[Openicc] GoSoC 2011: CPD and target printing

[Chris Murphy]

On May 15, 2011, at 9:06 PM, Graeme Gill wrote:

> Chris Murphy wrote:
> 
>> On both Mac OS and Windows it's always been best practices, until recently, to print
>> targets from Photoshop with No Color Management, or directly from the profile
>> generation app (e.g. ColorMuni or Eye One Match). It is NOT best practices to do it
>> with a web browser, or a word processing application. I don't even test that workflow,
>> I would never recommend it, I do not expect that it should work correctly. Those apps
>> have nothing to do with custom profiling at all. I completely disagree with the idea
>> that every app should have the ability to print profile targets. It's one tenth of one
>> percent of the market.
> 
> You are quite right, that it's not practical. But note the problem with
> the Mac is that it stopped being possible to reliably print test charts
> in Photoshop and Apples own program, preview.

I know it seems related, but they it's a figment of our imagination. It's just a knee jerk reaction to the problems on Mac OS to say we want all users to have a master off switch for system level color transformations, and then put that master switch in the print dialog.


> But again, this is my point - if the basic capability was inherent
> in the printing system, then any and every application would
> be reliably capable of printing test charts, better ensuring that the
> test chart prints reflect the all the other printing conditions accurately.

Again you don't know this. It may be true an overwhelming majority of the time with today's apps, but that's only because so many are clueless when it comes to color management. If and when more of them are, you can't be assured that the developers of these apps anticipate some arcane desire by someone to use their app to print profile targets, and haven't already converted content the moment the image data (the target in this case) enters application domain.

It's misleading, and it's clutter for all but a teeny tiny number of users. If it's going to get hidden by default, which it should to prevent clutter for most users, now it's no longer discoverable for the users who'd need it. Putting it into the print dialog, you're hosed from multiple angles no matter what angle you look at it from. It appears to not belong in the print dialog.

And if you're going to have apps that trigger the revelation of this option in the print dialog, I don't see why that isn't already a special target printing application right then and there.

Chris Murphy