Need Color Management Advice

LP
Posted By
Luis_Puncel
Oct 17, 2003
Views
140
Replies
7
Status
Closed
I have a question about Color Management. I know this may be considered a tired subject to some, but I have searched and read previous posts on the subject, read two books and several web sites and still am unsure. Before going on, I should mention that I have adjusted my monitor using Adobe Gamma.

Michael Aaland’s excellent book "Photoshop Elements Solutions The Art of Digital Photography", which is the first Elements book I read suggests that you keep the color management setting to No Color Management, "even if you are tempted otherwise." This is the way I initially set up Elements and I have since processed hundreds of photos this way.

Then I recently read the equally excellent book "The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers", wherein Scott Kelby recommends that "before you color correct anything", you should change program settings to "Use Color Management".

So,after reading Kelby’s book, and finding all of his other advice excellent, I turned Color Management on. Then I started to notice a blue cast in the whites of pictures I am working on in Elements. Other colors seem a bit more saturated, but not in an annoying way, but the blue tint in anything white is most noticeable. This blue tint is nearly impossible to process out of the photos. I have since turned color management off, but have tried an experiment printing the same picture with color management on and then off. Frankly, I don’t notice a difference in the printed results, while I do see a marked difference on the screen.

So should I be concerned, or just leave Color Management off and forget about it? I have invested hundreds of hours scanning and restoring old family photos, but have not printed many. I don’t want to invest several hundred hours more and then decide at a future date to have some prints made or share my pictures with others, only to discover that the color is off on all of my pictures.

Some sage advice would be appreciated here.
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Elena Murphy
Oct 17, 2003
Luis, sometimes a lot of what you see in Color Management is just the result of your monitor profile. You’ll also have a profile for your scanner and your printer in a true color corrected world. If you liked things the way they were before, leave them that way. You could try adjusting your Gamma to more accurately reflect what you’re seeing in print, but this is kind of backwards to the usual process where you get your printout to match what you see on screen.
If you look in the Print Preview dialog box and click on the More Options button and select Color Management from the popup menu there, you’ll see you can play with the output color management settings too, which is where Elements tries to tweak what your printer will output. This may be an area you want to experiement with too. But the bottom line is, if you are happy with your printed results, don’t mess with it.
There’s a reason this is called "color science". Some people have masters degrees in it. Lots of us just try to get it to the point where it works and then don’t mess with it.
Regardless of what you do, there is always the possibility that when others view or print your images, they will get different results, regardless of what you do at your end.
BB
Barbara_Brundage
Oct 17, 2003
Luis, I would keep in mind the reason that color management exists. The idea is to get prints that are as close as possible to your original. If you were already getting those, then there is no point in turning on color management.

If you have an employee who does a great job, does adding an extra manager to keep an eye on him and constantly make suggestions to him usually make him work better?

EDIT Hi, Elena. Didn’t see you before.
LP
Luis_Puncel
Oct 17, 2003
Thanks Barbara and Elena for helping me keep things in perspective.

Luis
RL
Richard_Lynch
Oct 18, 2003
I’ve written a bit about color management, and I am not a proponent of embedding profiles, for more than one reason. I am having a little difficulty finding my earlier postings on the forum here on this subject, but have some information here:

Richard Lynch "Printer Resolution, one more time" 10/4/03 8:38am </cgi-bin/webx?13/29>

and here:

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hpe/message/15>

See the topic "Color Management and Getting the Color You Want" under Long Answers.

The short of it, you really need to know why you are adding color profiles to your equation before you do it, and you shouldn’t just do it because it is there. if you did that, you should also feel it a requirement to use every tool in elements to improve your images every time you correct an image! I work happily with color management set to Off, and having calibrated my monitor (a must) and generated a simple ICC profile ( can be done all at once using Adobe Gamma). This tells Elements how to show you your image, and that preview is more important than embedding a profile.

Some of the recommendations of experts are well intended, but vague, because even a lot of professionals are not clear on what color management does. It can help you improve your good results — like taking a good original will help you get even better results in Photoshop. But just like you can’t ever expect great results in using bad images as source, you can’t expect great color results from profiling without first knowing you can get good results without it. If turning it on were the only correct solution, Adobe wouldn’t offer you the choice. Most people that I help do better by turning color management OFF and calibrating correctly.

All I can say is, lots of people were convinced the world was flat at one point. Often the biggest mouth isn’t the best one to listen to. calibrationists get paid a LOT for their theories, and while I bet they can get results, so can you, a lot cheaper, with better methods.

Richard Lynch
LP
Luis_Puncel
Oct 18, 2003
Thanks Richard. You have given me some things to read and consider. I think I understand your "adjustment layer" method of simulating the printed result. I will try it. If things don’t work out, I will be back with questions.

Right now the only problem I seem to have vis a vis printed results differing appreciably from the screen are black and whites (old photos which I have restored.) When I print them, there is a definite color cast (pink, and then when I try to correct I get a blue cast.) Even when I click "remove all color" and print a black and white, I get a blue tint to the black and white photo.

Luis
LK
Leen_Koper
Oct 19, 2003
Luis, exact colourmanagement is extremely difficult. The person who calibrated my set up told me "Leave it to us, it is our job and don’t spoil any time on it, as it is you, photographers, to do what you can do the best, taking photographs, and leave the rest to us".
He was right -BTW, color management in "my" Elements is turned off now- and told me -like I noticed before- that the quality of standard profiles for Epson printers generally is excellent, so the only thing I had to calibrate regularly was my monitor.

Of course this is of very little help to you, but why not try to send one of your images with embedded profile to a good professional lab, have it printed and compare this one to your own printer results? This way you will know where the problem might be located.

Leen
DP
Donald_Pike
Oct 19, 2003
Barbara,

Reading your message makes me think you work for the Postal Service, or have insider knowledge. I am a letter Carrier and what you have suggested is exactly what the Postal Service does!!! (LOL!)

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