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Hi all,

Here's a cautionary tale just to let you know that you can never know just what strangers are going to do with your carefully prepared RGB files in a collaborative RGB workflow! Warning: long post ahead!

Some of you may know that I've been working on a book soon to be published by a big name technical book publisher. My contract with said publisher requires that I turn in RGB files for all figures and graphics used in the book – I am not doing the CMYK conversions. I was assured that the production team is expert in CMYK production for their books, they've won awards, etc... etc... Just supply RGB Tiff files and all will be good.

OK...

I prepare all the files with embedded profiles. I have several contributors supplying files in various standard color spaces that I review, correct, make sure that appropriate profiles are embedded. For my own part, in preparing instruction materials I standardized on US Prepress Defaults in Photoshop which gives me a default workspace of Adobe RGB. All screen shots of dialog boxes, etc.. are thus displayed as Adobe RGB and subsequently "tagged" with Adobe RGB profiles. In some cases original files were in sRGB and since these were tagged appropriately with sRGB I saw no reason to introduce an additional conversion so I left them in sRGB. You can probably guess where this is going.

After several months of work all pages were written, edited, files uploaded to ftp, files re-submitted, etc... I start to get PDF page proofs back. I notice that a few photos of people seem to be too red in these first page proofs. I dutifully insert Acrobat comments to the effect that these files should be looked at to make sure that profiles are being honored because they look like sRGB files that are being treated like Adobe RGB files. I get no response from the editor or production people on this so now I'm on the lookout for other mistakes.

More page proofs come back - I notice a discrepancy between screenshots with dialog box previews, necessarily saved as Adobe RGB (which look good) and the associated files that were in sRGB (too red and a bit too saturated, hmm...) Now I'm pretty sure at this point that all image files are being assumed to be in Adobe RGB regardless of the embedded profile. After more proofs it becomes increasingly clear that all Adobe RGB images are reproducing accurately but any image that is in another workspace is off!

Final confirmation occurs in a sequence of images that show progressive retouching steps and one image in the sequence is dramatically darker, redder and more saturated. I review my files and discover that most of the images in this sequence had been converted to Adobe RGB but one was inadvertently left in its original Colormatch form. Of course this file was tagged with Colormatch so it displayed properly and matched the color of the other shots. If all the files had been converted using the embedded profiles they all would have matched for color in the proofs. Of courses this wasn't the case - the Colormatch file was being treated as if it was an Adobe RGB file and so it converted darker and more saturated.

After pointing out that the production team is making a basic color management error and that somewhere along the line with files shuffled back and forth profiles were being ignored, I am again told that they know what they are doing and that they can't get the color to match because the files have different profiles. It is urgently suggested that I re-upload all problem files in Adobe RGB!!! In the same breath I am assured that they are NOT NOVICES...

Well... not wanting to become victimized as an unlucky expert, I had to convert all the non-Adobe RGB files into Adobe RGB files. This amounted to about 1/3 of the total image count. Hopefully the production team will not make some other more grievous error and the CMYK conversions will proceed without further mishap.

So the moral of this story is that you can never trust that responsible parties will know anything about basic color management even if their livelihood depends on it - even if they publish books on color management! In fact, many "expert" production people are turning off all profile warnings and ignoring embedded profiles in an attempt to "turn off all that pesky color management stuff so they can get some work done"! Be afraid, be very afraid...

regards,

Lee Varis

http://www.varis.com

888-964-0024

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Lee:

From what I can tell, you're a fairly accomplished photographer/ Photoshopper, very conversant in RGB techniques. Rumour has it that you've even raised a little hell in Dan's advanced class.

Therefore, I can only ask: why would you expect to get excellent results from such a workflow?

Do the CMYK conversions yourself, if you want excellent results. How else can you control black generation, which is crucial? If you're not comfortable (which seems unlikely) get somebody you know and trust to help you.

I would be *extremely reluctant* to submit RGB files for reproduction, and I certainly wouldn't do it for a prestigious project that is going to have my name associated with it.

Good luck,

Ron Kelly

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Side topic here:

On Aug 9, 2006, at 2:56 PM, Lee Varis wrote:

I do not follow this sequence. If you have screen shots on Mac OS, they are already tagged with the current display profile. The color management policy in Photoshop dictates that this profile will be honored, not the Working Space profile. So they aren't displayed as Adobe RGB nor are they tagged with it.

On Windows, screen shots aren't tagged, therefore the North America Prepress 2 color settings incorrectly assumes Adobe RGB (1998) for a screen shot, and then embeds that profile into the image.

For people who are not creating original artwork in Photoshop (creating a new document and then either drawing/painting, or compositing various images together), the logical color settings file to use is the default. North America General Purpose 2.

a.) It assumes sRGB for untagged images, which is generally what we want. (Legacy files need special consideration, perhaps even batch embedding of some other more suitable profile as source.)

b.) It doesn't cause convoluted and confusing dialog boxes from appearing, which don't matter for the vast majority of users anyway because the correct default behavior is built into the color management policy. A possible exception to this is with respect to prepress users who probably do need the warnings on, or need to change the color management policy for CMYK to Off. By default it's set to Preserve Embedded (for both the General and Prepress CSF's).

My 4 cents (inflation).

Chris Murphy

Color Remedies (TM)

www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor

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On Aug 9, 2006, at 4:37 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:

Chris, I am creating original art that incorporates a screenshot of dialog boxes in Photoshop showing portions of an image that is being color managed - Photoshop is color managing the display of all image elements inside of Photoshop, including those portions of dialog boxes that include image previews. I don't know how it is supposed to work but when I test this, the screenshots taken of Photoshop dialog boxes only display correctly when the workspace profile is assumed for the screenshot. I suppose its possible that if you click outside of Photoshop when a dialog box is visible that the appearance might change but I always take screenshots with SnapX Pro while inside Photoshop. Screenshots are often combined with other elements in Photoshop so they are color managed in Photoshop! These are not screenshots of OS dialog boxes! I wouldn't care one way or the other if the dialog did not contain an image preview!

One would still assume that prepress users would want to preserve embedded RGB profiles, otherwise they wouldn't know what colors they were starting with. This was the whole point of my post – prepress users not honoring RGB profiles! I don't see how my choice of default workspace for creative work in Photoshop has any bearing on their refusal to honor embedded profiles!

regards,

Lee Varis

http://www.varis.com

888-964-0024

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On Aug 9, 2006, at 2:16 PM, Ron Kelly wrote:

As stated in my post my contract with this publisher forbids me from doing the CMYK – they insist on doing it so at the moment I'm stuck! I've done all the prepress on two books that were quite successful – I know I can do it myself! The publisher was unimpressed by this track record.

Yes, I was extremely reluctant! After arguing with them for a week about this I had to decide whether to do the book and let them do the CMYK or not do the book – I choose to do the book. It remains to be seen whether that was a foolish choice or not!

So far it seems that they can do a pretty reasonable job if the RGB files are in Adobe RGB. The little exercise I went through simply determined that:

a. They are not using a true color managed workflow

b. They don't really understand color management

c. They don't care to learn about color management nor do they care about any other way of doing things but their way!

This is really not so different than the majority of printers and prepress vendors that I have encountered over the years.

The trick is not knowing how to win at cards with a good hand – its knowing how to play the hand your dealt and win! In this case I was not going to be allowed to do the CMYK conversions – I had to figure out how they were handling the RGB files and deliver files in such a way that they would do a decent job.

Of course I would still prefer to do my own CMYK, optimize the black plate, sharpen, etc... but these are not the cards I was dealt! At some point in the future you may find yourself in similar circumstances. You are entitled to decide not to take a job of this nature but "never say never"...

regards,

Lee Varis

http://www.varis.com

888-964-0024

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Dan suggests that you always send files to 'strangers' in Lab mode, so that what you experienced cannot happen. But you knew that...

Best regards,

Ron Greenberg

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Lee Varis writes,

The Unlucky Expert strikes again. "His bidding is perfect, his play flawless. But he never wins. All his partners let him down."

Yes, and so could you have. The idea that, in this day and age, a partner who is a stranger can be relied upon to pay attention to an embedded profile is characteristic of your hero: "For the Unlucky Expert is so good he cannot bring himself to realize how bad other players can be. Either that, or he is determined to punish them for it--even when they are his partners. He will not bring his game down to their level--they must lift theirs to his."

OK. There's not much to do now. Hopefully, all this effort you've had to go through in remaking the RGB files will eliminate the most obvious problems, but still you are left with a situation where people who are proven incompetent will be massaging your important files. If the job comes out correctly under these circumstances you have more luck than you deserve.

The above quotations are not mine, but this one is: "In graphics, as bridge, we rely heavily on our partners. In either, it's foolish to assume that they are morons. However, neither do we want to assume great expertise, until such time as they demonstrate otherwise." Here, at the moment of seeing the contract, you can see that there is a high potential of partner error, so you move to short-circuit it.

You know how partners who mistakenly think they know what they're doing get up on their high horse about their own knowledge, so you don't fight with them. Don't EXPLAIN to them that you think you can do a better job than they can; they'll never buy it. TELL them that what they are asking for is technically impossible and offer to help them solve the problem. You're obviously not speaking directly to the production people, but rather to some acquisitions type. Tell her that all your files are in CMYK because you use the PrecisionPressGrab plug in, which, obviously, works only in CMYK. If they absolutely have to have RGB, you will need from them both their high-GCR and low-GCR matrix press profiles, which should be no problem. Make sure they understand, tell her, that they'll be getting layered RGB TIFFs, so they have to be careful of the layermasks when they doubleburn the plates, and also they should reverify all of their transparency settings before running the job, as otherwise there is a high risk of a bisynchronous bitflop which might result in the page not imaging. And assure her that you are at their disposal to help solve these problems.

She, of course, will have no idea what you're talking about, and will have to refer it to production, which of course will have no idea either, but will never let her know it; they will either say she miswrote the information or that they understand exactly where you are coming from. Either way, somebody will shortly call you to request further details, and this person will have some, probably not very much, technical knowledge. Try to formulate a way to let them give RGB (and in the process, you'll learn about their actual workflow); be very nice, approachable and let your technical knowledge intimidate them.

Sooner or later, a brainstorm will come to your partner. Maybe it will take five minutes, maybe he'll have to think about it overnight, but sooner or later it will occur to him that maybe it would be better to just work with your CMYK files, rather than going through shenanigans that he doesn't understand to get them into RGB in order to get them back into CMYK. When he makes this suggestion, be shocked at its brilliance. Mention how stupid you are not to have thought of it yourself. Support your partner, make him feel good, don't be confrontational--and you won't be as unlucky.

If you don't like this approach--how do you like the result you actually got? ;-)

Dan Margulis

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On Aug 10, 2006, at 9:02 AM, Dan Margulis wrote:

Yes, so very true!

LOL, yes this, of course is what I should have done. Now I have to sit back and hope that they don't completely muck up the printing. At this point I don't think it will turn out horrible BUT it surely won't be as good as it could be if I handled everything. Yes... I seem to be firmly in the unlucky expert camp - I wish I asked for advice before I got this far. Next time I will try your subterfuge approach... let this be a lesson for all.

regards,

Lee Varis

http://www.varis.com

888-964-0024

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On 8/10/06, Ronald Greenberg wrote:

Man, you guys are brutal! From what Lee said earlier, as much as CMYK would have been best and LAB safer than RGB, he was instructed to send tagged RGB to color-management "experts."

I think this is a valuable reminder of why blindly sending RGB is dangerous. Lee sent tagged RGB to "experts." He carefully communicated his concerns to everyone involved. He repeatedly tried to correct what he realized were profile issues, but to no avail.

If this can happen with all of those safeguards in place, surely we can discard the idea of sending tagged RGB to strangers and expecting everything to work out. As Lee pointed out, this is just a cautionary tale.

J Walton

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They make little blue pills for that now, you know, Dan. You don't have to put up with your bits flopping in your old age if you don't want to. I was surprised to read this however, as I assumed you were strictly heterosynchronous.

- Sterling Ledet

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If it were me in this situation, I would have followed their instructions initially (after all, we are trained to trust the advice we're given from the production folks, are we not?) but after seeing their incompetence I would have insisted that they accept my CMYK files or risk losing the job to another shop, plain and simple.

I don't know if this tactic was/is even an option for you, as you mentioned a contract, but I think they've done plenty to reassure you that they do not know how to properly handle your files when supplied as requested, and therefore there isn't really any reason to trust that the final product will meet your satisfaction either.

I suppose you could simply keep rejecting proofs until they get it right, insisting all the while on your original delivery date since this is clearly their problem. But that would probably just lead to more animosity.

BRIAN PYLANT

Manager, Electronic Prepress

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::

Disc Makers

7905 North Route 130, Pennsauken, NJ 08110

Toll free: 1-800-468-9353 ext. 5539

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The publisher is not working for me -- they are paying me to write a book for them! As far as they are concerned once I've finished writing the book my responsibilities are over. They are in charge of everything - I can't reject proofs, only make suggestions and indicate my preferences. There was a point, I suppose, in the process where I could have returned the advance and just refused to finish the book but now I'm afraid that would be a bit much (besides, I've already spent the money). Its their party now... I'm just a guest!

regards,

Lee Varis

http://www.varis.com

888-964-0024

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I've been taking magenta ones, no wonder I've been lacking cyan bits lately.

Mac Townsend

Adcom Graphics Digital Imaging

Fairfield, California

www.adcomgraphics.com

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But you are obviously doing more than writing the book, you are also supplying the images, correct? And if that's the case, then shouldn't you have a say in how those images are reproduced? Are you supplying the layout also, or just the raw text and images for someone else to layout?

I think I still would have insisted on supplying CMYK files, with the stipulation that I took responsiblity for the separations. What would they do, reject the files? Convert them to RGB and then back to CMYK just to spite you?

I definitely have an anal-retentive, control-freak side to me, and that part of me always insists on supplying press-ready files that are not to mucked with for *any* reason without my implicit consent (or, preferrably, involvement). And of course I have the prerequisite horror stories of things people have done to my files over the years in the interest of "making them better." Pftftftftft.

BRIAN PYLANT

Manager, Electronic Prepress

Disc Makers

7905 North Route 130, Pennsauken, NJ 08110

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Brian writes,

Let me stick up for Lee by explaining the economics of the book publishing industry. Many people want to write books. The publishers can afford to treat them like dirt. Some of them actually do, literally and on a personal level; others may not actually be rude, but neither will they budge much on their policies. The only authors who have leverage are the ones who have proven sales records. Everybody else gets paid almost nothing, with some, but very little, room to negotiate nonfinancial areas of the contract.

A lot of these publishers have production departments who are not particularly well paid, not particularly knowledgeable, highly protective of their turf, and exceedingly resistant to participation by authors. I myself went through this in the first edition of Professional Photoshop. In those early days of desktop publishing, it was obvious that I was far more qualified to make the pages than John Wiley's production department was (they're much better now) and my acquisitions editor went to bat for me all the way, knowing that the book had to look good.

It nevertheless had to go all the way to the top of the company to get a decision, and the telling factor was that I got the book's eventual printer to call Wiley and tell them they preferred to work directly with me in preference to the Wiley production staff. Eventually it was agreed that I would do the entire inside of the book but, as a compromise, not the cover. The production staff was so miffed that they actually refused to show me what they were planning. The first time I saw the cover of the book was on a printed copy.

The average author doesn't have these kind of strings to pull. Some publishers, Peachpit being one, are open to alternate arrangements with people they haven't worked with before. Others, of whom I assume Lee's is one, are very inflexible. In that case, you have to, as they say, take the bull by the tail and face the situation. I suggested to Lee one means of getting the job done.

Dan Margulis

P.S. Peachpit Press has been a joy to work with production-wise. They realize the benefits of having the book be press-ready the day after the edits are complete. I think, however, they would want proof that an author was actually capable of delivering such pages before signing a contract to deliver.

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J writes,

Yes, this is now obvious to everyone, several years too late. It might be worth going through the list archives, because a few years back, expressing any such sentiments as you do above would have earned you a lot of personal abuse, assurances that resistance is futile, and statements that you are a Luddite. There are several such threads at http: //www.ledet.com/margulis/ACT_postings/ProfilingandProofing/Profiling.htm

Also, see the enormous "Embedded Profile: Who's to Blame?" series of threads from 2003 at http: //www.ledet.com/margulis/ACT_postings/DailyLife/Daily.htm

I would say that the lesson of the cautionary tale--that a system designed to make it *safer* to transfer RGB to strangers wound up making it *impossible*--is that one should be very skeptical of the workflow claims of those who created this train wreck.

Dan Margulis

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On Aug 9, 2006, at 10:31 PM, Lee Varis wrote:

That's bizarre. I'll have to play with SnapX Pro at some point and see what they're actually capturing. If they capture post-composited data from the OS, it's normalized to the color space of the current set Display profile. So the display profile is the source profile for screen shots. If SnapX Pro isn't tagging its files, then that's obviously a less than ideal arrangement.

I think it's been characterized as sabotage for downstream consumers of RGB images to whole sale ignore embedded RGB profiles without asking the content creator (or some other competent upstream individual).

It has nothing to do with it, and I didn't make that clear. I was just pointing out that in the vast majority of cases, based on how Working RGB + Preserve Embedded Profiles actually work, that North America General Purpose 2 is a really safe and logical choice. Apparently SnapX Pro is doing something other than what's expected.

Chris Murphy

Color Remedies (TM)

www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor

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On Aug 12, 2006, at 2:18 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:

Whatever its doing, its just not tagging the file with any profile - this is not surprising. The fact that, for me, in my Adobe RGB default workspace, tagging the file with Adobe RGB may simply mean that my monitor profile is closer to Adobe RGB than anything else and therefore embedding ARGB seems to work!

regards,

Lee Varis

http://www.varis.com

888-964-0024

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Lee

It looks as if your monitor profile is close to aRGB. Mine is slightly lighter, so assigning it to a SnapzPro screen capture makes it appear lighter and less saturated. OTOH, OS X (10.4) assigns my monitor profile to all screen captures and they do match the original dialog when the profile is honoured, as per expectations.

I'm still of the opinion, not persuaded otherwise by any arguements I've come across, that Photoshop should honour tagged profiles by default and that a user should be required to enter a password or take extra steps to consciously ignore tagged profiles.

Shangara Singh.

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Shangara writes,

This was tried, with disastrous results, in Photoshop 7.0. It is not workable for service providers, who have to open hundreds of incorrectly profiled documents a day. It left them no option but to run all incoming files through a script that deleted all profiles, valid or not.

After a few weeks of watching this system blow up, and after several unseemly personal attacks on me by Chris Cox and Jeff Schewe for having pointed out the obvious in advance, an emergency corrective update (7.0.1) was released, restoring the status quo.

Dan Margulis

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On Aug 13, 2006, at 9:33 AM, Dan Margulis wrote:

a.) Although not explicitly stated, I think the context was with respect to RGB images. We know there are valid reasons for ignoring embedded profiles in CMYK images;

b.) and the suggested behavior is in fact default, minus requiring a password to change it;

c.) nevertheless, it's not 2002 anymore. Things do change, even for service providers;

d.) it's even the default behavior in Photoshop CS2 for CMYK images, to preserve embedded profiles. I've heard nary a word out of the industry about even minor explosions occurring as a result, let alone major ones. Is anyone hearing differently?

Chris Murphy

Color Remedies (TM)

www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor

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On Aug 13, 2006, at 11:38 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:

I've had one shop in Los Angeles totally screw up at least the first round of proofs by having their PS Preferences set to convert to their working space. I had to go into their computer and see what their setup was in order to figure out what was going on. Even after I pretty much figured it out, the best I could get from the prepress department was that "sometimes we convert and sometimes we don't". I then stripped all profiles for that particular job. But for the most part, shops just ignore any profiles and image the numbers you give them.

Peter Figen

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On 8/13/06, Chris Murphy wrote:

I don't think I'd use the word explosions, but yes when receiving CMYK images the decision to respect the embedded profile is a real issue. It is an issue that largely exists because of this default behavior.

The answer is not nearly as cut-and-dry as either Andrew or Dan might say. It's not always and it's not never, which makes the situation all the more confusing.

We had one client that was accustomed to sending CMYK files. Why they would do this is anyone's guess, since they clearly had no idea what a good separation was. For a time we ignored the embedded profile, assuming that it was embedded by mistake. Then they made a big deal about proofs not matching and we started respecting the embedded profile, no matter how ridiculous the image looked because of it. Then they decided to go back to the original way of doing things – though they did NOT stop embedding random CMYK profiles.

I would imagine the profiles got there, in part, because of Photoshop's CMYK defaults. So, yes, it's a problem. Why not an "explosion?"

On the low end, I'd say because the printers and clients are too clueless to know that their files are getting re-separated. For all the times it makes the image look worse it probably makes it accidentally better almost as often.

On the high end, I'd say because printers are smart enough to have good color-management policies and realize that their clients are clueless.

To me (and I mean in my view) this is a bug in Photoshop. It's like when Photoshop 4 FIRST came out, and there was that bug with Free Transform. Drastic transforms used Nearest Neighbor interpolation no matter what you had set in preferences. A lot of people never knew that problem existed, but it was a big enough issue at my shop to make us go back to Photoshop 3. I wouldn't say there were any explosions about the Free Transform bug, but it was still wrong behavior.

-----

J Walton

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Chris

In the context of the thread, I was referring to RGB files.

Shangara Singh.

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Re: Honoring Profiles

Chris Murphy writes,

Agreed on both counts.

Not the way I interpreted Shangara's post. I have no problem with requiring a warning, password, or other PITA when you change your defaults. However, if I understood him correctly, he was suggesting that it should be made a PITA each and every time you decide to open a document without honoring the tag. That isn't workable for anyone who deals with a lot of strangers.

Dan Margulis

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On 14 Aug 2006, at 15:15, dmargulisnj wrote:

Dan

I don't understand why it should be a PITA to honour a profile I took trouble to embed. After all, I do have the choice *not* to embed it. I would've thought it's better to assume the sender knows what they are doing than to assume they are clueless. The times when I have had problems with reproductions is when the recipients have ignored the embedded profile (these were RGB files).

I may as well use Photoshop 3 for all the difference it makes if people are going to ignore my profiles. Once they have honoured it, they can do what they like: convert my sRGB files to ProPhoto for all I care, as long as they cary the can but at least start from where I intend you to start.

PDF files can already be locked and I don't hear people saying they're a PITA to open but I have to confess I don't deal with CMYK output anymore and, for all I know, service bureaux may be crying PITA.

Shangara Singh.

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On Aug 13, 2006, at 7:02 PM, J Walton wrote:

I agree that this makes things challenging. We're also dealing with content providers who sometimes provide bad separations, and printers who sometimes effectively ask for them because they're too inept to either accept RGB or instruct on how to make a separation for their press conditions. And still other service providers who have color settings set to Convert to Working CMYK which has been a known source of disaster since Photoshop 6. While I don't like that color management policy being there, that particularly Hurt Me button has been around for a very long time and anyone still using it haphazardly is clueless and not to be trusted.

The problem really isn't the embedding of the profile. I've seen little evidence of the "wrong profile" being embedded in large numbers of images. It is possible to have a bad separation, tagged with the same profile, and hence there is an ability to incompletely reverse the conversion and retarget, in a manner close to the color appearance expected by the user who made the bad conversion. Not embedding the profile makes this harder to reverse.

The problem is with clueless people using a known treacherous feature, Convert to Working CMYK and automatically converting files without really thinking about the consequences. Anyone in prepress or print who is doing this, needs to be competent in performing such conversions or they shouldn't be doing them.

Professionals use the right tools for the job, and they use them correctly. That's what professionals do.

Fine but that's a bug. We aren't talking about bugs here, but rather features that are working as designed, and are documented as such. We may not like those features, and have legitimate complaints about them, but that's really a side issue to wholesale misusing an application setting, i.e. Convert to Working CMYK which has never been a default color management policy; and further misuse of an application feature "Convert to Profile" when the user doesn't understand the consequences of using such a feature.

Chris Murphy

Color Remedies (TM)

www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor

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On Aug 14, 2006, at 10:04 AM, Singh, Shangara wrote:

It's generally not safe to assume anything, especially competency. But even Dan has said that ignoring embedded profiles in RGB images is sabotage. As an embedded profile is metadata, ignoring it is in a sense data loss and is a saboteur level event.

For CMYK, the problem is more complex. On the one hand, the embedded profile is metadata, and ignoring it is also a data loss (of color appearance of the pixels themselves). But the separation data, being contained in four not three channels ALSO contains unique information that cannot be expressed in a three channel space. Thus pushing the data through a three channel space through a conversion is also potentially data loss.

We need smarter color management that can rectify both the valid profile data as well as the unique channel data. Device Link profiles improve the handling considerably, but they aren't smart at all (they're actually even more "dumb" than device profiles) and thus can't handle images on a case by case basis. We need a heuristic model to apply boolean logic to our images. We have the knowledge and ability to do this, we just need a vendor to get serious and code it and ideally put it into all of our applications because it is a universal image handling need. I think it should be done at the OS level. (No surprise there.)

Chris Murphy

Color Remedies (TM)

www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor

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On 14 Aug 2006, at 19:20, Chris Murphy wrote:

Chris

I would agree but, unfortunately, assumptions are made all the time. All I'm saying is just force people to assume that the sender is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. Once a recipient has the "evidence" before them, then they can prosecute and progress to sentencing: strip, assign, or convert to profile.

At present, if I send you a JPEG, Photoshop is forced to open it as a JPEG. It doesn't treat it as a Word file or a vector file. Why not force Photoshop to open an RGB file in ARGB as ARGB and not sRGB, or a CMYK file in Euroscale coated as CMYK Euroscale coated, and not US Web uncoated, which you can do without ever seeing the image? If a service provider thinks the ARGB or Euroscale coated profile is inappropriate, they can always take various actions once the file is open.

Shangara Singh.

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Shangara writes,

It is difficult neither to embed a profile nor to honor one. A conscientious service provider examines the first few files to see whether there is any indication that the client knows what he's doing. In your case, the answer would be yes, and the profile would be honored. For the remaining 90 percent of clients, they would assume that the profile meant nothing, as indeed it would, and would ignore or honor as they saw fit.

A less sophisticated service provider probably tuned this workflow out several years ago and has adopted the philosophy that its clients are better served if all profiles are ignored.

In either case, it is not a PITA to honor your profile, but it is an enormous PITA to have a system whereby the hundreds of files that they wish to open *without* reference to a profile require individual responses to prompts that that they are ignoring the profile. The Photoshop 7.0 experience indicates that the service providers found such a state of affairs sufficiently unacceptable as to render Photoshop unusable as a product. I have suggested ways that Adobe could make life easier (notably a prompt that would say, please treat the following profile in the following way until the next time I quit Photoshop), but so far no go.

Then you are not employed by a service provider.

Did you *tell* them, specifically, that your job depended on the profile being honored? Because if one thing is clear from the traffic on this list over the years, it's that if you hand off a tagged file to a stranger the odds of the tag being honored are poor.

These sentiments are perhaps appropriate for 2001, but I would prefer to think that there are certain grim realities we must learn to accept and accommodate. Surely it would be better for us if London hotels and restaurants were not so appallingly expensive, and you must agree that it is unfortunate that English ale contains so many calories. It is most sad that people ignore your profiles if you don't specifically tell them they must be honored, and heaven knows that something should be done about the U.K. weather, too.

Dan Margulis

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Just as an example, I work in what I would term a very "average" print shop as far as clientele goes. I would estimate that of the files we recieve with embedded profiles, upwards of 80% (maybe 90%) of the people submitting them have no idea what the profile is or even how it got there. Our policy is to honor an rgb profile and to discard cmyk profiles (barring any specific instructions from the customer).

RJay

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On 15 Aug 2006, at 12:13, Dan Margulis wrote:

Dan

I double-checked with them and was assured they honour profiles. When the prints arrived, I knew of course that wasn't the case. There was no problem having the prints done again but it just wasted everyone's time, and theirs was far more expensive. My point is I shouldn't have to double-check.

We're pumping as much carbon as we can into the atmosphere to let in more heat and help dispel the cold but our government just won't follow US's lead in pumping unlimited carbon and instead wants us to cut back with all the attending downsides: long cold summers and longer and colder winters, while the US enjoys perpetual sunshine all year around. ;-)

Shangara Singh.

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on 8/16/06 3:54 AM, Singh, Shangara wrote:

Shangara,

I'm sorry we (in the USA) add so much "junk" to the world's climate and other endeavors.

On the other hand the topic you raise with regard to profiles is to me a software user interface design problem. I'd rather have a interface that allows me to chose and set it to my choosing even if it means that we all have to think through complex things.

Lee Clawson

2/\V/\7 Studio

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Lee

That's laudable thinking but it ignores hard facts: not everyone likes to or is capable of thinking through complex things (me for one!).

Having choices is fine, the problem is giving choices that go against user expectations. You very often hear about civil liberties being curtailed when a government proposes a new law. Truth is, all societies impose restrictions on an individual's liberties, they just don't think of them as restrictions. To give a crude example, you cannot drive on the left (in the USA). Because everyone expects to drive on the right, you have "fewer" accidents. Give everyone a choice and see what happens! Color Management, as implemented in Photoshop, is a free for all. Is it any wonder there are "accidents?" No, force everyone to drive on the right (or left), once you are in your own drive, by all means drive on the grass, the left or in reverse.

Now, why did you use full stops, capital letters, apostrophes, etc., in your post?...Whatever your motives, it made it easier for me to read your post. Imagine what would happen if I had my email client set to automatically ignore grammar and punctuation and to translate all incoming posts into Punjabi without seeing them. I doubt if it would do a good enough job to understand the main theme of your post, let alone any nuances. End result: misunderstanding. Having opened your post in English, I can now use my enormous intellectual prowess to translate it into Punjabi and then back into English, all without any loss of colour.

Shangara Singh.

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I'm forming the distinct impression that this is a definite brush-off ("Yeah, yeah, we honor the goddam profiles, sure, whatever...") that a fair number of prepress services have figured out, just to shut up all those people who "pester them" with those "silly color management questions."

First they lie, then they make you feel like you clearly must not know what you're doing, you fancy schmantzy "color management specialist" you. Tsk!

Seems to work for them, so far, that is until we wise up to the con.

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Marco Ugolini

Mill Valley, CA

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I'm not sure what your point is. CM is not the same as the Rules of the Road - drive on the right in the US, or one the left in the UK. We are all intelligent beings, and the use or non-use of CM depends on the specific circumstances - do we print our own? Do we send to a printer? In what format, and who is the printer and what do they expect/need it terms of input?

CM is etiquette, but not "Rules of the Road".

Maris V. Lidaka Sr.

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We are a sheetfed commercial printer. We receive files from an ever widening diverse range of clients. We do our best to honor embedded RGB profiles. I distribute the attached Best Practice PDF to our prepress team and any interested clients.

We do not honor embedded CMYK profiles unless directly asked to do so by a color-knowledgeable client. (I have another step-by-step Best Practice PDF that I distribute to our prepress team for use when a job requires the honoring of CMYK profiles.)

If we honored embedded CMYK profiles mayhem would result because a VERY LARGE majority our clients do not have the time, inclination or perseverance to properly use CMYK profiles.

<<RGBtoCMYK.pdf>>

Annette Raimondi Murray

Prepress and Color Consultant

ANRO Inc.

222 Lancaster Ave.

Devon, PA 19333

Website: ANRO.com

800.355.2676 x241

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Oh to be in merry old England - even as a service provider and an advocate of both the weather and the ale. I suspect that far more of us love and honour the beer way before a profile. To be honest I have yet to hear a conversation about colour management let alone a colour profile in any pub that I've been in - for that matter such conversations are rare in the shop too! To my way of thinking the use of colour profiles should be a conscious deliberate effort on the part of the user and in no way imposed. Adobe certainly offer a fairly complete CM path if the customer uses all of its products, especially InDesign and Acrobat but even here we have just one customer who has taken the time to understand what is necessary. On that basis alone it would make far more sense that anyone using CM should have been made to consciously 'switch it on' and advised to declare its use to any service provider. Every such file should carry a WARNING LABEL. There's not too much wrong with the weather either certainly over the past few weeks - not so confident about hotel rates though but hopefully that wasn't the extent of your memories of your recent trip which I unfortunately missed.

Peter - Dundee Scotland!

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In a message dated Aug 16, 2006 12:56 AM, Peter Leyland wrote:

There is no "imposition" right now, really. With a minimum of effort, or by calling the IT dude or dudette on the premises, one can have the color settings changed in Photoshop so that he/she can pretend that CM doesn't exist and live obliviously and irresponsibly happy ever after. Never mind that even *not* using CM workflows is a CM choice: you are choosing not to color-manage *properly*. Any way you go, you are color-managing one way or another. It's a bit like politics: you may not care about politics,, but politics sure cares about you, always, whether you make your move deliberately or someone else end up making it for you by default...and it's usually not one that you really like a whole lot.

Certain basic decisions on color *must* be made at one point or another. The designer or production person who shows no interest in how color is produced flexibly for today's environments diminishes one's own value as a professional.

Pre-color-management Photoshop *did* make a choice about color too and imposed it on you unawares: it used your monitor's color space as its working space, with the result that there were a million divergent standards and color was a crapshoot. My point is that CM (in the wider sense of the term, not just in the ICC-related meaning) has always been "switched on", with the difference that now (as opposed to the olden days) at least you have a real opportunity to choose some fairly powerful ways to generate reliable color results.

Let's see:

"If you like gambling with your color, click OK."

Or:

"Your limited budget will be wasted on endless expensive rounds of color refinements that will make your prepress provider very happy and rich. If you don't mind your boss giving you hell for it, click OK."

More warning label submission are kindly invited.

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Marco Ugolini

Mill Valley, CA

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I'll refrain from outlining what I think of the shortcomings of the countries of the world.

The notion of having a "Standard" with Options is almost guaranteed to be problematic and confusing at some point. Since these "Standards" relate to color, there is an added and amount of subjectivism. It might seem like a simple case of workflow on the surface, but it can actually become a matter of managing numerous workflows. Fun, isn't it?

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In a message dated Aug 16, 2006 11:15 AM, Singh, Shangara wrote:

I woish to remind you that we have a Bill of Rights in this country, exactly because certain liberties are not to be negotiated.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1759)

That is a somewhat inept comparison. If you wish to use this road metaphor at all, color management is to be seen as building new roads altogether, with new rules to suit their uniquely new requirements. It's neither accurate nor fair to compare the narrow and fairly inflexible rules of the road with the greatly malleable and changeable environments that we should be considering here.

The "free for all" you refer to is in the minds of those who wish to play fast and loose: color management properly done involves pretty exacting and precise procedures. Those who don't care for them are free to go have their car crashes, but shouldn't complain of CM "failures" just because they don't want to get their hands dirty and a few brain cells mussed (with apologies to General Turgidson...).

Marco Ugolini

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Marco

In this one example, the lab was colour managed. It's just that the job got transferred to a Noritsu, which wasn't set up to automatically honour profiles. When I complained, they realised the mistake and reprinted the job.

Shangara Singh.

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On 17 Aug 2006, at 01:10, Marco Ugolini wrote:

Marco

Not to my mind and I did say "crude example!"

Laudable thinking but the "new" road still causes crashes some 8 years after it was built. The last time it had the lines significantly repainted was in Oct 2000 with some minor adjustments in Aug 2002.

Shangara Singh.

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In a