[Openicc] ALL YOU NEED IS A PROFILE, THE MYTH. (WAS CC Profiles In X Specification and dispwin)

[edmund ronald]

I think I need to put out a new topic explaining why PROFILES COME LAST.

Profiles allow softproofing on screen. They allow simulation. They
allow gamut mapping. BUT THEY COME LAST.

The inkjet industry has been exposing "visible" profiles because they
allow the above (softproofing, simulation, gamut mapping) when used
with Photoshop. However in practice, the profile will only get decent
results if the press or inkjet driver are already pretty well tuned to
put down the right amount of ink on paper.

The inkjet native drivers do this, in a "secret" way. Which is why
using third party papers or inks is complicated. No surprise here,
inkjet manufacturers make their profit from paper and ink sales.

What the inkjet guys and RIP resellers really guarantee in exchange of
their excessive profits is perfect stability. A print run today and in
one year with new inks, a new batch of paper,  and maybe with a
different OS and maybe with a PC instead of a Mac, and maybe even a
new printer of the same brand and model etc etc will usually still
yield results that are usably close. This is why canned profiles are
useful, why third party profiling makes sense, and why end-users don't
need spectros.

Before open-source people start to worry their heads about profiles
they should first turn their attention to obtaing the same degree of
cross-platform cross-application and time-invariant stability
guaranteed by the native printer drivers.

PROFILES COME LAST, folks, really..Just like Gutenprint is already
pretty useful, Argyll is also very good; Lots of people own spectros,
and they're getting cheaper. Profiles themselves are easy to make.
Creyating the preconditions for a good profile is hard.

1. If your printer drivers have a block the shadows or have an
insufficient gamut because of bad linearisation, color consultants
will advise users to use native drivers because  it's very hard to
compensate for bad linearisation.

2. If your system keeps varying its output each time you update then
your end-users will get VERY unhappy and will ditch your apps presto.

In summary: Profiles are the last link in the printing chain, and
probably the most trivial step for well-equipped domain experts to
achieve, even if this appears counter-intuitive to programmers.

Edmund