Profiles are Redundant?

[Mike Farley]

Unless you are a long term* reader of The Online Photographer, the first few paragraphs of this blog post will not mean much. That's not where the meat is at though, so you can safely skip them and go directly to the section on profiling. So far as I am concerned, the author (Ctein) knows his stuff and makes prints for other photographers. All I can say is "wow!". An iMac 27" retina monitor does not need calibration out of the box at D65? Printing is completely managed by Photoshop and the hardware without any need for profiling? Fascinating stuff, if you understand the underlying technology, and I will be experimenting.**

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... olete.html

* You should be. The person who runs it, Mike Johnston, is going through a lot of upheaval in his personal life at present and is currently in the middle of his second move within the space of a year so that he can be closer to his girlfriend. The blog has definitely suffered as a result, but it still remains worthwhile to keep an eye on it.

** A while back I heard how Brooks Jensen was getting prints made using a standard sRGB profile which were indistinguishable from those made with a custom profile. I guess that this post by Ctein explains how that was possible.

[davidc]

I got custom printer profiles done for my printer from permajet. Absolutely no difference to the final prints. Monitor calibration still makes a big difference for me but I suspect that's more because of my ambient conditions than the monitor being fundamentally wrong.

But printer profiles? A big waste of time in my experience.

[Mike Farley]

I have not yet had an opportunity to try out Ctein's ideas, but your experience is another indication that maybe the printer manufacturers have mastered colour management out of the box. Another explanation is that the majority of users have Epson printers, so the paper producers have a good idea of what they need to do for accurate colour reproduction..

I have, though, come across one instance where a profile made things worse. I downloaded a generic profile from Canson and when I used it Photoshop flashed up all sorts of out of gamut warnings. Sure enough, the print was terrible. Matters only improved when I created my own custom profile. At the next show I went to where Canson was in attendance, I got the usual shrugs that anything might be wrong.

Which printer are you using?

[Mike Farley]

And now from TOP, there is the corollary of why printer profiles are still neceesary.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... files.html

Note that I do have at least one issue with Ctein's opening statement. He says that you should always open Raw files in Lightroom using the ProPhoto colour space. This occurs by default, although for complete accuracy Lightroom actually uses it own colour space which is similar to ProPhoto. It is only when an image is output from Lightroom is a colour space applied, be it opened in Photoshop when I use ProPhoto*, exported to a file, or printed. There is no point in discarding data until you have to.

Other quibbles, I suppose, relate to whether camera can capture a wider gamut than Adobe RGB and how much colour information can be displayed in a print. Yes, cameras do indeed exceed Adobe RGB, but not by much from what I have seen and not consistently for all hues. Sometimes it is more, sometimes it is less. Print colours will not only depend on the printer, but also what the paper is capable of reproducing. Viewing conditions will also be a consideration.

There is also the question of soft proofing. Most monitors are still limited to sRGB, which is the case for the iMac display Ctein uses. Monitors which can show around 98% Adobe RGB are becoming much more affordable at around £300 - £400 compared to the £6k they started at a few years ago. Soft proofing is a useful facility at the start of the printing process to eliminate any obvious issues, but has limitations. Ultimately, the only way to know how an image will look when printed is to print it. Depending on your abilities and fastidiousness, the first attempt might well not be satisfactory, either.

* This option is only available in full fat Photoshop. Elements is restricted to Adobe RGB.

[davidc]

I have the Epson R3000. It's exceptionally good.

[Mike Farley]

Epson was the main pioneeer of inkjet printing and its experience shows. I have only three complaints about the company.

• OEM ink prices are an absolute rip-off.
• Ink cartridges are shown as empty when there is 20% or more of the ink remaining. That would not be so much of a problem if it were not for my first point.
• The company is apparently still unable to manufacture a print head which cannot simultaneously accommodate all nine inks. The resulting need to swap inks means that expensive ink is wasted. That would not be so much of a problem if it were not for my first point.

[davidc]

The last point is indeed an issue but the R3000 is much, much better than preceding models. Also, the problem goes away if you never switch from Photo > Matte ink or vice-versa I only ever use mine for printing photos, anything else is done at work.

The OEM ink price is largely manageable though, you can get OEM inks for cheaper than the RRP in many places, even over here where there is only a single store in the whole of Singapore that sells compatible ink! For example a full set of 9 inks has an RRP of 250 quid. Shopping around I got a bundle for 150 and now I don't need the matte ink I can get it even cheaper.

I did some quick maths about the longevity vs cost and found it still considerably cheaper than UK printing companies (although surprisingly NOT cheaper than SG prices) and the ability to self-proof is mega useful.

Not experienced the 20%/empty issue you mention, though I don't replace my cartridge until I see it visibly failing to print that colour

[Mike Farley]

I have an Epson 3800 and the cartridges are more than £40 each; a complete set of nine is in the region of £400. For expediency I usually end up leaving it to the last moment and popping over to Richard Frankfurt for replacements*. I like to give him the custom to show appreciation of his sponsorship of our annual exhibition.

Possibly Epson has improved matters since my printer was made, but having excessive ink left in the cartridge is definitely an issue and has been the subject of a class action against Epson in the US. Rather than measure the actual amount used, the printer estimates consumption. Having the line to the print head become empty would cause serious issues, so the printer errs on the side of caution. I too tend not to print on matte paper, but the printer still passes a little ink through the line from time to time to keep it clear and the matte black cartridge gradually empties. As the 3800 is pro spec, it has a removable maintenance cartridge and I do not like to think about the value of the ink deposited there when it comes to renewing it.

I suspect that printing at home is not the cheapest option, but I value the flexibility and convenience. I can choose the type of paper to match the print, which do not necessarily come out right the first time. It's much easier to be able to reprint more or less instantly rather than send it away again.

* The policy backfired on me earlier this year when the ink levels dropped more rapidly than usual and I had some urgent printing which could not wait.

[Mike Farley]

I have just seen the featured comment from Dave Polaschek in the second TOP article to which I linked. Gosh, there is a lot going on beneath the covers when it comes to colour management and printing. There's hours of fun to be had there for for the technically nerdy, or should that be the nerdily techie?

One surprise is that Photoshop and Lightroom do not have identical printing processes, although I have no idea what the differences between GDI and GDI+ amount to. It might explain why some prefer to print from Photoshop and Lightroom alone has a Print Adjustment option for Brightness and Contrast. Based on the comment, it is possible that in some circumstances the results obtained from a Mac might be technically superior compared to Windows, but I would not bet on Microsoft's and Adobe's engineers letting that one go.

[Mike Farley]

Ctein has just posted a very positive review of Epson's new P800 printer. Presumably the smaller P600 will perform similarly.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... inter.html

The main reason for posting here is that towards the end of the section on Colour Management he states that allowing the printer to manage colours only applies to Mac computers, which was not something he mentioned in his previous article. It appears that there are real differences between the Mac and Windows printing processes and anyone who uses Microsoft's OS should stick to using profiles. As a former (and possibly future) Mac Book Pro owner, I cannot really comment. The brand new Mac Book I bought was not in my possession long enough to try out such things once I discovered it had been supplied with a duff battery.