[Openicc] Colormanagement in Gutenprint

[Hal V Engel]

On Wednesday 20 April 2005 01:32 pm, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Carol Spears wrote:
> > 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.
>
> That is not quite true.  If the user puts his display in the "sRGB"
> setting (or uses a vendor-provided display profile), ensures that the
> display grayscale is visibly linear across the range, and there is a
> vendor-provided profile for the printer, there can still be helpful
> color management, it just may not be very accurate.
>
> The situation is certainly no worse than assuming that all RGB is
> "sRGB".
>
> Bob
> ======================================

There is also an open source utility to help with setting up your monitor to 
have the correct gamma and black point named monica.  Using this or something 
like it will help you get your monitor in the ball park.  Not exact but 
fairly close.  You should do this even if you are not using color management.  
Argyllcms has command line apps that will use a colorspectrometer to generate 
monitor profiles for those that want to be more precise.  Of course right now 
the only open source apps that will use a monitor profile are Scribus and 
CinePaint.  But GIMP will have this capability soon.

The printer part of CM is far and away the most complex part.  Profiling 
cameras and scanners and using those profiles is almost trivial by 
comparison.  Monitors fall about midway between these two extremes.  Since we 
have been talking about printers you can see that even a group with high 
levels of expertise is struggling with that complexity.  Hopefully when this 
is implemented we can hide most of the complexity from non-expert users while 
still giving them access to most of the benefits.