[Openicc] Colormanagement in Gutenprint

[Hal V Engel]

On Wednesday 20 April 2005 12:03 pm, Carol Spears wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 02:39:39PM +0200, Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote:
> > The price for a simplistic and easy setup today - user tells via print
> > queue what source colour space is used - is a lot of confusion in the
> > future. If the application is dumb regarding colour profiles, it will be
> > a hassle and a source of uncertainty to use named queues for source
> > profile specification.
>
> maybe i am completely wrong, but it seems to me that there is
> uncertainty regarding color profiles now.  meaning, if you are not using
> a specific chain of software that ends with a printer that has been
> professionally installed and calibrated you are not getting color
> management.  and this is a price we are paying because it was not set up
> simple and easy to begin with.
>
> feel free to correct me ....
>
> carol
>

There is at least a grain of truth in what you wrote.  But I don't think you 
need to have professionally installed and calibrated profiles/printers to see 
a significant benefit from using profiles.  On Windows if I use Epson 
everything (driver, printer, paper, ink)  using the canned Epson profiles 
with the work flow recommended by Epson I get very good results. But of 
course the results will not be as good as with a custom profile.  For many 
users these printer vendor supplied profiles would be a significant 
improvement over a non-CM printer work flow.   Now to do this users have to 
do some additional installation steps that are not part of the standard Epson 
driver installation and also have to read a bunch of Epson documentation to 
know what the Epson recommenced work flow is.   So this is not something that 
your average user even knows exists.

The real issue is, that with current systems and software, setting up and 
using a CM work flow is difficult enough that most users will find it too 
burdensome.  In my opinion this is because of flawed software and I think 
that with a better implementation that CM can become accessable to many more 
users.  In fact many of the options we have talked about would allow casual 
users to use a basic default CM printing work flow with canned profiles 
without their having to know anything at all about it.  They would not get 
the full benefits but they would still see a benefit. 

It is not so much that things are not simple and easy it is that the 
implementations that exist today exposed (or didn't expose) the details in 
ways that make this appear to be more complex than it needs to appear.  Part 
of this is because of fragmentation of the functionality that makes setting 
and using an end to end process difficult.  While at the same time not giving 
users or administrators a way to hide details when it would be good to do 
this.  The real issue is how do we correct the flaws that exist in current 
implementations to take CM out of the realm of experts and make it accessable 
to others without losing the flexibility that experts need to get the 
absolute most of the printers they use/support.   I think this is possible 
but it will not be easy to do.


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