards it to the screen which displays it in his 
> own particular way after using another  profile. The image you see 
> highly influenced by the light conditions of your room.
> Now you start to optimize it with your photo manipulation software, 
> which might apply another  profile as well. After that it goes to the 
> printerdriver, another profile comes in before sending it to the 
> printer, and again some profile comes in, and of course you selected 
> your paper which is again a profile.
> Now you have a picture, and if in all those mentioned steps and in the 
> steps I forgot to mention everything went well, and you would look at 
> it at the same light conditions as you shot your photo, it should at 
> least look a bit like reality, although not perfect because the paper 
> can not reflect the colors and contrast of reality.
>
> This is the goal of colormangement, but we realy need a lot of help of 
> the lord, to have the output look like the input. Besides of that, in 
> most occasions we would not be to happy if the pictures looked like 
> reality. Out of the context, people will say, ¨oh no that sky can 
> never be that red¨, or ¨the water can never be that blue¨. If you 
> shoot indoor with usual light, and it has been reproduced very well we 
> will experience the pictures as much to yellowish and so on and so 
> further.
>
> A better way:
> Try to set everywhere in your workflow same color profile. This is 
> hard, settings pop up or hide in so many places!
> Make a room where the light conditions are optima forma according 
> final exposing conditions.
> Compose a test print from different pictures, all colors, shadows, 
> highlights should be represented as much as possible. Print and view. 
> Make all needed adjustments in your photo management software and 
> print again and view. And so on until you have your best possible print.
>
> After this calibrate your monitor so that it relects your print in the 
> best possible way.
>
> From now on trust your eyes and WYSIWYG.
>
> Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.
> Best regards,
> Rinus
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