A few thoughts about color management

[Rinus]

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
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Martin (KDE)]

Am Samstag, 1. Oktober 2011 schrieb sleepless:

> 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.

I think you miss the point here. I made the same wrong assumptions a
few months ago.

Photography is NOT the art of reproducing the reality or taking a
snapshot of the reality, it is the view of the photographer of a part
of a scene. A photographer uses the camera like a painter uses the
colours, pens ... during creating the painting. Colour is one (only
one) part of creating a photo.

Colour management makes sure that the colours I see on my monitor are
the same (within the limitations of the hardware) on different
monitors and printouts. If you as the photographing artist wants the
sky to be red (i.e. as a sign for all the blood of innocent people)
colour management makes sure that it is the same on you monitor and
print, but this has nothing to do with the colour the sky had when you
took the photo.

> 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.

In technical photography you have to rely on exact reproduction of
what you photograph. For this you have to profile every step. But in
real life a photo is no longer a technical only thing. It caries
emotions, feelings, wishes. It does no longer matters if the colour is
exact.

Just think about all the parameters you can change in taking a photo.
- depth-of-field change by aperture
- movements frozen by the shutter speed
- angle of view chosen by the focal length
All this is part of a highly subjective view of the par I want to
photograph.

>
> 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.

Please don't do this. Calibrate and profile your monitor, scanner and
printer and that's all you need. And do yourself a favour and take a
printing-lab that supports colour management, not some of the cheep
one which do several "optimizations" before printing.

First step has to be calibrating and profiling. It does not mater
which one first. Do not calibrate any part of your hardware by simply
looking at it. This does not work. Use special calibration/profiling
hardware.

>
> After this calibrate your monitor so that it relects your print in
> the best possible way.
>
>  From now on trust your eyes and WYSIWYG.

Never ever trust your eyes. Human eyes neither have a special colour
setting nor do they have a special luminance setting. The eye looks
relative. There are few people out there which may see a wrong
calibrated monitor but they are few. You can see the wron colour if
you have a test print side by side the monitor, but now what is the
wrong colour? The monitor or the test print?

I once heard of a test. A german television show setup a piano half a
tone to high each tone. They took professional piano player and some
other piano player and let them play on this special piano. Only the
professional play was able to say that there is something wrong with
the piano. All other players did not notice the difference. Even the
professional was not able to say what was wrong.

>
> Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.

I once took a IT8 target shot every now and then to calibrate my
camera but I was not satisfied with the results. I double my effort
but the results keep poor. I partially lost the joy in taking photos.
Finally I ignore the calibration target and take photos as I like it.
Only before important sessions I use my grey card to set the white
point correctly.

As I am a technican I every now and then grab the IT8 target and shot
some photos to check if the camera setup can be improved but it is not
that often.

Just my thoughts

Martin

> Best regards,
> Rinus
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[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
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Remco Viëtor]

On Saturday 01 October 2011 19:17:33 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:
[snip...]

To be frank, I think you miss the point of colour management.

Colour management is ment to ensure that for a given input, you know what's
coming out. In the case of photography, you want to make sure that a photo you
open will display as close to correct (as defined by the colour space you use)
as possible, _independent_ of differences between devices.

To take your reasoning point by point:
-- Colour of scene lighting:
by using a neutral gray or white card, we can ensure that we know the light
temperature, so we can correct for it. Using a colour card allows correction
of differences caused by the camera/lens.

-- Camera manufacturer applying a correction:
that only applies to in-camera jpg, if you want to go through the effort of
colour management, you should be using raw format anyway (imho).

-- Import in computer/screen display:
To correct for differences in screen/graphics card response, you calibrate and
profile your screen, so a colour in your photo is displayed as close as
possible to the intended colour.

-- Printing: same as screen, but (of course) with different correction
profiles (of course, as it is a different device).

In short, one aim of colour management is to ENABLE you to get as close to the
original colours as possible...

There is a second point as well, concerning screen and printer
calibration/profiling: if you use screens as set by the manufacturer, you'll
have (big) differences between screens (even of the same make/type). By
calibrating and profiling the screen, you can have some confidence that
someone else sees the colours you aimed for, especially if that someone else
also has a calibrated and profiled screen display. When NOT doing any colour
management at all, don't be surprised that the lovely portrait you prepared is
seen by someone else with a green cast...

As for the better way you propose:
you can't use the same profile anywhere. You'll have the colour space you work
in (sRGB usually, other possibilities are Adobe RGB, ProPhote RGB, etc.), and
correction profiles for your camera(s), screen and printer. And please don't
mix up the colour space definitions with the correction profiles (although
they both use .icc or .icm extensions, they are completely different beasts).

Having a room with controlled lighting is indeed the ideal situation.

As for composing a test print and adjusting it to get the best possible print:
how do you define 'the best possible print' in an objective way? And how many
phtographers do print at home. I don't, given the investment required...

I do make sure my screen is calibrated and profiled though. That at least
allows me to prepare my photos and look at those of others with a reasonable
confidence that I see the colours as intended (*note*: not necessarily 'as
they were in the scene'!).

And as a final note: colour management is there:
1 - to enable you to get the original colours as they should be under neutral
light, *when you need that*.
2 - to make sure others see what you intented them to see (supposing they also
use colour managed equipment).

Starting from there, you have a known basis, and you can adjust the colours as
you like, knowing that others can see the same thing you do.

Sorry if this got a bit long (I still restrained myself...), but I often see
misconceptions about colour profiles, calibration and profiling (not
necessarily here). You might want to have a look at
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/color-management-printing.htm
for more information.

Remco
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Rinus]

Just to let you know that I follow this closely and appreciate all
contributions, regardless the opinions you express. Everything said
sofar is useful from one perspective or another.
Thanks a lot for the attention.
have a nice day,
Rinus
Op 01-10-11 19:17, sleepless schreef:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users