Soft Proofing a Blurb book

[michael_milne]

I need help. I'm about ready to give up on the hope of color managing my blurb

book (after about 6 hours of work). I wanted to color manage these images and

thought it would be worth the effort. I am learning as I go along.

 

I profiled my 20" imac lcd today using my "original" eye one hockey puck. I

found the HP 5000 printer profile (the printer that blurb uses) and followed the

workflow detailed in:

 

www.bonsai-photography.com/blurb-color-management.pdf

 

I changed the working space of the image to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 to reduce the

number of color conversions (this is the sRGB space used by blurb's software)

and edited the photo. I then soft proofed the image with the HP Indigo 5000 ICC

CMYK color profile and made adjustments. I checked the image for out-of gamut

colors (about 40% of the photo got covered in the warning!), which I reduced to

maybe 20% using Hue/Saturate but did not eliminate out of gamut colors because

it would have required massive desaturation and darking of the image.

 

I saved as a PNG file and imported into Booksmart, the blurb software for

creating books. To my surprise, the image suddenly acquired a very strong

YELLOW color cast. The sky also was suddenly a little purple too. I checked,

these color shifts happen throughout the image, just not in the out-of-gamut areas.

 

If the image is printed like it shows in Booksmart, it would be a total loss.

So I'm tempted to screw the whole thing and hope for the best, going completely

unmanaged.

 

There are so many variables here, I really don't know where to begin. Can I

assume my monitor is profiled? I must assume that the ICC HP 5000 profile is

accurate. Could it be possible that Booksmart is programed to automatically

soft proof sRGB images? I'm using booksmart version 1.7.7.

 

Any ideas?

 

I appreciate any help.

[tonybynum]

I dont know what I do right or wrong, but my blurb books look great.

 

I shoot in adobe rgb, if I do much post, it's in PS then convert to jpg, if I need to. save to folder. I calibrate my crt with pantone eye one 2.

 

Import images into booksmart, build book, send to blurb, in a week or so I get a great product, if THEY dont screw it up. I've had some issues with blurb, but not with color.

 

seems they are lacking in help right now and quality controls is not the best.

[ellis_vener_photography]

I did a long interview wit hthe woman who is CEo of Blurb. Basically she said thay can't provide profiles for the printers ( they print at two locations in the USA) jsut upload as sRGB. If you want to do a proof, do a one book run as a test run and judge from that.

[babette_ross]

Hi,

 

I may be offer some practical advice tho i wont pretend i understand the technical nature of this one, i struggled to crash learn exactly what out of gamut means a few months ago.

 

My first blurb book I did exactly what you did - softproofed with the bonsai HP Indigo 5000 ICC CMYK profile (and uploaded the book srgb.) I did "stuff" to bring everything into gamut and at the end of the day i was disappointed at how flat it all seemed - both on screen and unsurprisign also the printed book.

 

My next blurb book (and another one i did using My Publisher) i softproofed but didnt make any real changes based on gamut and was MUCH happier with the results. (Again uploaded srgb as they instruct you to do.)

 

I am currently proofing another book, my largest, and with a lot of vivid images (a vacation photo book from Oz/Nz/Hi) I am not going to go to any extremes to get it into gamut (although a few images i did make a curves adjustment if the overall image's brightness values changed a lot between srgb and the "bonsai HP Indigo 5000 ICC CMYK profile" Again i plan on just letting it go as srgb.

 

I need to not look at any of the 209 pages (I am insane) for a few days before i give it a final proof and upload and send it off. But I'd be happy to write back to you around the end of the month when i anticipate getting it back.

[Tim_Lookingbill]

I soft proof to a Noritsu minilab and find using a Hue/Saturation

adjustment layer or "Hue/Sat Fade To" set to Color blend mode

with varied levels of opacity will take care of the out of gamut

colors far better than applying a curve or levels adjustment. You

can use the selective color feature to single out colors and use

the (+) and (-) eyedropper to add and subtract from the selection.

 

I did this on in-camera 8bit shots of flowers taken with my Pentax

K100D which is known for over doing it on saturation. It allowed

me to preserve the rich contast of the original shot which

rendered well to the narrower dynamic range of the Noritsu with

very little editing. Most digicams already take very good looking

scene rendered shots that don't take that much fussing around

with color gamuts.

 

I've found if you set absolute highlites and black point while

maintaining original neutrality as captured in the scene by first

creating a custom WB RGB combo within the Color Picker by

double clicking Level's eyedropper buttons, then set these

absolutes by clicking on selected areas, you'll most likely in

combination with HueSat get the results you want with little fuss

when printed.

 

The sRGB soft proof approach as mentioned by Babette is

probably the way to go.

[babette_ross]

Michael - i just got my monster book. I am much much much happier with the results this time.

 

Again, i soft proofed in the "bonsai HP color space" and on a handful of pages i made some minor curve adjustments based on how the soft proofing looked.

 

I completely ignored the out of gamut stuff. The only pages where this led to some issues was predictably a sunsest shot but having said that its not terrible and im not sure the average (read non obsessive) person would notice.

 

The only thing i dont like is how fingerprint prone the covers is.

[gigi cidadi]

Dear all, I would like to ask a question about monitor profile to use in relation to blurb book. After I changed the photos in sRGB and

used INDIGO profile to softproofing, I got stuck with monitor profile issue. I am usually set on LCD which create a warm hue. Sorry I

forget to say that I am working on MAC laptop. Because I don t have a calibration tool, what profile should I use to correct the

photos, the standard LCD or try the sRGB and make the adjustment ? Let me know .

 

Regards,

 

Gigi