daniel_frisk

If you scan an image in 8 bits and stretch the levels in Photoshop you will get

gaps in your histogram. This could lead to banding effects in your images

depending on how much you stretch the levels. With 16 bit scans it doesn?t

matter as much. A tip is to use adjustment layers in PS since this will reduce

the amount of "correction generations" in PS. Flatten the image when you

have finished your corrections.

The banding is due to the on-screen conversion to the cmyk color space. (And

in the end the cmyk conversion needed for printing). A gradient can look fine

in 8 or 16 bit RGB but converted to the CMYK color space the available color

combinations are to few to cover all hue variations in the RGB image. How

bad this banding appears is due to printing method and quality of the icc-

profile. A way to make these bandings less apparent is to add some grain in

large gradient areas to break up the gradients, skies for example. Another is

to desaturate the problem colors or change hue to match them more to the

available printing colors.

Thank you for your responses. I have come across the name Pitman Photo on

another site and will visit them when I arrive. I live in Sweden and European

pricing on photo equipment is much higher than in the US. Mail ordering from

the US will cost me import duty as well as Swedish VAT. I want to take the

opportunity to shop while in the US. Even if Florida prices are higher than in

other parts of the US I am sure they still will be cheaper than in Sweden.

Hi

I will travel in the US this fall and will take the opportunity to buy

some new lenses for my Canon camera. I would like to know the

best stores in Miami/Miami Beach to buy them from. I?ve done a

search in the Yellow Pages on the internet but want to narrow it

down. I want to buy the 50mm 1.8 II (I broke my mark I!) and the

28-135 mm 3.5-5.6 IS USM. Since my plan is to leave Miami as

soon as possible and head west they need to be in stock.

Kind regards

Daniel

I´d like to change my previous advice about assigning new

profiles to images. My advise is only true when the original

icc-profile is unknown. (The image is for example sRGB but the

profile is not embedded into the image. If you assign the Adobe

RGB-profile to this image the colors will be wrong).

Michael is giving you lots of good advice. I´d like to comment on

the one about assigning ICC-profiles instead of converting to a

new profile. This advice should be don´t change profile unless

it´s necessary. Don´t assign new profiles to the images you

know the color space of.

If you want the colors in your image to be interpreted correctly in

the new color space you should *not* just assign the new profile

instead of converting. This is because the same RGB-value

represents different colors in different RGB-spaces. For example

the skin tones in an image created in the sRGB space will turn

flaming red if you just assign the Adobe RGB-profile to it instead

of converting the image to Adobe RGB.

When I make color corrections in an image I always use layers

and keep a copy before merging the layers. This is because

there is less "generation loss" if you use this method.

Photoshop will only calculate the new pixel values once when

the image is merged. The layer method is also useful for further

corrections of an image since you can go back to your original

adjustment layers and adjust the original pixels instead of

correcting a second generation image.