Color Mgmt: Nikon D80; Printer Profile use; GAMMAPage

[Ari]

Hi, I have a few questions regarding color managment, hopefully someone has gone through this already; I read all threads I found on color managment and they don't seem to be addressed yet.

  (sorry if these questions sound repetitive, I guess color management is a needed but complex issue)

  1- Nikon D80 Input color profile: can someone recommend what profile to use in digicam (and hopefully post it somewhere?) I have captured the icc's from Nikon windows software (such as NKDBase_NEF.icm, etc) and tried them all, but they produce bad results (very obscure output). I also installed Bibble Pro and as mentioned elsewhere, I ended up with some 5 profiles that look somewhat good, however I'd think that only one of those is the correct one? Can someone suggest?


  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)


  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?  


  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)



Thanks a bunch,
A

[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.
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[Ari]

Thanks Nicolas!

I checked out your page and played around with xcalib... the problem I have is that I don't have the .icm of my monitor! I guess with more resources I'll try buying a colorimeter, and that will fix the problem :)

Now I am kind of confused on 3), what I am supposed to do with the lab's printer profile? As you mention, having the Cam's profile and a working profile (and a calibrated monitor) seems  enough to generate a tiff for lab printing...in my own colorspace. However I've been checking several pro labs (just out of curiosity) and they all offer the profiles for their big printers, what's the point?

Maybe the lab printers don't apply the profile themselves and expect the tiff to be already in the proper colorspace?? anyone??

If I want to create a proof copy on my small printer, I guess I'd need my printer's own profile, not my lab's.

Thanks!

Nicolas Vilars wrote

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.
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[Heiner Lamprecht]

Hi Ari,

during Christmas, I've read through the PDF guides mentioned on this
list a couple of days ago.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/new_digital_photo_guides.html

They are very interesting, and some of them are dealing with CMS and
delivery for printing.  I recommend to read them, for this case in
particular:

"A Color Managed Raw Workflow from Camera to Print"

"The role of working spaces in Adobe applications" (more theoretical
background)

"Preparing Images for Delivery" (that's more or less your use case)

On Friday 29 December 2006 15:45, Ari El wrote:
>
> Now I am kind of confused on 3), what I am supposed to do with
> the lab's printer profile? As you mention, having the Cam's
> profile and a working profile (and a calibrated monitor) seems
> enough to generate a tiff for lab printing...in my own
> colorspace. However I've been checking several pro labs (just out
> of curiosity) and they all offer the profiles for their big
> printers, what's the point?

What I understood from the PDFs:

The printers profile is used for soft proofing, meaning a
screen-preview of the final print.  Normally, the preview will look
quite bad, compared to the normal display.  But that's the
difference between the monitor and the printer.

In general, the printer's gammut is a lot smaller than the one of
the display.  Black is not really black but dark gray, and white is
light gray or slightly yellow.  The soft proof is used to identify
those areas of the picture, which would be out-of-gammut of the
printer.  With this, you can try to manually adjust the colors.

If you don't do this manually, the software in the lab will do this
for you.  And you will not have a chance to check this before.

Suppose all colors are inside the printer's gammut, and this gammut
is completely inside the workspace (e.g. AdobeRGB), it doesn't
matter, what profile is embedded to the image.  Both will have the
same result.

BTW:  I assume, the D80 is quite similar to the D100 and D200.  I
tried a lot of raw-converting with both of them.  Unfortunately, I
can not recommend to use the Linux-tools for converting.  Instead,
I use the original Nikon software to create tiffs, and import them
in digikam and convert them to (16bit) PNG.  The result is a lot
better, especially in terms of sharpness.  Color management is also
more easy, as the tiff is in AdobeRGB (I configured the camera to
use AdobeRGB).


    Heiner

--
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[Ari]

Thanks!

I read the documents you recommended. They really help understand the issues.

Now I need to map some of the functionalities they mention for photoshop, into digikam.

In my case, this first batch I decided not to shoot raw. So I have my JPEGs, and they are in sRGB. And I have my monitor roughly calibrated to sRGB too. Finally, I also have the printer's icc.

In the doc "Preparing Images for Delivery" the guy converts his image into the printer's colorspace. From what I understood, the printer's colorspace is more limited (at least in some degrees) than srgb (his monitor), so he could actually see the gamut limitations introduced by the printer. Also from what I understood, this is the so called "softproofing".

The question is, how do I do this in digikam?

   1- How can I change an image's colorspace? (color space assignment is easy for raws, but how about any other image (tiff, png, jpeg). The purpose is to follow the recommendation of Adobe's article and send the images converted to the destination colorspace myself.

   2- Say I have a tiff image in WideGamut with the profile embedded. Again I have the output profile already setup. How do I do a "softproof"?

   3- What does the "Use Color Managed View > Monitor Profile" configuration do in Digikam? I am assuming that my monitor is calibrated to SRGB 2.2. Do I have to activate this "color managed view" or not? The thing is, I'm playing with widegamut images and this setting totally changes the tonality of my images, shifting all to the red. The scary part is, now I have no idea what is right,


On the D80 icc profile I found in Bibble forums that nikond.icm appears to be the one they use; some quick tests with bibble seem to confirm it. It is mentioned and also posted here: http://support.bibblelabs.com/webboard/viewtopic.php?t=6516

Just to summarize findings, other people are using NKDBase_NEF.icm  with UFraw with Gamma: 0.45 Linearity: 0.02. (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1616707&forum_id=434060)


Thanks,
Ari

Heiner Lamprecht wrote

Hi Ari,

during Christmas, I've read through the PDF guides mentioned on this
list a couple of days ago.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/new_digital_photo_guides.html

They are very interesting, and some of them are dealing with CMS and
delivery for printing.  I recommend to read them, for this case in
particular:

"A Color Managed Raw Workflow from Camera to Print"

"The role of working spaces in Adobe applications" (more theoretical
background)

"Preparing Images for Delivery" (that's more or less your use case)

On Friday 29 December 2006 15:45, Ari El wrote:
>
> Now I am kind of confused on 3), what I am supposed to do with
> the lab's printer profile? As you mention, having the Cam's
> profile and a working profile (and a calibrated monitor) seems
> enough to generate a tiff for lab printing...in my own
> colorspace. However I've been checking several pro labs (just out
> of curiosity) and they all offer the profiles for their big
> printers, what's the point?

What I understood from the PDFs:

The printers profile is used for soft proofing, meaning a
screen-preview of the final print.  Normally, the preview will look
quite bad, compared to the normal display.  But that's the
difference between the monitor and the printer.

In general, the printer's gammut is a lot smaller than the one of
the display.  Black is not really black but dark gray, and white is
light gray or slightly yellow.  The soft proof is used to identify
those areas of the picture, which would be out-of-gammut of the
printer.  With this, you can try to manually adjust the colors.

If you don't do this manually, the software in the lab will do this
for you.  And you will not have a chance to check this before.

Suppose all colors are inside the printer's gammut, and this gammut
is completely inside the workspace (e.g. AdobeRGB), it doesn't
matter, what profile is embedded to the image.  Both will have the
same result.

BTW:  I assume, the D80 is quite similar to the D100 and D200.  I
tried a lot of raw-converting with both of them.  Unfortunately, I
can not recommend to use the Linux-tools for converting.  Instead,
I use the original Nikon software to create tiffs, and import them
in digikam and convert them to (16bit) PNG.  The result is a lot
better, especially in terms of sharpness.  Color management is also
more easy, as the tiff is in AdobeRGB (I configured the camera to
use AdobeRGB).


    Heiner

--
    heiner at heiner-lamprecht dot net    GnuPG - Key: 9859E373
  Fingerprint:  3770 7947 F917 94EF 8717 BADB 0139 7554 9859 E373
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[Gilles Caulier-2]

Le Vendredi 29 Décembre 2006 12:52, Nicolas Vilars a écrit :
> 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/)

Well, since i have fixed several bug just before 0.9.0-final release about CM
stuff, we can use properlly the color managed view option...

Here, i'm using this option all time now. The corrected color displayed with
my LG Flatron L1915S flatscreen are incredible.

I don't have a device to calib my screen. I have used the ICC color profile
profided by the screen maker. I enough for me...

Gilles
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[Gilles Caulier-2]

Le Vendredi 29 Décembre 2006 12:52, Nicolas Vilars 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)

Try these files with NIKON camera :

http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/ICCPROFILES/CameraProfiles/LZ.2.0/

Gilles
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[Gerhard Kulzer]

Am Dienstag, 2. Januar 2007 21:10 schrieb Caulier Gilles:

> Le Vendredi 29 Décembre 2006 12:52, Nicolas Vilars 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)
>
> Try these files with NIKON camera :
>
> http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/ICCPROFILES/CameraProfiles/LZ.2.0/
>
> Gilles

Hello Gilles, welcome back!
I think the issue here is about display color management only, not about
cameras.
It is still true that digikam is very slow with monitor CM, that's why I put
up my blog with xcalib on our site.

Gerhard

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[Gilles Caulier-2]

On Wednesday 03 January 2007 08:58, Gerhard Kulzer wrote:

> Am Dienstag, 2. Januar 2007 21:10 schrieb Caulier Gilles:
> > Le Vendredi 29 Décembre 2006 12:52, Nicolas Vilars 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)
> >
> > Try these files with NIKON camera :
> >
> > http://digikam3rdparty.free.fr/ICCPROFILES/CameraProfiles/LZ.2.0/
> >
> > Gilles
>
> Hello Gilles, welcome back!
> I think the issue here is about display color management only, not about
> cameras.
> It is still true that digikam is very slow with monitor CM, that's why I
> put up my blog with xcalib on our site.
>
> Gerhard

I think there is some possible optimization to do again with M-CM
implementation. I will take a look.

Else there is a new shorcut to toogle M-CM on the fly from editor : F12 !

Gilles
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