This is probably the most basic question possible, but I’m at work and they did not give me a manual or install the Help files so I’m kind of stuck… I need to preserve the color profiles of the documents sent to me from our scanning department. I open the the document and check "use the embedded profile." Question is, when I do a "Save As" should I check "embed color profile" or not? Does that embed a new profile from my preferences, or re-embed the original profile? Which option preserves the profile that was originally in the file? If I un-check the option, what color profile does the document end up with?
I open the the document and check "use the embedded profile." Question
is, when I do a "Save As" should I check "embed color profile" or not?
Yes, embed the profile.
Does that embed a new profile from my preferences, or re-embed the original
profile?
It embeds the original profile (as noted by check).
Which option preserves the profile that was originally in the file?
"use the embedded profile" when opening the document.
If I un-check the option, what color profile does the document end up
with?
The document will still reside in that colorspace, but it will be untagged (mystery meat). Image> Mode> ASSIGN (that specific) Profile will retag the document correctly.
It should tell you right next to the check box what profile is being embedded. If you open the file and have checked "Use Embedded Profile", then that’s the one that will be embedded. If you uncheck the embed profile option during a save as, the file will be untagged.
I suggest changing your Color Settings preferences to automatically preserve embedded profiles and uncheck the "Ask When Opening". That way, you will always use the embedded profile and never get the profile mismatch dialog.
What type of profile is being embedded? Is it a scanner profile, a working space RGB profile, or is it a final output profile? Depending on what is being embedded, you might want to revisit your working space choices and coordinate with your scanning department.
I suggest changing your Color Settings preferences to…uncheck the
"Ask When Opening".
That’s fair, of course, but an advanced move, IMO 🙂
I really like how Bruce Fraser puts this point out there:
Bruce) "The safest starting point is to set all Color Management Policies
to Preserve Embedded Profiles, and to turn all warnings on. The other two policies change either the numbers in the images or the interpretation of those numbers automatically, which is great if that’s something you understand and want to happen, but confusing at best and disastrous at worst when you don’t. The warnings give you a moment’s pause to consider the situation, and to act accordingly."
It should tell you right next to the check box what profile is being embedded.
Yes, but these files come to me with any one of two or three different profiles. These are supposed to be the final output profiles, so I assumed they’d use a single profile. That’s what was causing the confusion to me. I was starting to wonder if PS was finding profiles that resided in my preferences and trying to apply those to the file.
I think the dialog in PS7 just seems slightly confusing. Since I already asked it to preserve the profile when I opened the file, it doesn’t seem it ought to have to ask again when I save, unless it was changing something. At the most, it seems that it should be asking me at Save As to preserve the embedded profile, not to embed a profile. Or that it might give me a check box to "discard embedded profile." Whatever. It all makes sense after a little explanation.
Since I always have multiple color spaces going on at once and I always open up every image from archived DVD’s before tossing them from the hard drives, I’ve found that unchecking the Ask When Opening is a huge time saving convenience. I also generally leave the information window at the bottom left of the document window set to show the document profile, which also helps as a reminder.
Jon,
"Yes, but these files come to me with any one of two or three different profiles. These are supposed to be the final output profiles, so I assumed they’d use a single profile."
I think you need to ask them why they are using multiple profiles. Could be that the files are going to separate outputs, or it could be that they just aren’t paying attention.
"That’s what was causing the confusion to me. I was starting to wonder if PS was finding profiles that resided in my preferences and trying to apply those to the file."
No, PS doesn’t do anything like that on it’s own, UNLESS you had your preferences set to automatically convert, but we know that’s not happening. PS will only give you the mismatch warning based on what it finds already embedded in the file. You have to take explicit action to either assign or convert.
No, it just opens into whatever your workspace is set to. If there’s no embedded profile there can be no mismatch warning. It may mismatch your working space, but Photoshop won’t know it at the time. The file would save as untagged unless you assigned a profile to it and resaved it.
I am constantly amazed at the variety of color spaces that some people or companies use. I use a lot of stock images in completing jobs for certain clients and the images I get are all over the map. Tagged, untagged, tagged incorrectly, you name it. I start out seeing what an untagged file looks like in my working space and go from there. For me, it’s a lot easier to eliminate one more dialog box on the way.
That’s what I had assumed, Peter, and that’s why I keep the warnings ON. If the file gets flagged as being untagged, I like to see which profile it looks more reasonable in by Assigning different profiles and comparing. It’s just a reminder aide type of thing.
I say "reasonable" for the very reasons you mention. There’s no way of telling you what color space was used and then left untagged.
How do you know what all those untagged files are suppose to look like? This must be troubling from a content creator’s perspective seeing anyone can change the intended impact of an image by assigning any number of profiles.
I have old stock agency photos from the Masterfile CD that are all untagged. When opened in PS set to US Prepress defaults, they are very rich and dramatic looking. Anyone could accept these as they are and assign AdobeRGB.
But something tells me this is not the way they were intended to look. I found assigning Colormatch brings the color more down to earth, but I still am left wondering if it’s what the photographer intended.
Same thing on photographer’s sites where you know they must have converted to sRGB to retain such rich looking color. I can assign Colormatch and it looks more real to me, but I feel I’ve violated the artist’s vision.
I was wondering if there was some RGB number combo to go by in the file to get a better clue on the color.
I sometimes refer to the CMYK readouts and look for heavy black generation in what’s suppose to be intense colors to give some indication of what would be the proper space.
There are some new digital imaging instructional books by some very obscure authors at my local bookstore where the color is so muddy and dull, I was surprised it made it past the proofing stage.
"That’s what I had assumed, Peter, and that’s why I keep the warnings ON. If the file gets flagged as being untagged, I like to see which profile it looks more reasonable in by Assigning different profiles and comparing. It’s just a reminder aide type of thing."
I just got tired of having to hit the keyboard every time there was a mismatch. I always have the document profile in view anyway and if it says untagged, it catches my eye.
"How do you know what all those untagged files are suppose to look like? This must be troubling from a content creator’s perspective seeing anyone can change the intended impact of an image by assigning any number of profiles."
I’m not sure what you mean? I don’t necessarily care what they were "supposed" to look like, I make them how I want them to look.
"I have old stock agency photos from the Masterfile CD that are all untagged. When opened in PS set to US Prepress defaults, they are very rich and dramatic looking. Anyone could accept these as they are and assign AdobeRGB."
Most RGB files are going to be Adobe1998, ColorMatch or sRGB. Only rarely is something going to be different.
"I sometimes refer to the CMYK readouts and look for heavy black generation in what’s suppose to be intense colors to give some indication of what would be the proper space."
Tim – this makes no sense whatsoever. The CMYK readouts are based on whatever CMYK output profile you have loaded, and any black plate information from the profile would have no bearing on the proper RGB color space for that image. The proper color space is whatever makes the image look best for the intended purpose.
I only use CMYK readouts as a guide. I’m output gamut centric at the moment until I can get a better wider gamut capture device.
When I examine the AdobeRGB tagged PDI file’s CMYK readouts of saturated colors under PS’s optimistic SWOP profile space, black and CMY ratio generation are as expected from how I’ve seen this file reproduced and checked against my CMYK swatch manual. Most of the colors in the PDI file are within gamut of PS’s SWOP and the Epson 2200 which accounts for the lack of preview change when Soft Proofing.
If you were to reassign sRGB to that file you’ld see a dulling of colors showing up as heavier black generation and dirtier CMY ratios in saturated and normal primary colors. I look for this as a guide when profile fishing for optimum color in untagged files only.
My eye adapts too quickly to color intensity and I have a hard time judging proper saturation when looking at a bunch of untagged mystery meat images generated many years ago. Or any batch of untagged images for that matter.
It happens with my untagged scanned negs off the Fuji Frontier. I’m a little taken aback by the saturation levels when assigning AdobeRGB. I assign sRGB or the canned Fuji Neg Scan profile which both significantly dull the color but look closest to the print.
But I want to beef up the print, so I go profile fishing by assigning several wider gamut working space profiles like JoeRGB, BruceRGB or NTSC which give better CMYK readouts than sRGB. Once chosen I then convert to the Frontier printer space. It really improves the prints without me having to individually edit all those jpegs.
I’m not dealing in wider gamut input photography I’m assuming you are doing.
Once again, what you’re doing is reading what the CMYK number would be IF you converted using THAT profile. Load a different profile and you’ll get entirely different numbers and it hasn’t changed a thing about your RGB file. Simply assigning a different RGB profile does not change the black generation of the CMYK profile you have loaded. It can’t. It will change the specific CMYK numbers, but not the black plate. You just can’t make a connection between an unrelated CMYK conversion and you RGB output. The two have nothing to do with each other.
BTW, JoeRGB is wider than Adobe, but BruceRGB is not while NTSC extends further into the reds and less into the blues that AdobeRGB. Assigning alternate RGB spaces is a valid way of working, but you have to understand what’s happening and why.
"If I ruled the world, Assign Profile would only be enabled for already-tagged
files if the user correctly answered 100 or so fairly tough color management questions, and signed a waiver. It’s fine for people who know what they’re doing to experiment with Assign Profile, but it’s really an expert feature…".
From the responses, I feel I still haven’t communicated effectively what I mean to say. I understand completely what you’re talking about, but it’s just not worth arguing over.
If I assign a narrower gamut RGB profile to an already visualy optimized RGB file created/captured in an ideal working space, it DOES change the CMYK mixes when color settings are set to US Prepress Defaults in PS. I’ll leave it at that.
the BIG problem with adobe CM as it stands is THERE IS NO FAIL SAFE!
if adobe CM was an airliner, would you fly in it?
it needs to be (for want of a better word, casting no aspersions) IDIOT PROOF and cater for the common denominator (trolly dolly) without affecting the pilots capability or radar.
someone who has no clue as to the consequences should have no easy way or ability to affect them without due warning.
Fail safe for what? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
How do you determine what tag to assign to an untagged unknown RGB image? Rely on the operator’s taste in color?
What if you get a series of scanned abstract art with brilliant seemingly oversaturated colors (psychodelic for want of a better word) but no clue where they came from? How do you know what to assign? Who calls the shots?
