[Openicc] GoSoC 2011: CPD and ... Mike Sweet workflow

[Chris Murphy]

On May 13, 2011, at 12:52 AM, Graeme Gill wrote:

> Michael Sweet wrote:
>> So no, I don't want users printing targets from arbitrary applications that have no
>> notion of color management. Instead I want to see applications that are specifically
>> written to print targets, measure them, and produce profiles that can be used by
>> arbitrary applications.
> 
> Nearly all existing color profiling tools assume that a normal
> test chart printing process can involve using a normal application
> (like Photoshop) to print the chart.

Nope. Photoshop is not a normal application. Not for a long time now. Not CS4 and not CS5. That "No Color Management" option was using a private undocumented SPI to indirectly disable ColorSync transforms. That same feature is gone in CS5, and now moved to the Adobe Color Printing Utility, which uses the same SPI (kPMApplicationColorMatching).


> Taking away this capability
> and not providing any other means of achieving this necessary
> step (never mind negating the possibility of application color
> matching on the assumption that there is no justification for it),
> flies in the face of reality.

While that is the reality, I think I'm hearing Michael admit this reality is at least unfortunate if not a mistake on Apple's part. The SPI is being shared with more developers, I'm told privately, but still it's a private SPI it is not documented and it's still only slightly easier than pulling teeth to get information about it. And in my view it's fundamentally flawed anyway, and could never be anything but a disaster for apps more complicated than Photoshop (i.e. one image = one object in the PDF spool; e.g. like InDesign which would produces hundreds or thousands of objects in the PDF.)

> 
> If this is the way Apple sees it, no wonder there are a lot
> of angry Color professionals out there. I certainly wouldn't
> want to see any of the Linux systems to go down this route.

Again, I don't think we need to worry about this on Linux. It requires a massive distortion of reality and denial to come up with something this overly complicated that has consistently not worked for every single party involved: Apple, Adobe, HP, Epson, Canon, and all of their users have had nothing but problems with this scheme since it hatched, and was predicted it would be a huge problem, in advance, by 1/2 dozen people when the egg was laid, including yours truly.


Chris Murphy