[Digikam-users] Bruce Fraser on different monitor profiles for different editing purposes

[Elle Stone]

One of the digiKam developers remarked that he couldn't see any "use case"
where the user might want to use a monitor profile other than the system
monitor profile, if a system monitor profile has been installed. 

Bruce Fraser is an acknowledged expert in the field of color management. He
wrote a very interesting article, Out of Gamut: Exploring Wide, Open (Color)
Spaces (http://www.creativepro.com/node/57719 - scroll down to "Working in
the Dark"), in which he laments the fact that no commercial profiling
programs allow the option of creating monitor profiles with perceptual
intent tables. He points out that a monitor profile with a perceptual intent
table allows one to view image details in images that are in very large
gamut color spaces like ProPhotoRGB, when the image colors fall outside your
monitor's relatively small color gamut.

With the open source Argyllcms, you can do just that, make a monitor profile
with a perceptual intent table. And I have indeed made myself a monitor
profile with a perceptual intent table. And I do indeed find it very useful
for keeping track of what's going on when editing an image in ProPhotoRGB on
a monitor with a color gamut that barely exceeds sRGB.

This type of monitor profile with a perceptual intent table is a LUT-style
profile. For my monitor (and probably for most monitors), a shaper-matrix
profile makes a better all-purpose monitor profile. So I routinely use two
different, equally valid monitor profiles in the course of image editing.

Gimp and UFRaw allow you to choose a monitor profile other than the
installed monitor profile, if you want to. Apparently digiKam also used to,
at one point, but not any more. Now neither digiKam nor showFoto nor Krita
allow you to choose.

DigiKam is already equal to or better than commercial programs in so many
ways. Why not reintroduce this useful and important feature - the ability to
change monitor profiles even when a system monitor profile has been
installed. It can't be that difficult to restore the user's choice and it
would make DigiKam more convenient, useful, and in general, even better than
it already is.

Kind regards,
Elle Stone

--
View this message in context: http://digikam.1695700.n4.nabble.com/Bruce-Fraser-on-different-monitor-profiles-for-different-editing-purposes-tp4469062p4469062.html
Sent from the digikam-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.