[Openicc] GoSoC 2011: CPD and target printing (Michael Sweet)

[Scott Geffert]

To Michael and Chris and others,

I had two encounters this week in the US regarding the topic of Apple and printing. One was a meeting in NY with senior management from a major printing manufacturer and a top contemporary artist. After explaining the problems that they have experienced with color on their Mac systems, the vendor told them to run Vista and the problems would go away.

I am sitting in Austin Texas now in a hotel (why I'm on this computer now I have no idea) but I have been working on a color printing project here where multiple printers  and operating systems need to tie in to an e-commerce workflow. The topic once more shifts to the fact that the windows platform is currently far easier to navigate regarding color.

This pains me to hear because I have always been an Apple advocate, but I think Chris is right that while the intentions may be  good, the current Apple product hitting the street literally prevents people from using standards to build sound sustainable workflow. Considering that the day rate of a color consultant costs the customer more than the Mac CPU this is a huge problem. I argue that after well over a decade of color management no one should need to hire a color consultant to create their own profiles. The act of making a profile could not be easier, and has been easy since day one. Turning off color management, and navigating the chaotic mix of application and print driver UI's are the parts that have degraded to a point of complete dysfunction.

To those that want to remove UI elements like a "none" setting for printing charts you are completely off base period. There is not a user I know that would have a problem with the word "none" or "off" in an ICC color dialog, or digital raw processor color dialog. It's not very forward thinking or innovative to remove control from the user.

Every week I run into this problem and every night I come home to read more of the trouble online. In any case, these problems are as real as can be, and the costs and pain are mounting daily. If Apple laid out a clear strategy to re-embrace "classic" ICC universal UI guidelines including and off switch, A big negative could become a huge positive!

Scott





On May 12, 2011, at 11:07 PM, openicc-request at lists.freedesktop.org wrote:

> GoSoC 2011: CPD and target printing (Michael Sweet)