doug_cooper

For what it's worth, I use an fully linear color workflow in my profession of computer graphics film production. There is definitely merit to the linear colorspace mathematically -- but for Photoshop it doesn't seem as well integrated as it could be. (Many tools aren't really designed well to work with that kind of color).

As for rebuttals to the value of Timo's rants (which yes, can be rather tiresome at times), I'd love to see some links to other points of view. Colorspaces is something that is of definite interest to me, and applicable to both my profession in computer graphics as well as my hobby of photography.

Thanks for the input.

So I've been experimenting with a Photoshop workflow lately based

entirely in the <a

href="http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/evaluation/gie/index.htm">AIM Linear

colorspace</a>

<p>

As advertised, it definitely provides significant improvements for

operations like sharpening, or other filters which operate on color

data from adjacent pixels and do so assuming linear color spaces. For

example, blurs are affected as well, although artifacts are less

noticable than with sharpening filters.

<p>

In order to get enough shadow detail, despite the claims on the AIM

site, I have needed to use 16-bits per pixel. Even with this, I'm

finding it often tricky to get any sort of good control of shadow

detail. All of the detail is packed into only a few code values -

especially when working with Photoshop's curve editor, which only lets

you edit in 256 values anyway (although it's interploating the extra

values for the purpose of applying the curve).

<p>

I'm now thinking of returning to a Gamma color based workflow simply

for more intuitive color adjustments.

<p>

At that point, I have a couple of options for doing my sharpening:

<p>

Wait until all color work is done, then flatten, convert to

linear/16-bits, and finally do a sharpen.

<p>

Or write a custom plug-in to provide a gamma aware UnSharp Mask

filter. (i.e. check the document's color profile, and convert the

colors into linear internally before sharpening, then convert back to

the document colorspace).

<p>

Has anyone else been working with a linear colorspace at all?

<p>

Is anyone aware of existing sharpening filters out there which have

built-in gamma compensation?