Color management/Printing Workflow Question

[Bryan Conner]

So silly. What is the point of having a profile to soft proof if you have no idea what rendering intent is being used, what CMM (with or without BPC), not knowing if they even use that profile (it is currently representative of the process) and you can’t edit the data for the soft proof? It is a brain dead, make the customer feel the shop is using CMS when they are not mindset. Might as well say “you have to send us sRGB” and forget the soft proof profile. Either fully commit to a proper color management workflow or just don’t. But to attempt to make customers feel the shop is using color management when they really are not is just a lie.

Andrew, your comment above is completely logical and to the point.

This is precisely the reason I was confused.  We have a tool (color management) that is logical to use...it is called MANAGEMENT!  I had the feeling that some printing companies were only saying that they were using color management in order to pacify those that question.  I could not see the logic in offering profiles to use but also stating that it is unnecessary to imbed the profile in the image.

I do not understand why a company would invest a ton of money to purchase printers such as an Epson GS6000, or an Epson 9900 and not want to implement color management.  Is it because they are afraid of screwing up due to not understanding color management?

Is there a way to "sniff out" if a printing company is actually using a fully color managed workflow?  Would sending the same file multiple times, each time with a different profile attached work?  i.e. ProPhoto, sRGB etc. 

 

[Hening Bettermann]

>> Digitaloriginal adviced me to deliver files in a standard RGB color space, NOT to embedd the paper profile they offer for soft proofing.

> So silly.

I am afraid my quoting was inaccurate. What he wrote was that I should enter a standard profile in the "Printer ICC" field in Qimage, and that the paper profile would be applied on the fly.

He also mailed information regarding rendering intent (perceptual) and BPC (+). This info is not yet accessible from the web site. Edit: here is the link he sent me:
http://www.digitaloriginal.de/info/icc-profile.php

> Is there a way to "sniff out" if a printing company is actually using a fully color managed workflow?  Would sending the same file multiple times, each time with a different profile attached work?  i.e. ProPhoto, sRGB etc.
  
I sent Andrews test image for a test print, converted to ProPhoto. When I got the prints in return, he had on his own added a print of the image in the original ColorMatch space. Both matched the screen image very good.

Good light - Hening.

[Peter_DL]

A colorspace conversion is taking place ... sRGB isn’t going directly to the printer, somewhere there is a conversion to the native output color space. The de facto printed gamut will most likely deviate from sRGB (and all one has to do is build a profile from the process and plot that gamut to see this).

Nope,
no colorspace conversion. The Fuji printer ignores embedded profiles.
The RGB data supplied are simply converted to print "as they are".

What we are talking about here is a wrong or less wrong Assign / gamut assumption
as opposed to Convert. Trust you know the difference.

If the RGB data supplied are in ProPhoto RGB, it is simply a totally wrong assumption about the print gamut. The print will be hosed. If the RGB data are in sRGB, it is a somewhat less wrong assumption. Good enough for Many. And if the RGB data were derived by proper conversion into the printer profile, it should be an accurate, CM correct approach – depending on the quality of the printer profile though.

Let’s focus on mechanisms instead of semantics.

Peter

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[digitaldog]

Nope,
no colorspace conversion. The Fuji printer ignores embedded profiles.
The RGB data supplied are simply converted to print "as they are".

Yes, agreed to a point. Depending on the front end, there is no color space conversion using an ICC profile. But sRGB numbers are being converted to a different set of values for output. As you wrote, ‘converted to print’. Again, there is no such thing as an sRGB printer. There are front end options that fully support ICC profiles (source and destination).

If the RGB data supplied are in ProPhoto RGB, it is simply a totally wrong assumption about the print gamut. The print will be hosed.

Yes because the front end, the process that converts to the actual native color space for the print process assumes sRGB. That doesn’t mean sRGB is what gets fed to the output device to make the print. There is a conversion to the native color space necessary to make a print.

[Bryan Conner]

It would be really nice if there were an industry wide accepted standard process to follow. The fact that there is not one this late in the color management game is amazing to me.  Why is there no standardization for printing companies?