[Openicc] [Gimp-print-devel] [Printing-architecture] Colour

[edmund ronald]

Michael,

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Michael Sweet <msweet at apple.com> wrote:
>
> In any case, whether they provide such controls or not, the default should
> be to do a good job of rendering colors in the handoff space their driver
> specifies. "Vivid" color should be an option, not a default.

Indeed, good default behavior is desirable!

>

> While you are quick to blame ColorSync, the issue of providing colors in the
> device color space to avoid transforms is well-known and every profiling
> tool I know of for the Mac already does the right thing to print a target.

At the ICC we seem to have a collective sense that printing profiling
targets *reliably* is presently impossible. Furthermore Joe User
cannot know whether his target was printed correctly or not.

> The most common problem is drivers - vendors incorrectly choose defaults or
> ignore color settings (applying *both* the colorsync profile *and* their own
> "enhancements") which leads to strange results. A very common problem with
> the Epson drivers is that the Epson color controls are not actually disabled
> in ColorSync mode! However, bugs like those are propagated to avoid
> "breaking" existing users' workflows (!?!)

Yes, indeed. But those bugs we could live with. Targets not printing, we cannot.

> So, while you may be able to use custom printer profiles with off-the-shelf
> printer drivers under specific circumstances, most people lack the knowledge
> or equipment to actually make use of those profiles, so I say they are of
> limited usefulness with less than ideal results.

I strongly disagree. Professional photographers and enthusiasts are
now every day downloading custom profiles from media vendor sites,
they are buying solutions such as ColorMunki and Spyder3Print. Photo
labs use Mac systems by the thousands with standard inkjet drivers and
custom media profiles to do big enlargements. Every Photoshop photo
tutorial book now documents profiled printing with custom profiles.
Enough already. Give us back our ability to print targets, and let us
then choose a forum for the public discussion of desirable exposed
features of inkjet drivers - I suggest this be debated within the ICC
Digital Photography Workgroup.


> ___________________________________________________
> Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer