[cairo] Subtractive API, part 0

[ecir hana]

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:

> I follow this up to this point. There is always a "right" ICC profile for the source space.

Where you get the profile from? The manufacturer?

> And there is a rather constrained range of "right" ICC profiles for the destination output process.

Where you get the profile from? A measurement? "constrained" and
"right" seems to be an oxymoron.

> I don't understand the characterization "that the numbers of possible ICCs grows
> exponentially". That statement doesn't make sense.

A printed color is affected by multiple things: paper, ink, dot gain,
... I would expect that for every combination there should be a
profile. All the possibilities form a tree, hence the exponential
growth in size.

> Generic conversions to output space will result in generic output that will often require an
> iterative proof-correction cycle to fine tune the result. Had you had the correct source
> (likely) and correct destination (less likely) profiles, then the color separation would have
> been made for the output condition, and you'd have extremely good correlation to what you
> wanted in the first place.

Again, where can I get a destination profile for some random printer
and random paper? And how could I get possibly good result if I don't
have the right destination profile? From that costly iterative cycle?

On the other hand, if I knew the paper was uncoated and soaked too
much ink, I could increase dot gain compensation and decrease ink
coverage. This is what I meant by "experience" - be it yours (even as
content creator) or that old guy at the company who is printing 30
years.

> The "experience" workflow is a relic of a by-gone era. Modern printers understand they need to adhere to established print standards so that people can use standard output profiles for standard printing conditions, because it enables modern manufacturing principles. The custom workflow that requires "experience" is the antithesis of a modern manufacturing process because every job is treated as custom. It's expensive. It's slow. And while such workflows exist, it is not a growth industry, just the opposite.

"'experience' is the antithesis of a modern manufacturing" - I must
agree once again. I'm all for objective process where everything is
written down so you can backtrack in case of a failure. I guess this
is why we are having this discussion, in the first place.