I should be assigning, shouldn't I?

[mikael1]

I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track here, but I just want to make

sure I'm doing the right thing as I wont have the chance to drumscan

them again. I've scanned dozens of old negs on a ScanMate 5000 into 16

bit RGB files. The scanner has no device profile and the software

could not assign workspace profiles in 16-bit (weird limitation).

 

Now I'm about to open the untagged raw scans in Photoshop and as there

were no profiles attached during scanning I should be _assigning_ a

workspace I've settled on when Photoshop asks, shouldn't I?

 

After assigning I will do inversion and and color correction and then

save the file.

 

Sounds reasonable?

 

Thanks in advance...

[andrew_rodney1]

Yes but the question is, assign which profile?

 

You might need to assign the display profile to produce a matching color appearance to a

scanner that doesn't understand profiles. But that's really not ideal.

 

BTW, you should be able to create and use an input profile with Color Quartet.

[danny_liao]

The most popular profile to assign is Adobe RGB 1998. That is what you should work

with in Photoshop.

[jespdj]

The scanned images are in the native colour space of the scanner. You should have an ICC profile that describes the native colour space of the scanner. Assign that to the untagged image, then convert to a standard colour space such as Adobe RGB.

 

Ofcourse, you have a problem because you don't have the colour space of the scanner.....

 

Directly assigning Adobe RGB to the scanned image only makes sense if the scanner's native colour space is close to Adobe RGB - if not, the colours will probably shift noticeably.

[mikael1]

Thank you all for the answers... This actually leads me to something else :)

 

Yup, the ColorQuartet software allows an input profile, but I'm not sure my teacher likes me fiddling around with his stuff (I'm at a school).

 

Colorshifts isn't a problem, these are B&W negatives & the only "color correction" to be done is desaturating the image. Will assigning the ProPhoto RGB workspace still be a problem?

 

I figured I'd go for RGB for the scanning of B&W negs as I've seen no recommendation of a grayscale profile (although dotgain 20% seems common) like Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB for RGB. Seems like in a grayscale workflow the work space is determined by what you output the data to (dotgain) while working in in RGB the workspace is independent of the output (Prophoto RGB or Adobe RGB etc). So, settling on a grayscale profile will also optimize the file for one specific output? Also, as the images most likely are gonna go through some sort of toning (through HSB or curves) they will have to be converted into a RGB space later, which would be a lossy process, right? The only backside would be the much larger size of the files. But hey, I can live with it.

 

Any ideas?

[andrew_rodney1]

-->Will assigning the ProPhoto RGB workspace still be a problem?

 

Yes! Assigning ANY profile that doesn't describe the meaning of the numbers is not good.

Either get your teacher to understand the role of input profiles or try assingning the

display profile which will at the very least get close to producing the same color

appearance in Photoshop as QC. Or you can just Assign all the profiles you can find until

you hit upon one that produces acceptable color appearance but what a kludge.