[Leica] I can't print my petunias!!

[images at comporium.net (Tina Manley)]

At 11:38 PM 8/20/2007, you wrote:
>Don, his monitor won't show that colour space though, and that's 
>where the printing decisions are made. Only the very best of the
>Eizo's will show 96% of Adobe RGB. I'm surprised regarding the 
>printer substantially showing that colour space though???? If you're
>making editing decisions in ProPhoto RGB you risk significant 
>remapping, surely?
>My 3800 and 800 both custom profiled and soft-proof beautifully, but 
>certainly won't reproduce the very high end blues. This is less
>apparent with greens for me. I'd be very interested if you have some 
>references for that Epson colour space capability.
>
>Worthy of a thread, I think.
>
>Cheers
>Hoppy


Hoppy -

I agree, it's worthy of a thread - and several books!  It's my 
understanding that the input devices - cameras and scanners - can 
capture more colors than can be displayed or printed by the output 
devices - monitors and printers.  It's probably a good idea to use 
the widest color space you can, in this case, ProPhoto RGB, as long 
as you know that some colors will be out of gamut and can determine 
which rendering intent is the best one to use to specify which colors 
will replace the ones that are out of gamut.  Bruce Fraser recommends 
using relative colorimetric most of the time since it preserves more 
of the original colors.  Relative colorimetric matches the white of 
the source to the white of the destination since our eyes adapt the 
other colors to the way we see white.  It keeps the in gamut colors 
the same and clips the out of gamut colors.  Perceptual changes all 
of the colors so the relationship of the colors to each other remain 
the same but all colors fit into the gamut.  When you get into very 
saturated or vivid colors the rendering intent can make a big 
difference.  I started researching color management when I ran into 
problems with this photo:

http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/69780688

The color of the cosmos is totally out of gamut.  To my eyes, it 
prints best with relative colorimetric but the print doesn't begin to 
match the colors that I see on the monitor.  My monitor is an Eizo 
profiled with Gretag Macbeth.  I'm printing on an Epson 4800 using 
ImagePrint profiles.  There is nothing wrong with the color of the 
print - it probably is a closer match to what the flower actually 
looked like. (Maybe this is a Leica M8 magenta issue ;-)) Relative 
colorimetric replaces the out of gamut reddish purple with a bluish 
purple.  I've tried using other color spaces and did work for awhile 
with just Adobe RGB but ProPhoto RGB does include more colors that 
can be seen on the monitor and printed than Adobe RGB does.  As long 
as you know that it also contains colors that can't be seen or 
printed and choose the rendering intent that will give you the 
closest results, it's probably the best space to use for everything 
except the web.  Bruce Fraser says that Adobe Camera Raw uses 
ProPhoto RGB to do its processing.  I'm only about half-way through 
his Real World Color Management book but I've used it as a reference 
book to answer a lot of my color mangement questions.

Tina

Tina Manley
ASMP, NPPA, EP, PI
http://www.tinamanley.com