fanta

Usually laptops have LCDs that are not suitable for critical photo work, as lightness/darkness of pixels shift depending on your eyes position in respect to the screen. It is worth calibrating it, say, to 6500K temperature, but profiling will not make it a reliable reference anyway. Unless you are positive you are buying a laptop with appropriate LCD, consider also buying an external LCD or CRT display.

With Photoshop CS, in the bottom of the image window, I used to see

the zoom % and the current color profile. I must have unintentionally

hit some keys combination that made it disappear! In the bottom of

the image window now I don't see any info. Does anybody know how to

restore it? It must be in the on-line help but cannot find it!

 

Thanks!

I would like to buy bulbs close to daylight (5000K or 6500K) to check

my prints color. It should screw on my desk lamp. Any idea where I

could buy this in Europe, or especially in Italy? I may also buy it

in US, but it must operate at 220V.

 

Thanks.

Hi,

what can be an appropriate way to take the mask from a layer, and

apply it (or its complement) to a different layer?

 

Right now I am doing:

 

- select the source mask in the layer palette, right click and "Set

selection to layer mask";

 

- select the destination layer in the layer palette, then Layer > Add

Layer Mask > Reveal Selection (or Hide Selection).

 

Given the masks I use are usually fathered/blurred on the edge to

give a smooth transition, I wonder if the above is an appropriate way

to proceeded: does it preserve the blurred edge of the mask? Also,

any short-cut?

 

Thanks.

Most likely the adjustements you did with the video card driver settings act on the LUT, and would be overridden as your calibration software loads a different LUT. You can verify it by changing drastically the driver settings, then having your calibration software load the CLUT; I bet you will see the second operation wipes out any change you had done with the first.

If you are using PS CS, it allows you to enter plenty of information from the browser, that will be saved either as part of the picture metadata, or as a "sidecar" file. But I don't know if there is a way to have PS print those info, for instance along with picture thumbnails.

I wonder what can be the most appropriate way to correct a picture

color based on a gray card photographed in a different picture.

 

I take slides: first shoot the subject, then put the gray card close

to the subject and shoot again. I then scan the slides.

 

I would like to correct colors in the first shot, based on the gray

card taken in the second shot. I am using Photoshop CS, but also

suggestions related to other applications (e.g. PWP) will be

insightful.

 

Also, do you believe that taking the two shots with the same exposure

(time and aperture) is important?

 

Here what I am doing know:

 

- open the second shoot (with the gray card);

 

- open the levels or curves tool, or a layer, and use the gray

eyedropper to set the gray point from the gray card

 

- save the levels/curves

 

- open the first shoot (with the subject), open the levels or curves

tool (or a layer), and then load and apply the previously saved

levels/curves

 

Does it make sense, and any better way to proceed?

With the Canon i950, I had this experience with the Canon provided color profile: if I turn color management on in the printer driver only, Photoshop (and other applications) print fine. But if I turn the color management off in the printer driver and try to color manage the print in Photoshop, then the print has bad colors. I believe that Canon provides a color profile with some non-standard tweak that confuses Photoshop and other applications.

 

I suggest you do use the printer driver color management, and set the "Print Space Profile" in PS to "Same as source" (from File > Print with Preview).

 

If you do want to do the print color management from within PS, you should obtain a custom made profile for your printer.

 

In any case, you do not want the printer color management to be done by both the driver _and_ PS, otherwise it will be done twice with bad results.

I believe you have the greatest flexibility by saving RAW files (possibly 16 bit/color/pixel), with no color conversion. Then you can do the conversion later on either by mean of Vuescan itself, scanning from the RAW file, or Photoshop, or whatever. This assumes that you have a color profile for your scanner, either the canned one or a custom built. If you don't, you can still use Vuescan embedded color profile when converting RAW files to the color space of your choice.

I don't know about the specific system you are using (ColorVision), but how does it load the color look-up table (CLUT)? Becase if it has its own system to load it, then it may conflict with Adobe Gamma loader; in case you should disable the Adoba Gamma loader.

 

Also you can double check what profile PS is actually using with Edit > Color Settings and then in the "RGB" drop down look at the entry "Monitor RGB - xxx"; xxx is the color profile PS is using.

Just in case... if you are trying to use the Canon canned color profile in Photoshop or other applications, you may find it doesn't work well. With the Canon i950 canned profile, I found Photoshop CS prints pretty badly, while I got good results leaving the color management to the printer driver. I believe the canned profile has some tweak the driver is aware off, but that messes up Photoshop.

Sorry, that had to be you add 3 stops (not 4) to place the metered snow in zone 8.

I wonder how the Zone System can be applied to slides, if at all. My

doubt is that the system foresees a scale of 10 values, from 0 to 9,

where each step corresponds to 1 stop. But with slides we have a much

shorter dynamic range available, say a bit more than 5 stops,

compared to negatives. So is the scale of 10 values still suitable?

 

For an example, consider to take a slide of a snow landscape, and you

want to place the lightest snow in zone 8; you meter that snow and

add 4 stops to the meter reading. That would place the snow in zone

8... but wouldn't you also exceed the slide dynamic range, and snow

will be completely burned?

 

Any though?

In my scanned slides there is often a color cast which is more

evident in luminous spots, and less evident in the shadows. I set up

a correction with an adjustment layer, but by default that will be

applied uniformly on all the pixels. Instead, I would like it to be

applied in a way which is proportionate to the pixel brightness,

ranging from 0% on pixels totally black, to 100% on pixels with max

brightness.

 

Any idea?

 

Ciao,

Francesco