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Using Printer Profiles

gavini
I use C1 LE, and I want to prepare my RAW files for an online print service. This service (Pikto in Toronto) supplies three print profiles - matte, glossy or metallic - for its AGFA D-Lab2 printer.

My question is how (or if) I can embed one of these profiles without resorting to Photoshop.

C1 LE appears to manage profiles in two places:
1. Color Management Window in the Workflow dropdown. There is a place to specify the output destination profile, which I've currently set to Canon sRGB
2. The Color management workflow in the process tab (Convert to Destination, Embed Camera Profile etc)

I've added the Pikto profiles so that they appears in the Color Management Window listing of available profiles. Should I be specifying it here?

Any help appreciated.
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Comments

8 comments

Date Votes
  • Anonymous
    gavini,

    Great question, these profiles are becoming more available by various printing services.
    You will want to be sure to:
    > Color Calibrate your monitor and have file loaded in Color Management
    > Have Color Management on / enabled
    > Select the printer profile as the Destination in Color Management window
    > Adjust image to desired color
    > Reset Destination in Color Management to be sRGB
    > Set Process tab Color Management Workflow to be Convert to Destination
    > Process images

    In general, if D-lab is printing onto Kodak paper - use Adobe RGB 1998
    and if Fuji - use sRGB for best results. If other, then test test test.

    Hope this helps you get great print results.

    Sincerely,
    kc
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  • enigma54
    [quote="Keith Carpenter" wrote:
    gavini,

    Great question, these profiles are becoming more available by various printing services.
    You will want to be sure to:

    > Color Calibrate your monitor and have file loaded in Color Management
    > Have Color Management on / enabled
    > Select the printer profile as the Destination in Color Management window
    <b>> Adjust image to desired color
    > Reset Destination in Color Management to be sRGB
    > Set Process tab Color Management Workflow to be Convert to Destination
    > Process images</b>


    I'd like one clarification on the steps posted above:

    After adjusting the image to the desired color using the printer profile as the Destination in Color Management, why is it necessary to reset Destination to sRGB and then processing the image with "Convert to Destination", which is in sRGB??

    If I were to NOT reset the Destination to sRGB and just leave the Destination with the printer profile, then set Process tab Color Management Workflow to be "Convert to Web" (which I set to sRGB), would this produce the same result??

    Thanks in advance!
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  • gavini
    I'm also a little confused by the need to set the destination colour space back to sRGB.

    All I know is that my experiment with Pikto seemed to work. I saved four RAW files to JPEGs with the Working Space set to the Pikto Print profile that I wanted. I purposely chose files with sky, foliage, skin and evening light dominant in them. With the exception of the (yellowish) evening light, the prints are a very close match with what I see on my monitor, which I calibrated using the Adobe Gamma utility. The yellow was a little too intense relative to the monitor's rendition. Red and green tones, which I find are the worst culprits when you don't get the print profiles right, were rendered very well.

    I checked the JPEGs in CS2, and found that, sure enough, C1 had attached the Pikto print profile I selected.
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  • enigma54
    [quote="gavini" wrote:
    I'm also a little confused by the need to set the destination colour space back to sRGB.

    All I know is that my experiment with Pikto seemed to work. I saved four RAW files to JPEGs with the Working Space set to the Pikto Print profile that I wanted. I purposely chose files with sky, foliage, skin and evening light dominant in them. With the exception of the (yellowish) evening light, the prints are a very close match with what I see on my monitor, which I calibrated using the Adobe Gamma utility. The yellow was a little too intense relative to the monitor's rendition. Red and green tones, which I find are the worst culprits when you don't get the print profiles right, were rendered very well.

    I checked the JPEGs in CS2, and found that, sure enough, C1 had attached the Pikto print profile I selected.


    I'm also in Toronto and have been thinking of trying Pikto - are you happy with the overall print quality and service?

    I'd like to use C1 for every step of the workflow without having to resort to Photoshop. Can you confirm that these are your steps:

    1) In the Color Management settings, set the Ouput Destination (Working Space) to the Pikto printer profile and adjust colors/exposure as needed.
    2) In the Process tab, choose "Convert to Destination" - this final step I think effectively converts the RAW to JPEG with the Pikto printer profile attached.

    Also, what sharpening settings did you use? I've found that using Standard, 250 for amount and 3 for threshold worked well.
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  • Anonymous
    [
    quote]After adjusting the image to the desired color using the printer profile as the Destination in Color Management, why is it necessary to reset Destination to sRGB and then processing the image with \"Convert to Destination\", which is in sRGB??


    If you are sending images to a lab, they may or may not want a file that has been converted to the printer profile. Only the lab will be able to answer this question for you.

    If I were to NOT reset the Destination to sRGB and just leave the Destination with the printer profile, then set Process tab Color Management Workflow to be \"Convert to Web\" (which I set to sRGB), would this produce the same result??


    Yes, this would produce the same result. 💡 This is excellent and seems quite wise to me.

    The confusion or awkwardness here is that Windows version does not truly Soft Proof as does the MAC version of Capture One. This is why you switch Destination to/from the output profile you're working with.

    Be less critical of a print to monitor match if you have not used an analytical monitor calibration kit to establish monitor profile; and are not viewing print under the industry standard D50 illumination lighting.
    Lighting From a Monitor may never be able to perfectly match light reflection from a print, but it can come darn close.

    Regards,
    kc
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  • gavini
    [quote="enigma54" wrote:


    I'm also in Toronto and have been thinking of trying Pikto - are you happy with the overall print quality and service?

    I'd like to use C1 for every step of the workflow without having to resort to Photoshop. Can you confirm that these are your steps:

    1) In the Color Management settings, set the Ouput Destination (Working Space) to the Pikto printer profile and adjust colors/exposure as needed.
    2) In the Process tab, choose "Convert to Destination" - this final step I think effectively converts the RAW to JPEG with the Pikto printer profile attached.

    Also, what sharpening settings did you use? I've found that using Standard, 250 for amount and 3 for threshold worked well.


    Your steps are the ones I used. As for sharpening, there is no flat, simple guideline to follow. I tend to follow the ones in Scott Kelby's book, "The Photoshop CS Book For Digital Photographers". He has several combinations of amount/radius/threshold, depending on the subject matter. There is the additional question of what you want to achieve, of course. However, he suggests use of 85/1/4 respectively as a general purpose setting and this yields pretty good results, on the whole. For portraits, he suggests 75/2/3.
    I do know one thing - oversharpening can ruin an otherwise decent pic. That is one of the main reasons I use RAW exclusively these days.

    Incidentally, as I do more printing, I am beginning to realize that white balance is more critical to good colour results than I ever realized. C1 can approximate it, if you have a neutral patch, but have a look at the Whi Bal product at:
    http://www.rawworkflow.com/

    All you do is hold a pocket sized card in front of the camera and shoot it at some time during your shoot. If the light remains the same, you're done. Use that pic in C1 to balance.

    I think you'll find Pikto one of the best places in Toronto to have prints done. They are very familar with C1 and CS/CS2, and they're willing to help if you run into trouble. And my view is a) it's a pleasure to go to their store in the Distillery; b) they regularly do shows with some fine photographers; c) they use first rate printers and papers. In other words, they care about what the hell they're doing.
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  • gavini
    Keith:
    I asked Pikto several times about setting the output to the printer profile, because I was sceptical it would work. But it seems to work very well. Pikto has a user forum and this might yield more info.


    Thanks for your help in this.
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  • enigma54
    [quote="gavini" wrote:
    [quote="enigma54" wrote:


    I'm also in Toronto and have been thinking of trying Pikto - are you happy with the overall print quality and service?

    I'd like to use C1 for every step of the workflow without having to resort to Photoshop. Can you confirm that these are your steps:

    1) In the Color Management settings, set the Ouput Destination (Working Space) to the Pikto printer profile and adjust colors/exposure as needed.
    2) In the Process tab, choose "Convert to Destination" - this final step I think effectively converts the RAW to JPEG with the Pikto printer profile attached.

    Also, what sharpening settings did you use? I've found that using Standard, 250 for amount and 3 for threshold worked well.


    Your steps are the ones I used. As for sharpening, there is no flat, simple guideline to follow. I tend to follow the ones in Scott Kelby's book, "The Photoshop CS Book For Digital Photographers". He has several combinations of amount/radius/threshold, depending on the subject matter. There is the additional question of what you want to achieve, of course. However, he suggests use of 85/1/4 respectively as a general purpose setting and this yields pretty good results, on the whole. For portraits, he suggests 75/2/3.
    I do know one thing - oversharpening can ruin an otherwise decent pic. That is one of the main reasons I use RAW exclusively these days.

    Incidentally, as I do more printing, I am beginning to realize that white balance is more critical to good colour results than I ever realized. C1 can approximate it, if you have a neutral patch, but have a look at the Whi Bal product at:
    http://www.rawworkflow.com/

    All you do is hold a pocket sized card in front of the camera and shoot it at some time during your shoot. If the light remains the same, you're done. Use that pic in C1 to balance.


    Actually, the "250 for amount and 3 for threshold" (Standard setting) that I was referring to are the parameters in the sharpening tab of C1. I know Photoshop and some of the sharpening actions/plug-ins are probably better than the sharpening feature offered in C1 but I'm trying to simplify my workflow and use C1 for all of my post-processing. I'll use Photoshop for more involved processing such as cloning stuff out.

    I have a Kodak grey card...isn't that the same as WhiBal except WhiBal offers the small size convenience of being able to carry it around in your pocket? I'm not being sarcastic as I am thinking of getting it. I could just trim the grey card to a smaller size I guess.
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