Dan Margulis Applied Color Theory - Photoshop 7 Pros and Cons
From: Dan Margulis
Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2002, 11:42 AM
RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Folks,As Photoshop 7 shipped yesterday (15 April) I will now amplify my earlier comments about workflow issues with the release.
Photoshop 7 has pros and cons. Depending on how each one of them affects you, you will have to decide whether the upgrade makes sense. For myself, the minuses far outweigh the pluses, so I will be sticking with Photoshop 6. However, depending on your workflow, it may be logical for you to make a different decision.
Naturally, the pluses have gotten all the coverage and nobody is aware yet of the dark side. Therefore, I'll concentrate on that. But I'll lay out what I consider to be the five top items on each side.
Dan Margulis
PROS:
1) It runs natively in OSX and Win XP.2) Adds a huge array of brushmaking and painting features, to the point that it becomes a rival to Painter. This is a really big deal if you happen to do this kind of work. If anything, the power of this has been underrated, but it's not for everybody, either.
3) Liquify tool much better; a Pattern Maker added that can easily create an entire file based on a single selected object. A nice special effect.
4) A File Browser that lets us point at a given folder and it gives us what amounts to a contact sheet of what's in it. The thumbnails it shows are not large enough to evaluate image quality but they're plenty large enough to find a specific image if you don't know what its name is.
5) A Healing Brush, and a companion Patch tool, that try to do intelligent correction of damaged areas of an image. The Healing Brush operates similarly to the clone tool: you click an unaffected area first and then paint over the damage. With the Patch tool you drag a selection on top of the damaged area. Either way, Photoshop analyzes the situation and tries to figure out how to repair the damage based on the patterns it sees in the undamaged area, rather than blindly cloning. It ain't perfect but it's a nice improvement.
CONS:
1) Unlike previous versions, if we open a file that contains an embedded profile in any way other than by honoring that profile, Photoshop 7 considers that it is a change to the file *even if we immediately close the file without any other change.* Thus, it will generate a Save Changes? dialog that we must respond to.The ramifications of this are quite serious if you happen to accept many files from strangers who embed a profile you don't wish to use (like, anybody who hasn't changed the Photoshop defaults). You can't open a large number of these files simultaneously just for a looksee without having to respond to a warning upon closing each one. For an operation as large as a service bureau, it's unworkable. Salesmen and CSRs are always opening client files to see what they contain, and they'll be prompted to save nonexistent changes, default answer being Yes. Similarly, any large CMYK operation that accepts profiled files from clients is in trouble.
It sounds like this wouldn't affect a studio photographer who only is working on his own files, but wait, it gets better.
2) Unlike previous versions, Photoshop 7 reads EXIF data. The English translation of this is that some digital captures have no embedded profile for the purposes of Photoshop 6, but they do for Photoshop 7. This was pointed out late in the beta process so nobody really has a good handle on it yet, but all the cameras that are known at this point to do this state that the profile is sRGB. Unfortunately, none of them actually behave as sRGB devices. At least two Nikon and two Canon models have been identified as behaving this way, including the Nikon 950 that I own. They say sRGB for Photoshop 7; in fact they are more like Apple RGB or ColorMatch RGB.
This means that, in order to even open the files without getting an alert every time, you have to turn profile mismatch off in color settings, which one would prefer not to do. But at least it's workable. The problem is, however, how this operates in conjunction with problem #1 above.
If you have such a camera, you are in the same position as the service bureau--although you have generated the file yourself, it has an incorrect embedded profile. Therefore, you either have to open in sRGB and deal with a photograph that's darker and flatter than it should be, or open it in a correct way and have Photoshop 7 treat the very act of opening it as a change.
In other words, if you are used to opening a whole batch of images from a given shoot at the same time just to examine them quickly without changes, you can't do this in Photoshop 7. Every image will give you a Save Changes? prompt. You can't even quit the program to close the files.
3) As most of us know, layered files saved in PSD format are much more economical if the "Maximize Compatibility" option in preferences is turned off. Otherwise, every layered file saves, in addition to the layers, a composite flattened version of the file. This unnecessarily bloats the file size, often doubling it. The original need for this was when Photoshop 3 introduced layers in 1994, a Photoshop 2 user wouldn't be able to open a layered file at all without the composite, but at least could see something if the composite was there.
Since there are few Photoshop 2 users left, there's really no excuse for this option to be checked, and it can be a big deal if it is. If you use, say, three adjustment layers on one base layer, checking that option doubles file size.
Unfortunately, Adobe has now decided that this is a needed option, because InDesign and Illustrator don't read layered files without the composite, although why anyone would want them to is unclear. Therefore, when first we uncheck the preference, we get a new warning message saying that we shouldn't do so. Assuming that we still persist and check this new warning saying yes, we understand, but we still want to save without a composite, the suffering is not over. In spite of our having declared twice that we wish to do the sensible thing that 99% of all users should do, Photoshop 7 won't let us do it in peace. Instead, each and every time we save a new layered file, it will warn us that we shouldn't be doing it, and require that we respond. There is no way of turning this bogus warning off.
4) The TIFF format has been seriously degraded. Adobe owns it, so they can do whatever they like with it, which is unfortunate because so many of us depend on its stability to make a living.
Some years ago, the spec was amended to permit, among other things, layered TIFFs or those saved with JPEG or ZIP compression. A layered TIFF, unlike a layered PSD, *must* carry a composite version. Most but not all applications can *place* a layered TIFF, but whether they can image it is unknown. Layered TIFFs can be large. At the very least, they'll clog networks and strain RIPs. As for JPEGged or ZIPped TIFFs, AFAIK only Adobe products can even place them.
In Photoshop 6, users were given the opportunity to access these dubious features but had to check off a preference to do so. By default only a standard TIFF could be saved. A few people did decide they needed the features but by and large the world said no, quite logically in my view.
Notwithstanding the clear lack of interest in the market, Adobe has decided to make these changes *mandatory* in Photoshop 7, even if you are one of the 99% of users who *never* want to save a TIFF with layers or with one of these exotic compressions. They'll be in your face every time you save. And, naturally, thousands of less sophisticated users, who don't know the difference between JPEG and JPEGged TIFF, will be saving them by mistake, let alone saving enormous files because they don't understand why smaller TIFFs are a good idea or don't notice the tiny box in the save dialog box that "alerts" them that they're saving layers.
5) In certain versions of Photoshop 7, notably OSX, the Custom CMYK dialog now defaults to 400% total ink, unusable for any printing conditions. As I haven't been using OSX and the issue is not present in 9.2, I can't give further details.
From: Rick Gordon
Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2002, 4:13 PM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
I'm wondering if it may be picking up its defaults from settings in the ColorSync preferences for CMYK (defaulting to Generic CMYK). I'm wondering if it were changed there to a proper profile, perhaps that would alter the situation.------------------
On 4/16/02 at 10:02 AM -0400, Dan Margulis wrote in a message entitled
"[colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships":>5) In certain versions of Photoshop 7, notably OSX, the Custom CMYK dialog
>now defaults to 400% total ink, unusable for any printing conditions. As I
>haven't been using OSX and the issue is not present in 9.2, I can't give
>further details.___________________________________________________
RICK GORDON
EMERALD VALLEY GRAPHICS AND CONSULTING
___________________________________________________
From: Jeff Harmon
To: colortheory@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2002, 2:21 PM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
I would think allowing LZW compression of layered TIFFs would make them smaller than PSDs, but you're right -- they're actually bigger! Good lord. All along I've been hailing the layered TIFF because of LZW, never testing my hypothesis... They should at least allow not saving a composite in the file, as PSD does; you're certainly right in pointing out that that must be the reason for the bloat.Saving a composite also, in my experience, allows previews in digital asset management systems like iView Media Pro, based on Quicktime. I'm not sure if Portfolio or Cumulus is the same; it'd be interesting to check. I would assume they would need the composite as well. This is a serious issue for people dealing with indexing thousands of images. So it's not only old versions of Photoshop and the current InDesign and such that might need a flattened version saved in a layered file...
-- Jeff Harmon
Colorhythm LLC
From: Dan McCormack
Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2002, 8:50 PM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Do you know that these things wouldn't be changed/fixed in the final (non-beta) version?Dan mccormack
From: Todd Flashner
Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2002, 8:37 PM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
> Saving a composite also, in my experience, allows previews in digital asset
> management systems like iView Media Pro, based on Quicktime. I'm not sure
> if Portfolio or Cumulus is the same; it'd be interesting to check.Jeff,
I use iView Media Pro to view layered PSD files without saving a composite. I've heard other such programs can't display layered files ay all, but iView can. But I don't save TIFFS, so I guess that is the difference?
Todd Flashner
PS, Nice report Dan. Makes me feel good I'm in no hurry to upgrade to OSX or PS7. Thank goodness...
From: Jeff Harmon
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 2:15 AM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Todd wrote: "I use iView Media Pro to view layered PSD files without saving a composite. I've heard other such programs can't display layered files ay all, but iView can. But I don't save TIFFS, so I guess that is the difference?"Actually, I think what you're seeing is the Quicktime generated THUMBNAIL, but the MEDIA level preview is not available for PSDs saved without a composite in iView Media Pro. The Media preview IS available with layered TIFFs, however, so that is the difference -- just in the other direction!
-- Jeff Harmon
Colorhythm LLC
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 1:54 AM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Rick Gordon (rick@rickgordon.com) writes:>I'm wondering if it may be picking up its defaults from settings in the
>ColorSync preferences for CMYK (defaulting to Generic CMYK). I'm wondering
>if it were changed there to a proper profile, perhaps that would alter the
>situation.No. To clarify:
1. The default CMYK working space in Photoshop 7 is the same profile used in Photoshop 6, which is "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2" which is based on SWOP/TR001 standard characterization data. It's a reasonable default setting if you have NO idea where your CMYK images are going to get printed.
2. If you choose to use the pop-up menu to select "Custom CMYK" to create your own CMYK space, using ink settings, custom dot gain, black generation, ink limits, etc. on OS X it has a default ink limit of 400%.
In reality, this causes separations with a 266% ink limit to be produced. So you aren't going to have a major mess on press; but the contrast will be reduced due to the much lower ink limit, assuming you're printing coated.
3. The ColorSync control panel does not affect Photoshop at all EXCEPT:
a.) The monitor profile set in ColorSync tells Photoshop what monitor profile to use for display compensation.
b.) Anything else selected in the ColorSync control panel is ignored UNLESS you specifically select "ColorSync CMYK - [name of profile in ColorSync control panel]" as the CMYK Working Space.
4. With the exception of the OFF color management policy considering documents with embedded profiles as "dirty" on open; and any documents assigned a profile in a "Missing Profile" dialog box are also considered "dirty" - Photoshop 7 color behavior is identical to Photoshop 6.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 1:27 AM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Dan Margulis writes:>1) Unlike previous versions, if we open a file that contains an embedded
>profile in any way other than by honoring that profile, Photoshop 7
>considers that it is a change to the file *even if we immediately close the
>file without any other change.* Thus, it will generate a Save Changes?
>dialog that we must respond to.Dan and I both have made rather compelling arguments why this is so ridiculous, considering the color management policy is OFF. When the policy is OFF, that is a user making an explicit point to Photoshop that embedded profiles are not important; however Photoshop 7's behavior is to persist in making the profile important despite this up front policy made by the user. What's so nuts about this is that NOTHING actually changes by backing out of the file. In fact if you go with the recommendation of Photoshop to SAVE the file, *that* is what causes the file to actually change (by overwriting the image that had a profile embedded with a duplicate copy without a profile embedded).
Because I'm already saying "profiles don't matter to me" - the logic of this behavior escapes me. Those who supported this decision argue that the disregarding of an embedded profile on open makes the file "dirty" as though it's been changed. Well, from an anal retentive point of view, yes this is true; but from a color management policy point of view it's not true. I've already acknowledged that anything having to do with embedded profiles when opening and saving documents (unless I explicitly assign a profile, or convert the image) is NOT important, therefore disregarding an embedded profile on open is per my WISH. Effectively I am telling Photoshop that I defined a "dirty" image to not be equated to the disregardingn of embedded profiles - yet it then disregards its own policy. It's contradictory and just makes zero sense.
I'm hoping that the Photoshop team has reconsidered this for the shipping version.
>5) In certain versions of Photoshop 7, notably OSX, the Custom CMYK dialog
>now defaults to 400% total ink, unusable for any printing conditions. As I
>haven't been using OSX and the issue is not present in 9.2, I can't give
>further details.A 400% ink limit does not produce separations with 400% ink. It actually produces 266% ink limited separations. Photoshop 6 does this as well, so it seems Custom CMYK has some long standing bugs that haven't been resolved for a while. But so long as you specify a reasonable ink limit, that ink limit should be honored (reasonable being 220% to 330%).
In OS 9, while 400% ink is not the default ink limit for Custom CMYK, if you select 400% ink as the TAC, you get the same behavior as OS X.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: Ron Bean
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 11:10 AM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Dan Margulis writes:>You can't open a large
>number of these files simultaneously just for a looksee without having to
>respond to a warning upon closing each one.It sounds like it needs an option to "Open as Read-Only".
IMHO *any* program that can change a file should have a "Read-Only" option, to prevent accidental changes.>2) Unlike previous versions, Photoshop 7 reads EXIF data. The English
>translation of this is that some digital captures have no embedded profile
>for the purposes of Photoshop 6, but they do for Photoshop 7. This was
>pointed out late in the beta process so nobody really has a good handle on
>it yet, but all the cameras that are known at this point to do this state
>that the profile is sRGB. Unfortunately, none of them actually behave as
>sRGB devices. At least two Nikon and two Canon models have been identified
>as behaving this way, including the Nikon 950 that I own. They say sRGB for
>Photoshop 7; in fact they are more like Apple RGB or ColorMatch RGB.Of course, some camera owners will insist that it *is* sRGB, because the camera says so. Others will say "I don't know anything about color spaces, but I know what I like".
It seems odd that the manufacturers would care enough to label it as sRGB, but not enough to get it right. I hope this is just due to lack of experience, and that they'll eventually improve.
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 10:51 AM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Jeff Harmon writes:> In PS6, you choose only one compression method for TIFF, and I
>assume it's applied to the layers and composite both in the file. Is PS7
>different, or am I wrong?I don't think compression is applied to the composite unless specified separately. I don't think this was an option in PS 6, but it is in PS 7. Honestly, I'm not sure what Photoshop 6 would do to the composite if you specify LZW compression.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: Jeff Schewe
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 5:37 PM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
On 4/17/02 2:32 AM, Dan Margulis wrote:> 2) Unlike previous versions, Photoshop 7 reads EXIF data. The English
> translation of this is that some digital captures have no embedded profile
> for the purposes of Photoshop 6, but they do for Photoshop 7. This was
> pointed out late in the beta process so nobody really has a good handle on
> it yet, but all the cameras that are known at this point to do this state
> that the profile is sRGB. Unfortunately, none of them actually behave as
> sRGB devices. At least two Nikon and two Canon models have been identified
> as behaving this way, including the Nikon 950 that I own. They say sRGB for
> Photoshop 7; in fact they are more like Apple RGB or ColorMatch RGB.Regarding this issue, Dan is simply wrong. There is a major industry push for the usefulness and functionality of metadata (XMP being a major advancement in Photoshop 7) and particularly EXIF metadata. For metadata schemas to be at all useful, the applications than read files must be enabled to use the embedded tags. In this case, Photoshop 7 rightly respects the tags. While it may be pointed out that some EXIF color tags are incorrectly being embedded by digital cameras, it can hardly be considered Photoshop 7.0's fault if the cameras are mis-tagging the files. Photoshop 7.0's behaviour is correct for industry standards. This was pointed out to Dan on several occasions by industry experts. I suggest if Dan wants a crusade, he should take it to those companies-the camera companies-who are screwing up. That's where the blame should be directed.
As for the other issues, well if those relatively minor issues prevent Dan from upgrading and using Photoshop 7, that's his right. In my opinion, they're red herrings. . .
Regards,
Jeff Schewe
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 6:44 PM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Jeff Schewe writes:>While it may be pointed out that some EXIF color tags are
>incorrectly being embedded by digital cameras, it can hardly be considered
>Photoshop 7.0's fault if the cameras are mis-tagging the files. Photoshop
>7.0's behaviour is correct for industry standards.Dan's #2 complaint is actually two complaints in one, and they interdepend on each other, in his view.
The first problem, which is a digital camera vendor problem, is the tagging of images as sRGB when the images are in fact not sRGB images. I agree with Jeff, this is not a Photoshop 7 problem; but I don't think Dan was pinning the blame on Adobe for this problem either.
The second problem, which is an Adobe problem, is the change in the definition of the OFF color management policy. There is now no longer a way to effectively say "I don't care about embedded profiles." You can't tell Photoshop, upfront, that profile data (whether it's there or not) is unimportant to you. It's a contradiction of color management policies as a concept, and it renders the OFF policy significantly less relevant or useful.
Photoshop 7 has a mechanism to respect embedded profiles called the Preserve Embedded Profiles color management policy. That is the one to use in order to respect embedded profiles, if you like it, then you should use it. There is also an OFF policy, but it's now effectively broken. So there are digital camera vendors doing something wrong for sure, but Adobe is also doing something wrong when it comes to the behavior of the OFF color management policy.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: William Alexander
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 6:44 PM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
I wonder if Dan has any role at all in evaluating -the camera companies'- software/hardware performance in the development stage, as he does with Photoshop. If so I would suspect that he has taken it up with the companies. If not I would suspect that addressing the issue where he has an ability to actually make a difference would be the prudent thing to do, wouldn't you? Maybe it's not Adobe's fault that other companies are in error, but they would be at fault for blindly ignoring another companies errors... at the detriment to the functionality of their software.Wm Alexander
From: Dan Margulis
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 7:28 PM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Jeff writes,>>Regarding this issue, Dan is simply wrong. There is a major industry push for the usefulness and functionality of metadata (XMP being a major advancement in Photoshop 7) and particularly EXIF metadata. For metadata schemas to be at all useful, the applications than read files must be enabled to use the embedded tags. In this case, Photoshop 7 rightly respects the tags.>>
Jeff misinterprets my views but it's mostly my fault for writing in a sloppy way.
I agree that Photoshop should read and honor this tag. Now that I know that many cameras, including mine, embed incorrect tags, I wish that there were a way to turn the read off temporarily. However, hindsight is always 20-20 and one cannot blame Adobe for not having thought of putting a turn-off feature in.
Although I listed it as Con #2, it really is no con in and of itself. It's a con only because it's deadly in combination with Con #1, which is Photoshop 7's idiotic assumption that any time one opens a file with any color setting other than the one found in the incoming file, this constitutes a change to the file even if the user is only trying to examine, not alter it.
The idea of being able to open, say, 50 files from a given camera, look at them under what we think are the best monitor settings, and then close them again, hardly seems like an unreasonable request. Yet Photoshop 7 has managed to find a way to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that anybody who's a heavy user of such a camera is basically shafted.
>>Photoshop 7.0's behaviour is correct for industry standards. This was pointed out to Dan on several occasions by industry experts. I suggest if Dan wants a crusade, he should take it to those companies-the camera companies-who are screwing up. That's where the blame should be directed.>>
First of all, nobody had to point this out to me because I never took any other position. As for complaining to the camera companies, let's get real. We call them up, get to talk to somebody who's never heard of color management, and state our complaint. And they respond: "Let me get this straight. This camera works perfectly in Photoshop 6, right? And now that you've gone to Photoshop 7 it's busted?" And they hang up and fall on the floor helpless with mirth.
Dan Margulis
From: Dan Margulis
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 9:21 PM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Chris Murphy writes,>>There is also an OFF policy, but it's now effectively broken. So there are digital camera vendors doing something wrong for sure, but Adobe is also doing something wrong when it comes to the behavior of the OFF color management policy.>>
While I agree with everything you say, you seem to be limiting the issue to those who wish to ignore color management, which isn't the case.
It doesn't matter how much you love or hate color management or how committed you are to embedding profiles or what your Color Settings are set to do. Incoming files with incorrect profiles kill *everybody's* PS7 workflow, not just those with CM off. If you get 50 or 100 files from a camera like the ones we're talking about, or from a client who is using Photoshop's default settings, and you want to just open them all and examine them, you're hosed in Photoshop 7, period.
You're right, of course, about the logic of the situation. While color management off can be a flexible policy (I use it myself for CMYK files, but if there's a profile mismatch I take notice) in principle the setting of off means what it says--the user doesn't want to be bothered by profiling issues such as this, particularly when they're the fault of some third party. So, Photoshop 7 skewers him with profile issues created by the fault of third parties.
Dan Margulis
From: Marc Pawliger, Adobe Systems
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 10:27 PM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
--- In colortheory@y..., DMargulis@a... wrote:> The idea of being able to open, say, 50 files from a given camera, look at
> them under what we think are the best monitor settings, and then close them
> again, hardly seems like an unreasonable request. Yet Photoshop 7 has managed
> to find a way to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that anybody who's a
> heavy user of such a camera is basically shafted.The 7.0 File Browser color manages the previews and thumbnails and can certainly be used to do a "quick looksee" as you call it. Suggestions have also been made to accomplish exactly what you want to do with a miniscule amount of effort by creating a one step action to ignore the valid warning you find so onerous to dismiss with a single click or keypress.
> As for complaining to the camera companies, let's get real.
> We call them up, get to talk to somebody who's never heard of color
> management, and state our complaint. And they respond: "Let me get this
> straight. This camera works perfectly in Photoshop 6, right? And now that
> you've gone to Photoshop 7 it's busted?" And they hang up and fall on the
> floor helpless with mirth.I'm sorry you feel ineffective in affecting the decisions of digital camera manufacturers to correct what you believe is their grievous wrong. Please know Adobe has taken up the charge and is also endeavoring to bring proper color tagging to digital camera images. I hope we will be able to be more persuasive.
Marc Pawliger
Photoshop team, Adobe Systems
From: Ron Bean
Date: Wed, Apr 17, 2002, 11:37 PM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Dan Margulis writes:>However, hindsight is always 20-20 and
>one cannot blame Adobe for not having thought of putting a turn-off feature
>in."Any feature that can't be disabled is a bug."
(I'm not sure who first said this-- maybe Andrew Tannenbaum?)
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 01:53:44 -0000
From: Jeff Schewe
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
> First of all, nobody had to point this out to me because I never took any
> other position. As for complaining to the camera companies, let's get real.
> We call them up, get to talk to somebody who's never heard of color
> management, and state our complaint. And they respond: "Let me get this
> straight. This camera works perfectly in Photoshop 6, right? And now that
> you've gone to Photoshop 7 it's busted?" And they hang up and fall on the
> floor helpless with mirth.Actually, Canon is aware of the problem and is _VERY_concerned. When they will be able to fix this is up in the air, but they are working on revised software now to address Carbonizing for OS X. This fix better be in their software or I'll kick some butts. The real villan in all this is sRGB and the Cool Aide that so many companies drank. It's clear that sRGB is an excellent output color space for the web. . .and that's about it. The color science fools at the camera companies assumed that an sRGB EXIF tag was "PC" color space and made the mistake of believing their own hype.
In point of fact, complaining loudly to the camera companies _WOULD_ do a lot of good. It will accellerate their fixing of the problem of their own making-which Photoshop 7.0 exposed.
Regards,
Jeff Schewe
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Thu, Apr 18, 2002, 7:27 AM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Marc Pawliger writes:>Suggestions have also been made to accomplish
>exactly what you want to do with a miniscule amount of effort by
>creating a one step action to ignore the valid warning you find so
>onerous to dismiss with a single click or keypress.It's not a valid warning. If it were the result of a Preserve Embedded Profile policy, with a profile mismatch warning, and the user decides to disregard the embedded profile, THEN considering the file dirty would be valid. But this behavior is totally invalid and inconsistent with the concept of the OFF color management policy, Marc.
I can think of NO ONE who would use the OFF color management policy who would conceivable find it even slightly helpful that every single image with embedded profile they open BECOMES dirty JUST because they opened it. That is so totally absurd.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: Dan Margulis
Date: Thu, Apr 18, 2002, 6:47 PM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Marc writes,>>The 7.0 File Browser color manages the previews and thumbnails and can certainly be used to do a "quick looksee" as you call it.>>
First of all, welcome to the group, and good luck in your efforts to defend some of these indefensible features.
As for the File Browser, this is my favorite feature in PS7. It's a great way to organize and identify images. However, the purpose of examining a series of images is ordinarily to determine not what they are pictures of but whether they are professionally usable. When the File Browser's thumbnails indicate whether highlight is blown out, or whether the image is slightly out of focus, or whether fine detail is salvageable, then we can use it as you suggest. Until then, we have to open the files and check them out.
>>Suggestions have also been made to accomplish exactly what you want to do with a miniscule amount of effort by creating a one step action to ignore the valid warning...>>
The suggestions have indeed been made, but not by anybody with serious production experience. Anybody with such experience is going to answer, the hot key that forces images to close regardless of any warning is going right next to the hot key that formats my hard drive without warning. Most of us would rather have to respond to 100 false warnings rather than inadvertently close a file with important changes unsaved. Forget this hot key. Nobody is going to put that kind of time bomb on their system.
>>...you find so onerous to dismiss with a single click or keypress.>>
I don't find a single click onerous, but when there are 50 images open at once, it starts to get annoying. The real problem, though, is the pause that takes place every time when one sees the warning and tries to evaluate whether there has really been a change to the file, or it's just one of these bogus Photoshop 7 warnings.
>>I'm sorry you feel ineffective in affecting the decisions of digital camera manufacturers to correct what you believe is their grievous wrong. >>
If I were seriously aggrieved at everyone whose files contain incorrect profiles there would be little joy in my life. While I wish both Jeff and Adobe luck in persuading the camera companies to embed the right tag, the problem is not the camera vendors but rather that the very fact that a file carries an sRGB tag is a strong indication that the tag is wrong, and that Photoshop 7 gives us no way to address this reality. And, of course, the reason that the large majority of sRGB tags are wrong is not the fault of the camera vendors, but rather of some of your friends who designed an interface in such a manner that this would be the inevitable result. We, the users, have to live with embedded sRGB being usually wrong, and could do so nicely with PS5 and PS6.
Besides, I have a proven history of being an ineffective persuader in such matters. Heaven knows I did try to explain that things like instituting sRGB as a Photoshop default or to have files convert on open without warning were counterproductive, but I didn't get anywhere, and those changes were far more damaging than anything Nikon or Canon are currently doing. And, as you've seen, I haven't been effective in preventing this new brainstorm.
If any change of substance is made to a file, PS6 and PS7 behave identically, so we are talking solely about the case where the user opens a file and then immediately closes it. There are two possibilities: either he planned the move so as to alter or discard the profile, or he didn't--he just wanted to see what was in the file, or was thinking about making a change and decided not to. One would have to assume that the chances that the actual intent was to change the profile are around 10 billion to one against.
Catering to the one in 10 billion, Adobe's response is to present a dialog to which the default answer is yes, change or discard the profile. Having thus guaranteed that a whole lot of files will get their profiles either trashed or replaced inadvertently, Adobe now proposes to persuade camera manufacturers that it's in the industry's best interest that they embed correct profiles in their output.
If the objective is really to get more accurate profiles into the marketplace, the effort would be far better spent in rushing 7.0.1 out the door than in bothering Canon and Nikon.
Dan Margulis
From: Shangara Singh
Date: Fri, Apr 19, 2002, 7:08 AM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
On 18/4/02 6:24 PM, Dan Margulis wrote:> Catering to the one in 10 billion, Adobe's response is to present a dialog to
> which the default answer is yes, change or discard the profile.Holy-serious-rich, Photoman! I wouldn't mind bringing out some software that
sells 10 billion copies. 10 billion multiplied by L500....hmmm...yummy.<g>Isn't the issue that PS5 and 6 let you open a file, change the profile (making serious changes to the file in the process) and then close it and have Photoshop NOT save the changes or ask you Do you want to save changes? And that's now seen as unintuitive? The thinking being, whenever there's a change to the file, Photoshop should prompt you to save it and PS7 does just that. We still haven't received our copies in the UK so can't see what's physically happening.
Why not simply sort the changes made to a file when applying a tool and when changing the profile on opening? It should be possible to set up another little option in the Color Settings which, if selected, asks you to save the file whose profile has been altered on opening. If it's not selected then lets you close the file as per PS5 and 6. I suspect Adobe would want it the other way around but at least it gives the user a choice. This option would only apply to opening files and not once edits have been made.
If you want to open a lot of files, change their profile and save them then you could either make an action or tick the box in Color Settings and sit with your hand over the Return key. If you want to open a lot of files, inspect them and close them without taking any further action then just make sure the "Modifying Profiles: Warn when closing" box is ticked or un-ticked, depending on its default setting.
Sounds like Adobe now want, after having let users get used to one way of working for a number of years, to correct a wrong. When they've tried that before, they've had to either go back to the old way or give an option. Why not give an option now?
--/ Shangara Singh.
Adobe Certified Expert/Photoshop 6.0
Member: National Association of Photoshop Professionals
Author of Adobe Photoshop 6.0 ACE Exam Aid for Mac/PC
Showreels/PortfoliosOnCD for DoP's and Photographers
Gateway to Websites: http://www.e-pixel.co.uk
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Fri, Apr 19, 2002, 7:15 AM
RE: RE: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
Jeff Harmon writes:>I would think allowing LZW compression of layered TIFFs would make them
>smaller than PSDs, but you're right -- they're actually bigger! Good lord.
>All along I've been hailing the layered TIFF because of LZW, never testing
>my hypothesis... They should at least allow not saving a composite in the
>file, as PSD does; you're certainly right in pointing out that that must be
>the reason for the bloat.For what it's worth, I will personally be using layered TIFF with ZIP compression for layers, and JPEG compression for the composite. This produces the smallest file sizes. There are no longer compelling reasons to use the PSD file format. All elements of a Photoshop document are retained using this method (including vector shapes and text).
>Saving a composite also, in my experience, allows previews in digital asset
>management systems like iView Media Pro, based on Quicktime. I'm not sure
>if Portfolio or Cumulus is the same; it'd be interesting to check. I would
>assume they would need the composite as well.Yes, I think so. Note that saving a JPEG compressed composite may or may not be supported in your asset management system. But you can elect to use ZIP compression for the layers, and no compression for the composite (I'm talking about TIFF).
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: Chris Murphy
Date: Fri, Apr 19, 2002, 6:59 PM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Shangara Singh writes:>Isn't the issue that PS5 and 6 let you open a file, change the profile
>(making serious changes to the file in the process) and then close it and
>have Photoshop NOT save the changes or ask you Do you want to save changes?No. Regardless of the color management policy that you have set, if you assign a profile to an image, that will make the file dirty and will cause that profile to be embedded in the image, EXCEPT with the missing profile dialog box. If you added a profile in the missing profile dialog, the image was not marked dirty.
Photoshop 7 does modify that behavior, and that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that a file could be considered dirty just by virtue of opening the image which is what Photoshop 7 does with iimages containing embedded profiles when the OFF color management policy is enabled.
The profile is not being changed, it's being ignored and a warning that the file has changed in this regard, I argue, is not necessary because the user made an upfront request to Photoshop not to consider these files with discarded profiles as being dirty upon open BECAUSE they selected the OFF color management policy. If they'd done the exact same thing with Preserve Embedded Profile, and selected Discard in the Profile Mismatch dialog, THEN considering the file dirty would be appropriate.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
From: Mark Garten
Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2002, 9:28 AM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Photoshop 7 ships
So I have been following this thread and the theory of "dirty" keeps coming up. Can someone explain what this is and why there is a problem (or so it seems) with it.Mark Garten
From: Dan Margulis
Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2002, 10:48 AM
RE: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Mark Garten writes,>>So I have been following this thread and the theory of "dirty" keeps
coming up. Can someone explain what this is and why there is a problem (or so it seems) with it.>>"Dirty" is programmer shorthand for the phrase "This file has somehow been changed, therefore if the user tries to close it, Photoshop must generate the Do-You-Wish-to-Save-Changes warning." It's not a pejorative; if you open a file and apply a curve to it, it's now "dirty". Personally, I prefer "changed" as being a lot clearer.
The issue here is a difference in behavior between Photoshop 7 and earlier versions. If we open a file and for any reason our color settings disagree with that file's embedded profile, Photoshop 7 considers that the file has changed, *even if we close it immediately without doing anything to it.* Photoshops 5 and 6 consider that there is no change.
Thus, if we open several such files in Photoshop 7, we quickly lose control of the situation, because we can't close any of them without the Save Changes prompt and we don't know which files have actually changed. Also, some of us open 50 or more files at a time to try to examine for quality. In that case there is no graceful way to close them all quickly.
The people who are affected by this are those who have to open files containing incorrect embedded profiles--as in the user who prepared them was just using Photoshop defaults--or who simply want to ignore the profile, as is ordinarily the case in CMYK output. One would think that it would affect service providers and others who get files in from strangers a lot more than it would photographers who are working only on their own files, but it depends on the camera. Certain cameras embed a profile that was not visible to Photoshop 6 but is visible to Photoshop 7. In all the instances we're aware of so far, that embedded profile is sRGB and it's *wrong.* Thus, if the photographer opens the file with any sensible color setting, the mere act of opening "changes" the file in the warped logic of Photoshop 7. Photoshop 6 wouldn't even see the incorrect profile, let alone cause trouble when we try to close an unchanged file.
We are all shaking our heads over this is how totally brain-dead the concept is. The only people who benefit are those who wish to use opening and closing a file as a method to change or discard profiles, and who haven't figured out how to use batch processing to do it. That's probably less than 20 users in the whole world, I'd guess. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of users have to open and examine files containing the wrong profile, and are hosed by the change.
Furthermore, the change is made in the name of color management, but the obvious result will be a large number of files where the profiles have been stripped out or changed inadvertently.
Dan Margulis
From: Andrew Rodney, andrew@digitaldog.net
Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2002, 12:19 PM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
on 4/22/02 8:43 AM, Dan Margulis wrote:> The issue here is a difference in behavior between Photoshop 7 and earlier
> versions. If we open a file and for any reason our color settings disagree
> with that file's embedded profile, Photoshop 7 considers that the file has
> changed, *even if we close it immediately without doing anything to it.*
> Photoshops 5 and 6 consider that there is no change.
ONLY if you have your policies set to OFF (which is kind of dumb). If you turn off the warning check-boxes (cause you don1t want to be warned) and you set policies to Preserve, you can open files with no prompt and close them without getting this save issue presented to you.If you open a file with the OFF policy and it1s got an embedded profile, by VIRTUE of setting the policy to off, you1re telling Photoshop 7 to toss the profile which is an alteration of the file. So naturally you are asked if you want to save that change.
> The people who are affected by this are those who have to open files
> containing incorrect embedded profiles--as in the user who prepared them
> was just using Photoshop defaults--
That doesn1t mean the embedded profile is incorrect. It may not be the shop profile but it1s most probably the profile used to convert the file. It1s darn difficult to embed the incorrect profile in Photoshop 6 or 7. If the people opening the file don1t intent to use the embedded profile (because despite the method used to do the conversion by the user, the shop doesn1t care), then it really makes no difference what1s embedded (until the shop decides to do another conversion).> ....or who simply want to ignore the
> profile, as is ordinarily the case in CMYK output.If you intend to ignore it, opening with preserve policy doesn1t affect that decision! The shop sends the numbers to the device and the embedded profile doesn1t do a thing anyway.
> One would think that it
> would affect service providers and others who get files in from strangers a
> lot more than it would photographers who are working only on their own
> files, but it depends on the camera. Certain cameras embed a profile that
> was not visible to Photoshop 6 but is visible to Photoshop 7.
> That1s the fault of the camera manufacturers who place the wrong EXIF metadata tagging. IF camera manufacturers would embed the actual profile correctly (or the correct EXIF metadata), we1d be OK. This isn1t a Photoshop issue. It1s a camera manufacturer issue.> In all the
> instances we're aware of so far, that embedded profile is sRGB and it's
> *wrong.* Thus, if the photographer opens the file with any sensible color
> setting, the mere act of opening "changes" the file in the warped logic of
> Photoshop 7. Photoshop 6 wouldn't even see the incorrect profile, let alone
> cause trouble when we try to close an unchanged file.
>
It1s not the embedded profile. IF the file has a true embedded profile, that takes president over any EXIF metadata. Most of the Pro cameras are embedding the correct profiles the users sets up in the host software. Most of the consumer and may Prosumer) digital cameras are funneling their data into sRGB, not writing a profile but placing this sRGB info in the meta data that Photoshop sees. With the preserve policy, at least the image opens in sRGB which should be OK for most consumer cameras and if the preview looks bad, the user can assign a KNOWN profile. But 9 times out of 10, these cameras don1t supply and kind of known profile and shoot into sRGB (or something close). So we are not really any worse off than Photoshop 6 which would take an untagged file and open in your preferred RGB Working Space. That1s not any closer to the aim of the camera unless your Working Space is set to sRGB (which again is an assumption). Again, this is a camera manufacture issue.
> We are all shaking our heads over this is how totally brain-dead the
> concept is.
We? Speak for yourself Dan. Once again you seem to feel you speak for all Photoshop users. You may speak for some, but many don1t agree with you.> The only people who benefit are those who wish to use opening
> and closing a file as a method to change or discard profiles, and who
> haven't figured out how to use batch processing to do it. That's probably
> less than 20 users in the whole world, I'd guess. Meanwhile, hundreds of
> thousands of users have to open and examine files containing the wrong
> profile, and are hosed by the change.Why are the profiles wrong? And if you don1t care about profiles, what1s the problem?
Andrew Rodney
From: Chris Murphy, lists@colorremedies.com
Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2002, 4:00 PM
RE: Re: [colortheory] Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Andrew Rodney writes:>ONLY if you have your policies set to OFF (which is kind of dumb).
That's all well and good, but it's not a valid excuse for breaking the OFF policy behavior. Regardless of whether it's not a good idea to use or not (and there are valid workflow reasons to use it), Photoshop 7's OFF policy is almost entirely useless now.
>If you open a file with the OFF policy and it1s got an embedded profile, by
>VIRTUE of setting the
>policy to off, you1re telling Photoshop 7 to toss the profile which is an
>alteration of the file.
>So naturally you are asked if you want to save that change.Andrew, this is insane logic. First off, you aren't asking Photoshop to toss the profile, you're asking Photoshop to ignore the embedded profile. There's a difference. Second, by asking Photoshop to ignore the profile you aren't actually changing anything in the file - you are stipulating that embedded profile information is not important to you, and if it's not important to you, the fact it's been discarded on open should not cause the file to be considered modified JUST by virtue of opening the file. It's ridiculous logic that a file can be considered "dirty" or "changed" just by being opened.
OFF is a POLICY, not an action - a policy means something more than just a single action to discard a profile on open, yet continue to treat the resulting image as though the PRESERVE policy were being used.
What's even worse is that the default option for dealing with this "changed" file is to SAVE the file and *that* is the activity that actually causes the file to be changed.
This is poor use of logic on the part of the Photoshop team, and on various lists and news sites I'm already reading about this being a problem for production workflows.
I've asked probably five or six times for someone to give me an example of the usefulness of this new policy and NO ONE has yet given me an answer.
>ItÕs darn difficult to embed the incorrect profile in Photoshop 6 or 7.
Directly yes. Indirectly it's pretty simple. Open an RGB image with no profile embedded, which causes the working space RGB profile to be used for that image (which could easily be wrong), now convert the image. This not only converts the data but now assigns a profile which is embedded if the PRESERVE policy is used. Voila.
>That1s the fault of the camera manufacturers who place the wrong EXIF
>metadata tagging. IF camera manufacturers would embed the
>actual profile correctly (or the correct EXIF metadata), we1d be OK. This
>isn1t a Photoshop issue. It1s a camera manufacturer issue.It's both. The wrong profile being embedded in images is a fact of life, and some workflows are significantly more apt to receive images with the wrong profile embedded than others. That was the whole point of the OFF color management policy, which has now been dorked. Adobe "fixed" something that had hurt no one in an actual workflow.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 06:53:15 -0600
From: Andrew Rodney, andrew@digitaldog.net
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
on 4/24/02 4:09 PM, Chris Murphy at lists@colorremedies.com wrote:
> 98% of how Photoshop 7 does color management is also how
> Photoshop 6 does color management.
>
> When it comes to color management, Photoshop 6 is a must have, but
> Photoshop 7 is not. I don't hear anyone in any camp suggesting that
> Photoshop 7 is a must have in regards to color management.There1s so little change (as you point out; 98%) that sure, you1re correct.
There Îs SO much more in PS7 that is well worth the upgrade. The Healing
Brush/Patch Tool alone.Andrew Rodney
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 07:03:45 -0600
From: Andrew Rodney
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
on 4/24/02 10:02 PM, Russell Proulx wrote:> Why wouldn't a "CMYK workflow service bureau" simply choose "use embedded
> profile" and save themselves the
> aggravation of dealing with the "save before closing" prompts?Beats me. Some people feel that if a file has an embedded profile, they will automatically be subject to hives, Impotence, hair loss and snickering from their peers.
If you don1t care about profiles, it doesn1t matter if you preserve it or not. More than likely, preserving it will at least provide a chance that what you see and what the user saw matched. By ignoring the profile, ALL you1ve done is change the preview until you go about a conversion in which case, more likely than not, the description of the numbers is correct. If it1s not, you can simply strip out the profile, assign a profile or what ever.
If a Service Bureau is going to simply send data to an output device, it doesn1t matter what the profile shows them. IF they have some ancient RIP that doesn1t like profiles, they are going to strip out the profile anyway so simply do a batch (Droplet) and don1t even open the file. Why would someone open a file? They want to edit it so eventually a Save dialog will be prompted. They don1t want to edit it, they want to simply look at it. So use Preserve. If you care about accuracy, it will likely preview correctly. If it looks like crap, you1ll likely try assigning different profiles before you take out the big guns and edit the pixels. Simply assigning the house profile might produce a better preview (and it WILL provide a better indication of what those numbers will look like to the shop output device). In this case, you can save or not save the file (depending if more editing is called for).
Lots of Service Bureaus use OFF because they simply don1t understand what the cause and effect of using Preserve will do and they1ve been taught by some people that the only reasonable route is to strip out the profile. Most don1t understand just how little the profile does in situations where you don1t care about profiles. The numbers are the numbers (the holy grail on this list). So if all you care about is the numbers, preserving the profile doesn1t make any difference and in the case of one poster here, will actually insure that the end user can1t blame you for altering their file.
Andrew Rodney
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 06:50:40 -0600
From: Andrew Rodney
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
on 4/24/02 7:04 PM, Richard Chang wrote:> Trusting the numbers will always work, if you know what they mean.
That1s what profiles do Richard, they tell us the meaning of the numbers. That1s ALL profiles do.
Andrew Rodney
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:48:18 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Richard Chang writes:>Trusting the numbers will always work, if you know what they mean.
And therein lies the pitfall - if you don't know what they mean. There are more kinds of output devices than at anytime before now and they all have COMPLETELY different behavior. I'm currently working with some large format printers used to print billboard, and skin tones need to have around 30% more yellow in them compared to typical press work. There are a variety of colors that can be printed on it that can't be printed on press, and there are just as many that can be printed on press than can be printed on billboard. And the ink behavior is completely unlike a press. Color management isn't just a nice thing in this case, it's essentially mandatory.
> Display intentions are just that; intentions. Given that displays are transmissive >rgb phosphors attempting to replicate reflective cmyk inks on (oftimes) >non-white paper, physics tells me they'll never truly match.
Depends on what you call a match. I regularly see well calibrated/profiled displays predict output within the 90%-95% range (at least as good as a Matchprint, Waterproof, Approval or IRIS) when the process control is excellent and the output profiles are valid. Getting there is some effort, but once done it's saving huge amounts of time and money on an hourly basis.
Also, the whole transmissive vs. reflective argument is way overused. BOTH utlimately produce LIGHT that you see with your eyeballs. So long as the light getting to the eyes generates the intended response, they will look the same.
One thing that cannot be expected is to look at a proof/press sheet at the same time you look at the monitor. The monitor has a totally different spectral power distribution compared to that of light coming from a proof/press sheet. You need to look at them separately. You should look at proofs/press sheets at least 90 degrees from that of your display so you aren't look at them at the same time. This will allow your visual system to adapt to each separately and this adaptation is mandatory if you want a good display to print "match".
>I find color management an interesting cunnundrum because it
>is not obvious or intuitive, there are changing standards, and the
>inevitable development glitches. I also find it interesting that if one
>truly knows how the numbers work, you don't really need off the shelf color
>management, you already have it in your head, perfect for those days when
>color management stuggles.I think you are confusing color management and color correction. If you know how the numbers work, you can manipulate them effectively to achieve a certain reproduction. This is image enhancement or repair - which is color correction. Color management doesn't try to do this.
When you do something as simply as a mode change to convert an image from RGB to CMYK, THAT is color management. If it's not setup correctly then you will have to do a lot more color correction MANUALLY to fix the resulting separation. If it had been setup correctly to being with, you'd have only subtle tweaks to get print ready artwork assuming the original RGB image was satisfactory.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:52:27 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Andrew Rodney writes:>There 's SO much more in PS7 that is well worth the upgrade. The Healing
>Brush/Patch Tool alone.For people who need it, it's great, and they will want to get Photoshop 7
because of this. But there are lots of workflows that don't ever use these kinds of features. I have workflows where they have dedicated stations with Photoshop just for image crop, rotate, resize, then resave. That's it - all day long.Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:50:12 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Russell Proulx writes:>Ok...I'm playing with PS7 and am trying to "break it" in the manner that's
>been discussed over the past few days and I can't
>make the "problem" occur...
>
>Setting "Preserve Embedded Profiles" in Color SettingsThat's why. The policy needs to be set to OFF for the problem to occur.
With the policy OFF, open an image with embedded profile that doesn't match your working space and immediately try to close the image.
>I am surprised that I haven't been "hit over the head" with this problem
>as quickly as I had expected to be. Especially with
>all the fur that's been flying because of it.I've been EXTREMELY specific that it only occurs with the OFF policy.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:58:42 -0400
From: "Russell Proulx"
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
On 25 Apr 2002 at 11:50, Chris Murphy wrote:> The policy needs to be set to OFF for the problem to occur.
>
> With the policy OFF, open an image with embedded profile that doesn't
> match your working space and immediately try to close the image.
>
> >I am surprised that I haven't been "hit over the head" with this problem
> >as quickly as I had expected to be. Especially with all the fur that's
> >been flying because of it.
>
> I've been EXTREMELY specific that it only occurs with the OFF policy.Chris,
When OFF is set, and there is a profile mismatch, I'm prompted (ask when opening) to either keep the profile, convert it, or toss it. As I said in my post, choosing to "Use the embedded profile" does not result in a change (ie: no prompt when closing) while the other 2 choices do. I always try to set my RGB space to that of the file to avoid conversion whenever possible anyway, so this won't affect me.
On another topic, I find it funny how many of PS7's 'new' features are 'borrowed' from a program called ThumbsPlus from www.cerious.com. Unfortunately for Mac folks it's PC only. It does thumbnails, webpage/contact sheet generation, batch renaming, batch profile tagging or changing, lossless rotating, etc.. It even has a great cataloguing feature that helps me find images stored on my CDs. Just thought I'd plug a great tool that I'll still continue to use instead of PS for many tasks.
Russell Proulx
Montreal, Canada
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 12:54:44 GMT-6
From: Héctor Antonio Roldán Catalán
Subject: PS7, multi version?
Chris Murphy writes:> For people who need it, it's great...
>...But there are lots of workflows that don't ever use > these kinds of featuresI totally agree. You can get other software in home, office, business and "industrial" versions. And of course, other prices.
I think it would be a great step in ps. Because of my work I know a lot of people in the graphics arts industry in my country and I have seen that for many of them, PS has a high price because they don't fully use it.
Going back to the profiles issue, because what I just wrote, some of these people have a lot of confusion because they don't even know what profiles are.
PS is great but since version 5.0 i'm not a great fan. I understand and apreciate the advanced multi options ps6 has, but I have seen how it confuses people.
I understand too that it is a peace of art and color correction is very serious work because involves a lot of knowledge and the tools are getting equally advanced and serious. This puts a lot of pressure in the users to get trained.
A LOT of the local printing services in my country don't even use profiles and the ones that uses them don't give these to clients.
Sometimes is easier to put 3C,28M,30Y in a skin even when the image in the monitor appears redish or BW but in my experience, profiles have been useful to me showing to the client a simulation of the final work.
EVEN when I can see a lot of differences between what we see, the client eyes aren't trained as ours (color theory group).
I totally disagree with software that alter my files, even those that takes out the ps icon and put theirs so the next time you click on your files they will be opened with other app than ps. (MGI) And more with apps that modifies the internal data of the file.
Hector Antonio Roldan Catalan
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:51:37 -0400
From: Steve Bohne
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 color management
Ok, I'm new on this list, and I bow humbly to the likes of Dan, Jeff, Andrew, and probably 99.999% of the folks here. I'm not taking sides, and I do not wish to get in the middle of a pissing contest, since my slicker is at the cleaners.I'm just a working stiff who wants to avoid as many problems as possible. I understand that guys like Scott and Dan, who are working in PrePress or taking others images and working on them are bugged by the new Adobe workflow.
All I want like to know is this:
I am a professional photographer. I photograph using a Fuji S1 digital camera. I print on a Fuji Pictrography 4000, or send larger orders to my lab where it is printed on a Kodak LED printer.
Here's an important bit of infomation: I rarely print anything for anybody else, and I rarely work in CYMK.
My color space is Adobe RGB. When I take images from the card into PS 6, it tells me there is a profile mismatch. I have it set to CONVERT these fuji jpg files into Adobe RGB. I am getting great images.
I have PS 7. Here we go: what do I need to do to make it act just like PS6 when I open files from my camera via the card reader, to make it convert the files to Adobe RGB?
I thank you for your kind consideration,
Steve Bohne
PPA Certified
Master Photographer, Craftsman
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:39:07 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Andrew Rodneywrites:>Sounds like Photoshop 1.0.9 would be ideal.
No they still need to be able to open CMYK images, PSD documents, and deal with the occasional exploding TIFF. So that means Photoshop 5 as a minimum.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:44:31 -0600
From: Andrew Rodney
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 color management
on 4/25/02 12:51 PM, Steve Bohne wrote:> I'm not taking sides,
> and I do not wish to get in the middle of a pissing contest, since my
> slicker is at the cleaners.As a dog, I find pissing an important part of my day....
> My color space is Adobe RGB. When I take images from the card into PS 6,
> it tells me there is a profile mismatch. I have it set to CONVERT these
> fuji jpg files into Adobe RGB. I am getting great images.OK, when you get a mismatch, what you1re telling me is the files from the camera have an embedded profile. What profile is the camera providing? I1ve worked with the S1 Pro and I don1t recall getting an embedded profile in the file. Are you instead getting a 3Missing Profile2 dialog?
What I1ve found is that with the S1, you can assume ColorMatch RGB and get reasonably good previews (and resulting conversions). The only thing better would be to create a custom ICC profile for your specific camera. That opens a whole can of worms. So what you might want to do is this. Open some of these untagged files and tag them with ColorMatch RGB (you can try Adobe RGB as well). I1d view on a calibrated display and view something you know (like a Macbeth Color Checker). Assuming you like the previews when ColorMatch RGB is used, all you have to do is simply ASSIGN ColorMatch RGB to all incoming files off the S1 pro. Done!
> I have PS 7. Here we go: what do I need to do to make it act just like
> PS6 when I open files from my camera via the card reader, to make it
> convert the files to Adobe RGB?
Photoshop 6 and 7 will work IDENTICALLY if you simply avoid the OFF policy. So, set your RGB Working Space as ColorMatch RGB (assuming again that this space works best for the untagged files off the S1). You can set your Policy to Preserve. When you go to open the files, you1ll get a missing profile dialog and you can simply click on the last radio button which will assign the Working Space (ColorMatch RGB). You can also keep the Policy to OFF and the file will open untagged, then use the Assign Profile command to assign ColorMatch. Since the file is untagged BUT the current RGB working space is ColorMatch, the previews will still be correct. I1d still assign the correct profile unless you intend to convert to an output space in the same editing session in which case, assigning ColorMatch is an extra step (Photoshop will simply assume ColorMatch for this untagged file because it1s the space you set in the Color Settings. And ColorMatch will be used when you convert to the Fuji for output).Andrew Rodney
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:53:24 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 color management
Steve Bohne writes:>I have PS 7. Here we go: what do I need to do to make it act just like
>PS6 when I open files from my camera via the card reader, to make it
>convert the files to Adobe RGB?Same exact settings you are using now.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:56:47 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Russell Proulx writes:>When OFF is set, and there is a profile mismatch, I'm prompted (ask when
>opening) to either keep the
>profile, convert it, or toss it.Set policy to OFF, uncheck ask when opening.
>I always try to set my RGB space
>to that of the file to avoid conversion whenever possible anyway, so this
>won't affect me.Then the OFF policy isn't what you should be using, in which case nothing I've been saying will affect you. It won't affect most Photoshop users either (probably), it only affects those that want profile issues to be ignored.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:33:07 -0700
From: Frank Vena
regarding the ongoing debate about PS 7's color management policy, here's my two cents:following is a cut and paste from PS 6's documentation regarding Color Management policies (the comments in brackets are mine):
A) Policy option: Off
Default color management behavior:
1) New documents and existing untagged documents remain untagged. (according to Adobe, and i quote, "Documents without associated profiles are known as untagged and contain only raw color numbers. When working with untagged documents, Photoshop uses the current working space profile to display and edit colors". therefore pixels are assigned the values of your current PS working space. if you now save the "new" document, then you've changed the pixel values in the original document to those of your current PS working space (even though the document remains untagged)- which is the same as the "Convert to Profile" policy; see B - 3 below).
2) Existing documents tagged with a profile other than the current working space become untagged. (and you have the exact same situation as in #1 above)
3) Existing documents tagged with the current working space profile remain tagged. (if you save, then no change occurs)
B) Policy option: Convert to Working Space
Default color management behavior:
1) New documents are tagged with the current working space profile. 2) Existing documents tagged with a profile other than the current working space are converted to and tagged with the working space profile. 3) Existing untagged documents use the current working space for editing but remain untagged.
so, it seems pretty clear to me that the OFF policy is simply a way to open documents, view them in your working space and close them without affecting the original. if one wanted to change the original, then one would turn the "Convert to Profile" policy on, or would assign or convert the document using the Image>Mode>Assign/Convert command. it is very clear that the new CM policy in PS 7 is redundant and therefore unnecessary.
to quote a phrase from the feminist movement "No means No!"
and that's all i have to say about that.
Frank
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 23:12:00 -0700
From: "Raymond St. Arnaud"
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
I'd like to address this issue from the perspective of the naive user using Photoshop on a casual basis in an educational environment. Our College does not have the resources or manpower to help users as they scan and prepare images for various educational purposes. They are left to their own abilities.The behavior of Photoshop 7 runs counter to the normal behavior that such users expect. They know if they open a word document, look at it and close it, they will not be asked to save changes. This is pretty well the standard in all software that I encounter.
When a naive user encounters a dialogue box requiring a decision, they are as likely to make a wrong decision as a right one.
The suggestion to write an action to compensate and expect to implement such behaivior on the part of the casual client is beyond the absurd. Adobe should have to fund a full time employee to police and explain this bizarre procedure.
aside: ( I read with interest on the movement to address liability on the part of software companies as a result of bugs and bad software implemantation.)
These kind of policies should be set by the user, or in a college enviroment by the administrator. Most of these users live in Monitor space color, always have and likely always will. OFF should mean OFF, just like NO means NO.
By forcing this issue, Adobe is limiting its market to a smaller segment, and likey lower profits. Now that I own 14 shares (Adobe takes over Accellio), I want them to live long and prosper ;-)
Fortunatly theres still Paint Shop Pro as an alternative.
Regards
Ray
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 18:33:48 +1000
From: "Stephen Marsh"
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 color management (S1 > A98)
In colortheory@y..., Steve Bohne wrote:> I'm just a working stiff who wants to avoid as many problems as
> possible.There are many of similar mind here Steve, after all this list is 'applied'
colour theory and not just a think tank.<g>> My color space is Adobe RGB. When I take images from the card into PS 6,
> it tells me there is a profile mismatch. I have it set to CONVERT these
> fuji jpg files into Adobe RGB. I am getting great images.
>
> I have PS 7. Here we go: what do I need to do to make it act just like
> PS6 when I open files from my camera via the card reader, to make it
> convert the files to Adobe RGB?Steve - you can load in the exact same .csf Colour Settings file from version 6 into 7 - as noted by Andrew and Chris the basics of the colour settings have not changed much at all...but:
As Andrew notes, is this a profile mismatch or a missing profile message in version 6? If there is a ICC profile, then when you load the same settings file into ver7 things would be the same.
The only difference that I can think of is that if there was _no_ ICC profile in the digicam file - but it _did_ have a exif tag describing the camera space, then Photoshop 7 would honour the exif tag if no ICC tag was in use (ICC takes priority, and I think the exif data is rewritten as 'uncalibrated' to indicate a non camera space after editing in Photoshop).
For example, I have a shot from a Sony Cybershot which has a meta tag indicating that sRGB is the space - but any rational person would choose ColorMatch/Apple/Generic Kodak DCS or other lighter gamma with less intense colour if choosing a space for this image (the skintone is the issue with this shot which makes it easy to discount the sRGB meta tag or using Adobe/NTSC etc).
Regards,
Stephen Marsh.
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 08:58:39 -0500
From: Gary Roushkolb
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
After installing PS 7 on a Mac 9.1 system I notice that the icons of files in 5.5 or 6 take on a different look than before. Often we switch between versions of photoshop to see that out files will be ok at the clients shop, but now the "system" seems changed. Has anyone else noticed this? Doesn't seem to be a problem just strange.
Gary Roushkolb
Donlevy Lithograph
Wichita, Ks
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 11:22:33 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Gary Roushkolb writes:>After installing PS 7 on a Mac 9.1 system I notice that the icons of files >in 5.5 or 6 take on a different look than before. Often we switch between >versions of photoshop to see that out files will be ok at the clients shop, >but now the "system" seems changed. Has anyone else noticed this? Doesn't >seem to be a problem just strange.
Happened to Photoshop 5 when I upgraded to Photoshop 6. And now Photoshop 5 and 6 have the Photoshop 7 icon as well. I think it's a Mac desktop database thing; as well as the fact Photoshop as an application has the same creator regardless of version (I think).
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 13:39:35 -0400
From: "Pylant, Brian"
Subject: PS7 Changes Icons (was: Re: Photoshop 7 ships)
> After installing PS 7 on a Mac 9.1 system I notice that the icons of files
> in 5.5 or 6 take on a different look than before. Often we switch between
> versions of photoshop to see that out files will be ok at the clients shop,
> but now the "system" seems changed. Has anyone else noticed this? Doesn't
> seem to be a problem just strange.We saw this on the Mac with the beta (we don't yet have the release version), but not on Windows.
Brian
Electronic Prepress Manager
Disc Makers
www.discmakers.com
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 13:59:09 -0400
From: Scott Olswold
Subject: RE: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Gary,When you install an application on a Macintosh (at least in 9.22 and lower; how things happen in MacOS X I don't know, nor do I care yet), it adds some information to the Mac's Desktop file (a database of file information on the hard drive), including its associated icons for this file type, that file type, etc., and this information is attached to the actual file's Resource fork (a Mac thing; you PC folks don't need to worry about this) which holds, among other things, what icon should be displayed for it.
Just because the icon changes doesn't mean that the file is radically different. If it's a TIFF, JPEG, EPS, or PSD, it should open up fine in the other apps (but you'll have to either File>Open or drag to the app/alias; double clicking will launch PS 7).
Scott Olswold
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 18:24:19 +0000
From: RJay Hansen
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
Actually, if you keep different versions of various apps on your machine, you'll notice that those app's files (usually) inherit the icon of the latest version of that application. I believe it's a function of whether the latest version retains the same type and creator code as previous versions (I'm assuming you're on a Mac). Mac's use the type and creator to determine the icon a file gets. This info is stored in the desktop database (that's why rebuilding the desktop fixes generic icon problems).I use FinderPop (a contextual menu utility--http://homepage.mac.com/fpop/) to open a file in the version of an app I want since I have a couple of versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark etc. on my machine.
RJay
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 10:01:46 -0700
From: Richard Chang
Subject: Photoshop 7 ships
Chris Murphy writes:>One thing that cannot be expected is to look at a proof/press sheet at
>the same time you look at the monitor. The monitor has a totally
>different spectral power distribution compared to that of light coming
>from a proof/press sheet. You need to look at them separately. You should
>look at proofs/press sheets at least 90 degrees from that of your display
>so you aren't look at them at the same time. This will allow your visual
>system to adapt to each separately and this adaptation is mandatory if
>you want a good display to print "match".First of all my definition of a match is when two different renderings look the same. Perhaps I don't understand how this display aspect of color management works. I've been told by Bruce Fraser that he can maintain a delta-E deviation of 1-2. I was thinking that color management has championed the use of calibrated displays because they allow, through the use of profiles, accurate display of output conditions. I am wondering if Bruce's claim was regarding a standard deviation within his fleet of display devices, or with the deviation of his Barco and some specific output. I guess this comment is a revelation to me because I was thinking the industry is claiming more accurate matching than you're alluding to.
I am interested in a clearer definition of "different spectral power distrubution" as it applies to monitor illumination. Specifically how is this phenomenon different than reflective light energy?
Since human visual perception is our final arbiter of matching, and because color management has used a measurement of visual perception of just visible differences (delta-E) to quantify the wonderfulness of color management, why is it appropriate to use an inspection condition that requires separate viewing to decide a "match"? If this is a color management dance step around practical realities, could I call this the Delta -E Dodge?
Perhaps someone can illuminate why monitor transmissives relative to reflective light energy are both "overused" and as close as 95% matching, but separately viewed for eval. What defines a monitor calibration? Why does my monitor at the Colormatch D50 look so dissimilar to a D50 viewing booth? I was wondering about this monitor device and had a thought; what is the measured color temp after running the Pre Cal and Photo Cal with a monitor spyder? A Minolta Colormeter measuring a white field in Photoshop revealed a reading of 5500 Kelvin. Why doesn't it read 6500K?
>I think you are confusing color management and color correction. If you
>know how the numbers work, you can manipulate them effectively to achieve
>a certain reproduction. This is image enhancement or repair - which is
>color correction. Color management doesn't try to do this.>When you do something as simply as a mode change to convert an image from
>RGB to CMYK, THAT is color management. If it's not setup correctly then
>you will have to do a lot more color correction MANUALLY to fix the
>resulting separation. If it had been setup correctly to being with, you'd
>have only subtle tweaks to get print ready artwork assuming the original
>RGB image was satisfactory.I consider color management the vehicle by which technology allows color rendering workflows, via software and hardware, to be performed more accurately, faster, and more economically. Within this definition, I do not find color management intuitive. Certainly this above mentioned revelation about viewing conditions isn't something one would guess is required after the optimistic sales pitches from the profile panderers and the calibrationists.
Richard Chang
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 12:24:38 -0600
From: Andrew Rodney
Subject: Re: Photoshop 7 ships
on 4/25/02 11:52 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:> I have workflows where they have dedicated
> stations with Photoshop just for image crop, rotate, resize, then resave.Sounds like Photoshop 1.0.9 would be ideal. It does run under OS9 (I have a copy of every version I've owned). It will run on something like 8mb of ram! But perhaps 2.5 would be better since I think it was the first version to deal with CMYK. Why be bothered with all the other useless tools?
Andrew
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 14:54:18 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Soft proofing, was: Photoshop 7 ships
Richard Chang writes:>First of all my definition of a match is when two different renderings look
>the same. Perhaps I don't understand how this display aspect of color
>management works. I've been told by Bruce Fraser that he can maintain a
>delta-E deviation of 1-2.That by measurement. A measuring device is saying "to me, these two colors look the same." Measuring devices are predicated on human visual response when looking at a single light source - not when multiple light sources prevent chromatic adaptation. A proofing box and monitor are different light sources, and if viewed simultaneously will prevent chromatic adaptation from occuring.
> I was thinking that color management has
>championed the use of calibrated displays because they allow, through the
>use of profiles, accurate display of output conditions. I am wondering if
>Bruce's claim was regarding a standard deviation within his fleet of
>display devices, or with the deviation of his Barco and some specific
>output. I guess this comment is a revelation to me because I was thinking
>the industry is claiming more accurate matching than you're alluding to.My understanding of Bruce's tests were comparing multiple calibrated monitor products displaying a LAB version of the Gretag Macbeth color checker, compared to an actual color checker. The purpose was to rate how close each monitor/calibration product was able to reproduce the desired LAB value. Nothing I've said is in conflict with this.
>I am interested in a clearer definition of "different spectral power
>distrubution" as it applies to monitor illumination. Specifically how is
>this phenomenon different than reflective light energy?It's possible for different spectra to produce the same response in the human visual system. It's also possible for the human visual system to get a different response from the same spectra if more than one is present.
This is why there are optical effects like simultaneous contrast and bezold effect. If you take a green solid and put it on a red background, and the same green and put it on a yellow background, the greens look different. They will measure the same, but the surrounding color causes a different color appearance.
>Since human visual perception is our final arbiter of matching, and because
>color management has used a measurement of visual perception of just
>visible differences (delta-E) to quantify the wonderfulness of color
>management, why is it appropriate to use an inspection condition that
>requires separate viewing to decide a "match"? If this is a color
>management dance step around practical realities, could I call this the
>Delta -E Dodge?No, you call it a fact of life as a human being on planet earth. If you are reading a magazine, non-image areas of the paper look white and are called white. If you ask any random person what the color of the paper is, they would say "white" - experience tells most of us that it isn't really white even though it looks white. But take a piece of photocopier paper next to it and suddenly you realize how very non-white publication paper is (even a non-brightened #1 stock will do this). That is because of chromatic adaptation. The human visual system looks for anything close to white, and maps it to its concept of "white" in our brain.
So "white" can be made of multiple spectra. In order for white to always look white, there can only be one white in visual proximity. So either the monitor, or the viewing booth, and not both of them at the same time. Chromatic adaptation must be allowed to occur in order for any "matching" of different media to occur.
>Perhaps someone can illuminate why monitor transmissives relative to
>reflective light energy are both "overused" and as close as 95% matching,
>but separately viewed for eval.Monitors are light sources - they emit light, and you see it. An illuminated proof is also a light source as far as your eyeball is concerned. The human visual system does not distinguish between transmitted, emitted or reflected light. All of it is light.
What does make a difference is that there are certain characteristics of most emitted light, due to limitations of human technology, that make its spectral power distribution unlike that of most reflected light. The human visual system is not a spectrophotometer, fortunately. It makes use of metamerism so that something that doesn't have the exact spectral characteristics of "magenta" can still look like magenta. For example, it's possible to simulate the exact same color response on a monitor, a photograph, a printing press, and dye sublimation even though NONE of those processes will emit the same spectra for a given color. Their materials are totally different, yet your visual system can be tricked into perceiving the same color.
If this were not the case, the only thing on the planet that would look "orange" would be an actual orange. Anything not made up of the exact same chemical components as an orange would have some other appearance and it would be impossible to produce the response called "orange" without some actual orange peel being incorporated. Orange on a printing press is definitely NOT made up of anything chemically resembling an orange. Even if you use hexachrome orange (a brilliant orange), an orange and a press reproduction of an orange will never look the same next to each other. They may look close, but they will never be identical and that's because together, you can fake out the human visual system. Separately, you can. Just like monitor soft proofing.
> What defines a monitor calibration? Why
>does my monitor at the Colormatch D50 look so dissimilar to a D50 viewing
>booth?Background:
D50 is an illuminant approximately to that of daylight, with a specifica spectral power distribution. A monitor and a viewing booth (with fluorescent lights) cannot reproduce D50. It's impossible with today's technology. You could build a viewing booth with specially filtered halogen lights and end up with something very much like D50, but it's not possible with fluorescent lights. What you are actually going for is a correlated color temperature of 5000K. What you want is for the WHITE of the monitor to look the same as the WHITE in your light box. The difference between 5000K (which is only about the color appearance of white, whether it's warm, neutral, or cool) and D50 is mostly academic in the printing world since so many people use 5000K fluorescent (and therefore deviate en masse from the standard, which is D50, not 5000K). But if you work in photography, paintings, museums, fint art, or lots of inkjet prints, it can make a huge difference. Some inksets will look completely different under 5000K fluorescent (which is closer to the F7 or F8 illuminant) than under D50, and others do not.The answer:
The international commission on illumination came up with all the illuminants, as well as the concept of correlated color temperature. Correlated color temperature only applies to like media. So two monitors with white points calibrated to 5000K will have white that looks the same (assuming luminoscity is the same), two light boxes that measure as having 5000K white will also look the same. But a monitor and paper reflecting light from a light box are NOT the same thing - they are not the same kind of media. It's a cross media application. Therefore 5000K white on a monitor and 5000K white on paper from a light box will not look the same. Part of this has to do with luminoscity, monitors just aren't as bright as light boxes, and this causes a lot more discrepency that colorimetry compensates for.So the solution is to calibrate a monitor to 6500K. That will more closely approximate the white you get from a sheet of paper in a light box.
> I was wondering about this monitor device and had a thought; what
>is the measured color temp after running the Pre Cal and Photo Cal with a
>monitor spyder? A Minolta Colormeter measuring a white field in Photoshop
>revealed a reading of 5500 Kelvin. Why doesn't it read 6500K?Are you referring a light meter? Or are you referring to two different colorimeters measuring the same patch of white from a monitor, using the same software package?
>I consider color management the vehicle by which technology allows color
>rendering workflows, via software and hardware, to be performed more
>accurately, faster, and more economically.See that's a marketing definition. I will have to add this to my list of color management definitions. Currently I only have the "broad" definition and the "narrow" definition. I should also have the "marketing" definition as well.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 01:46:51 -0000
From: "denkjersey"
Subject: profiles and Photoshop 7
I'm brand new here, so please excuse me if this has been discussed before. With Photoshop 6.0 my Fuji S-1 camera files opened as "untagged" which gave me the option to assign my custom camera profile (created using Andrew Rodney's technique..thanks Andrew) and then convert to my standard working space.Photoshop 7 however, now "sees" my camera files as tagged with the srgb profile which is gives me no where near as good color as my custom profile. It's a huge pain having to open files, click on "don't color manage" assign my profile and then convert to the working space...plus..I don't want to jpeg these files again...so I'm saving them as tiffs with the new color space embedded..which is taking up huge amounts of space.
Does anyone know a way to tell Photoshop not to assign srgb to my camera files?
Thanks in advance.
Dennis Kelly
Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 09:22:36 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: profiles and Photoshop 7
Dennis Kelly writes:>Does anyone know a way to tell Photoshop not to assign srgb to my
>camera files?No. Call Fuji, tell them that they are improperly assigning sRGB as the profile in EXIF data in your files. If you don't complain, it won't get fixed, and the problem is primarily with the digital camera vendors, not Adobe. Although Adobe it being derelict for not coming up with a way to deal with this reality (actually they had a way, but broke it in Photoshop 7).
What I recommend doing is make a Droplet action in Photoshop that you can drag an entire folder of images on, and it will remove sRGB, reassign the profile you want, then convert to your working space and resave the image. Once it's created, it will be a much quicker way of dealing with the issue.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 12:19:02 -0400
From: Ric Cohn
Subject: Re: profiles and Photoshop 7
Many (but not all) of us feel your pain. You need to open the file without conversion and then do an assign profile to the correct camera profile and resave.Unless people are posting crank questions to this site, I think the question of whether Photoshop's new behavior is a bad idea has been answered by the users!
Ric Cohn
ric@riccohn.com
http://www.riccohn.com
212.924.4450> It's a huge pain having to open files, click
> on "don't color manage" assign my profile and then convert to the
> working space...plus..I don't want to jpeg these files again...so I'm
> saving them as tiffs with the new color space embedded..which is
> taking up huge amounts of space.
> Does anyone know a way to tell Photoshop not to assign srgb to my
> camera files?
Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 11:14:01 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: profiles and Photoshop 7 Thanks!
Dennis Kelly writes:>Chris..thanks for the quick reply. I'll have to read up on droplets.
>One quick question...if I open a jpeg, change only the color profile and
>save it, (as a jpeg) am I recompressing and losing color information, or is
>the image data left unchanged and just the exif data altered?I think as long as you don't do a Save As, and the change only occurs to non-image data, there is not lose of information (artifacting) as there is no need for the image to be rerun through the JPEG algorithm. At least my file sizes aren't changes substantially (a few bytes) when I add and remove guides and do just a save. In the past, if I do a save as though, file sizes start to drop rapidly indicating to me compression is throwing out more data. However, I just tried this in Photoshop 7 and the file size is the same - so it's almost like it knows that there is no change in the image portion, or that given the quality setting, the data is compressed as much as it should be.
I'm really not sure :)
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 12:56:01 -0000
From: "rgb2cmykuk"
Subject: Re: profiles and Photoshop 7
Couldn't work out what platform the original poster was using, but if it's Mac then the easiest thing to do is drag and drop your images on the free Applescripts that are supplied with the OS.Just drag all of the images on the "Embed chosen profile" script and then choose a profile. Alternatively, if ColorSync is correctly set up, you can "Embed specific profile" or "Embed display profile".
This will be a whole lot quicker than getting PS to open and resave all of your images. And if you wanted to you could easily adapt the scripts to re-profile all of the images that you drop into a hot folder.
-- Martin Orpen
Idea Digital Imaging Ltd -- The Image Specialists
http://www.idea-digital.com
Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 08:42:17 -0700
From: Jan Steinman
Subject: Re: profiles and Photoshop 7
> From: Chris Murphy
>
>What I recommend doing is make a Droplet action in Photoshop that you can
>drag an entire folder of images on, and it will remove sRGB, reassign the
>profile you want...If I may be so brash as to potentially start a platform war...
MacOS has had droplets for changing profiles for nearly a decade. That may be why many MacOS users see this (and many other so-called "problems" that Windows users have when doing graphical stuff) as a non-issue.
-- : Jan Steinman
: Bytesmiths
: 19280 Rydman Court, West Linn, OR 97068, 503.635.3229
Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 12:19:01 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Re: profiles and Photoshop 7
Jan Steinman writes:>MacOS has had droplets for changing profiles for nearly a decade.
This is true, and they are quite useful.
>That may
>be why many MacOS users see this (and many other so-called "problems" that
>Windows users have when doing graphical stuff) as a non-issue.I wouldn't go that far on the color management front - the ColorSync AppleScripts alone aren't something most users realize is installed by default. I think if anything Mac users have more of these problems in terms of quantity just because there are so many more of them in this industry.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 09:02:55 -0400
From: David Ridderhof
Subject: Photoshop 7.01
There is an update to Photoshop that fixes, among other things, the following issues I've seen discussed in this forum.
-If the color settings color management policy is set to "Off", Photoshop no longer asks to save changes unless other edits have been performed.
-The total ink now defaults to 300% as it did in previous versions of Photoshop.
-The color of white areas in CMYK files saved as JPEG no longer shifts.Here is the Mac link.
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=39&platform=Macintosh
David Ridderhof
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 09:08:01 -0400
From: "Calvin Jones"
Subject: PS 7.01 update
The 12.8 MB update is now available for download.
See the list of features, one of which addresses color management policies, at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1851
Calvin
Calvin Jones Photography
http://www.CCJonesPhotos.com
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 13:40:07 -0700
From: Rick Gordon
Subject: Ignore EXIF Color Space Plug-in
The "Ignore EXIF Color Space Plug-in" is available at: http://www.adobe.com/upport/ownloads/etail.jsp?ftpid=1882.
Along with the 7.0.1 update's removal of the Save requirement for ignoring color management when opening tagged images, two big workflow issues in PS 7 are now solved.
And for the rest of PS 7, the advantages over 6 are substantial. The added blending modes have been well worth the price of admission for me, not even counting the more-mentioned improvements in brush architecture and added tools.
--
___________________________________________________RICK GORDON
EMERALD VALLEY GRAPHICS AND CONSULTING
___________________________________________________EMAIL: rick@rickgordon.com
WWW: http://www.shelterpub.com
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 22:46:35 -0600
From: Chris Murphy
Subject: Re: Ignore EXIF Color Space Plug-in
On Thursday, August 29, 2002, at 02:40 PM, Rick Gordon wrote:
> Along with the 7.0.1 update's removal of the Save requirement for
> ignoring color management when opening tagged images, two big workflow
> issues in PS 7 are now solved.Of course now Dan, myself and the handful of other people (I forget who they are) who instantly had fit over this behavior are now vindicated.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (tm)
Boulder, CO
303-415-9932
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 10:32:39 -0500
From: "SUSAN & JOHN OPITZ"
Subject: Re: Ignore EXIF Color Space Plug-in
>And for the rest of PS 7, the advantages over 6 are substantial.
This is interesting that an author, not to long ago came out with "the pros and cons of Photoshop 7" addressing these issues to the user and Adobe themselves. I did not see any other author,beta,or alpha tester do this(talk about this to the public anyway).And he got a lot of flak for it. Even a color management expert agreed with the author on the "Management off" policy. While their are workarounds for these issues, certain users would not have known this. I know Adobe listens to their customers. But I wonder if Adobe would have made these changes if the author never wrote about them. And the issue be blown off and just a workaround to be done. I feel more authors and alpha,beta testers be like this. One thing is to be loyal. That would be good for politics. Not for programs to make them better......What I meant to say......is..... easier.
John Opitz
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 21:02:53 EDT
From: DMargulis@aol.com
Subject: Re: Ignore EXIF Color Space Plug-in
Chris Murphy writes,
>>Of course now Dan, myself and the handful of other people (I forget who they are) who instantly had fit over this behavior are now vindicated.>>
There's no vindication involved; other than Adobe shills and sycophants, anybody with half a day of production experience knew this was ridiculous, and lots of people told Adobe so months ago. Some admittedly told them more bluntly than others. The point is that there is no excuse for ever releasing 7.0 in this form. Now that 7.0 has persuaded many users that profiles are bad things that cause trouble, the release of 7.0.1 hardly seems worth celebrating.
What we've just seen, with essentially the same cast of characters on the Adobe side, is a repeat of the 1998 Photoshop 5 experience:
1. Seduced by a color management argument that they don't understand, they propose some major interface change.
2. Lots of experts tell them way in advance that it either won't work or will screw up so many workflows as to be counterproductive, but they release the change anyway.
3. Real-world users who complain are publicly belittled and ridiculed.
4. When it becomes apparent that there is a real problem, it is blamed on some other segment of the industry.
5. Finally, having significantly set back the cause of color management by causing a lot of people to turn it off, out comes an embarrassing corrective upgrade that should never have been needed in the first place.
Well, what's done is done. I'm sorry that the spam warning on saving layered files wasn't eliminated and that the TIFF interface wasn't corrected. However, these problems are of the PITA nature, not workflow-breakers. I agree with Rick that Photoshop 7.0.1 now becomes usable for almost everyone for whom it previously wasn't.
Now that Adobe has conceded the error of its ways, before closing the discussion it's impossible to resist quoting as follows. ;-)
Dan Margulis
*******************
USER IN ONLINE FORUM:
> The new "Photoshop always complains if you don't have the composite turned on
> when saving in PSD format" and "Photoshop always marks a file 'changed' if you
> open a file and discard the embedded profile" bits are EAB (excessively
> annoying behavior). Fix that, and I may upgrade, but for right now I'm afraid
> that I'll take a pass.CHRIS COX of Adobe REPLIES:
It sounds like you listened to Dan Margulises piss and vinegar before getting
any real facts.....Dan's little rant should not be treated as a review--just
a list of things that Dan doesn't like, and things that don't fit with Dan's
narrow world view.
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