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Insight and advice on color management, from capture to output. The first part of this six-part series tackles cameras and scanners.
By Tom Hauenstein
Handling tech support for LexJet customers over the past couple of years has taught me many things. One of these lessons was discovering that many photographers and fine art reproducers have similar questions about color management for printing.
While one could write an entire book about color management (and some have), I wanted to boil down the process as much as possible and offer basic guidelines and advice. The plan is to release this six-part series on color management here, in our monthly InFocus e-newsletter, and also in Great Output and archived on our website so that you can always refer back to the information as needed when questions arise.
The inkjet printing industry is extremely dynamic. Therefore, some of the topics covered may become quickly outdated. I will constantly update the electronic versions of these articles on our website as needed in order for the information to remain pertinent. The series will be broken down in the following segments:
1. Capture: Cameras and scanners
2. Process: Manipulation for print
3. Printing from the EPSON Stylus Pro-series driver
4. Printing from the Canon imagePROGRAF-series driver
5. Printing from the HP Z-series driver
6. Printing through the ImagePrint RIP
Capture Calibration
Image capture is the most important step in producing great output. The subject matter, composition, exposure, and aperture are what determine the ultimate quality, or lack thereof, if all of these parameters are captured perfectly. Color management is simply making sure nothing is lost during the trip from the mind’s eye through the camera, on the monitor, and out of the printer.
Those who set up their shot correctly the first time will always be more profitable than those who do not pay as much attention to detail. Let's say two photographers are commissioned to reproduce an identical piece of fine art on canvas at 16 in. x 20 in. Also assume that they are both going to charge $100 for the capture, manipulation, and the unfinished canvas print. Finally assume that their time is worth $50 per hour.
Photographer A takes only ten minutes to set up his picture and shoot because he did not adjust his all of his settings as well as he could have, knowing that he has enough megapixels in the camera and tools in Photoshop CS2 to make up for any errors. The second photographer takes 30 minutes to set up his shoot because he planned and executed his lighting, exposure, and aperture perfectly.
The first photographer then spends two hours in Photoshop on this one file. The file was underexposed and the lighting wasn’t balanced across the painting, so he spent a lot of time masking out sections of the image and adjusting to try and make the lighting even. The second photographer does a quick curves adjustment and only spends ten minutes in Photoshop.
Photographer A
Set up and shoot 10 minutes at $50 an hour = -$8.33
Manipulation 120 minutes at $50 an hour = -$100.00
Ink and Canvas Cost 4 sq. ft. at $2.22 sq. ft. = -$8.88
Payment $100 total price = $100.00
Total = -$17.21
Photographer B
Set up and shoot 30 minutes at $50 an hour = -$25.00
Manipulation 10 minutes at $50 an hour = -$8.33
Total = $57.79
I understand that this example is really simplistic, but it illustrates how attention to detail during capture saves time and money during subsequent steps. Any mistake in capture will completely eat away your profits if they must be corrected in Photoshop. In carpentry, the saying is, "Measure twice; cut once." In digital photography it should be, "Meter twice: shoot thrice" since memory is cheap and there is no film involved. This is the most important thing you should know about capture.
The arrow indicates where you select the camera-specific source space with a RAW file.
As for camera color management, it may or may not be profiled. You can simply rely on the generic source color spaces that are inherent in your camera, such as Adobe RGB 1998 or sRGB.
If you would like to create a color profile for the camera, I recommend X-Rite’s Eye-One Match, ProfileMaker Publish, or ProfileMaker PhotoStudio. This profile will then be the source space for your files. You can apply them to your image in one of two ways: If you shoot in RAW, then you can select this profile as the source profile while converting to a compressed file format, such as JPEG or TIFF. When shooting in JPEG, you need to assign this profile to the image while in Photoshop. Be sure to select edit>assign profile and not edit>convert to profile.
In scanning, all ingredients of the image (subject matter, composition, exposure, aperture) have already been decided, so now you're trying to reproduce those results. But first, the scanner should be profiled. You want to create an ICC profile to understand exactly how the scanner sees color, and this profile becomes your source profile. I would recommend X-Rite's Eye-One Match or ProfileMaker Publish software to perform this task.
When opening a JPEG, you would assign the camera-specific profile here.
You should create a separate ICC profile for reflective and transmissive scanning using different targets. The software is very intuitive and wizard-driven. The ICC profile created for your scanner should then be the embedded RGB work space for the scanned image. This ensures that whatever program is used to view the scanned image understands exactly how your scanner interprets color, and will display or print that image accurately.
Ultimately, color management is all about cutting down on color correction, which is the work you do within each file. You manage color through properly profiling and calibrating all your equipment, and by paying attention to detail during capture.
Tom Hauenstein is LexJet’s technical support director.