eric_perlberg

Yes, you're right, you can sell custom profiles within the licence and lots of people do

including my own profiling business, what you can't do is distribute generic profiles

without the mentioned licence, whether or not you charge a fee.

The licence is your guide however, if you say its not mentioned in the licence, then

apparently you can with this product. In general you can't.

You should check your licence from Monaco Systems. It's my understanding that you're

not permitted to make specific profiles for printer/papers and release them to the public.

I may be wrong but I know its not permitted to use Gretag Macbeth profiling systems in

this way. The licence charge to do this for GM stuff is in the tens of thousands of dollars

so you could be headed for some legal troubles IF I'm correct. Worth a check.

Carl, I've never seen the ability to rotate the display image through a graphics card driver

on the Mac but maybe because I haven't purchased a higher end graphics card. I certainly

don't know a way to access the driver natively through OS X which would be analgous to

the ATI driver control you have in the taskbar.

The Eizo marketing bumph however claims that not only is the monitor itself physically

rotatable but that it contains the ability for rotating the image through an onscreen

control. And that doesn't seem to work.

Hi All,

Santa was amazingly good to me and loaned me an Eizo CG21 over the hols until early Jan.

He barely had time to dump the box and scoot off on his sleigh for what is obviously his

busiest business evening of the year. As a result I'm feeling my way through various tricks

this pony can do.

I've been able to bring up the menu for screen orientation and clicking on the portrait or

landscape radio buttons does successfully shift the Eizo Menu box from landscape to

portrait but the OS and software continue to be shown in landscape mode. The manual

says nothing other than listing this as a feature.

I'm working on a Mac and starting to feel this is one of those ...oh it doesn't do that on a

Mac" features that occassionally crops up. Can anyone help with this issue?

Thanks

Eric

<i>How do you do a "soft mode proof"?</i>

<p>

<a href="http://computer-darkroom.com/ps8-colour/ps8_7.htm">click here </a>

Nicholas,

<p>

If you have decided on an iMac let me encourage you to put more RAM in then 256mb. It's

hard to say how much RAM is enough but you its easy to say that 256 will make your new

iMac crippled. Your iMac is capable of holding 2gb of RAM and Photoshop is currently

limited to using 2gb of RAM but then there's issues like the operating system needing

RAM to do its thing, etc.

<p>

Apple charges top price for RAM and its dead easy to add RAM to an iMac. I just checked

<a href="http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listparts.asp?

Mfr%2BProductline=Apple%2BiMac&mfr=Apple&cat=&model=iMac+%28G5

-1.8GHz%2C+17-inch%29&submit=Go"> Crucial Memory</a> and a 512 meg chip for

the

iMac

(giving you 768mb) is only 59 pounds incl VAT and a 1GB chip (giving you a total of 1.256

gb)

costs 165 pounds incl VAT. I would recommend a minimum of 1gb using 2 matched 512

chips at a cost of 118pounds incl VAT.

The reason I say that RAM is important is that if you're working with any image in

Photoshop or Elements and its bigger than that of a 1 megapixel camera, Photoshop/

Elements will not have enough RAM to work with and as a result use the Hard Drive for

extra memory. This really slows down any computer which also requires some RAM for its

operating system. 256mb is really not sufficient.

But as I said, don't buy Apple RAM if money is more important than convenience. Crucial is

just one of many companies from whom you can purchase the correct

RAM so you can't make a mistake and <a href="http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/pdf/

imacg5/B033-2496.pdf">this pdf file </a> shows you how simple it is.

<p> if you can purchase RAM in matched sets, that will also positively affect the speed of

an iMac. I can give you references for this if you want but otherwise, trust me on this.

<p>

Please, other people, encourage Nicholas not to go with 256mb of ram lest he think his

computer purchase was a mistake!

one issue you may want to think about is balancing the light levels that you're viewing your prints in with the intensity of light coming from your monitor. If you're monitor is turned up very bright and you the light bouncing off your prints is not as bright, this would cause the problem you describe.

Similarly, if you're viewing your prints in plain tungsten lighting you're going to have a mismatch with your monitor if its profiled to 5000 or 6500 k. You can spend lots of money on a viewing booth which professionals do or you can approximate these advantages with certain lamps like OTT or bulbs with 5000k light and CRI of near 100. If this is unintelligible to you, do a search, there are discussions on these topics at photo.net

It could be of course that either of your profiles is off.

Nicholas

My principal machine is a Mac with OS X but I also work regularly on Windows XP. I prefer Macs for personal reasons but if suddenly Macs were wiped from the planet and I could only use a decent quality XP computer my life would change very little. I do design and photography work and all of the major programmes I need are available for both and work well on both and beyond that its a question of personal style and personal workflow.

Both are either very quick (at any price point) or frustratingly slow depending on external factors like file size and task. If you're rendering Toy Story neither is anything approaching fast. If you're working on 1gb size photography files both are slower than you would like. But on amateur level work from a digital SLR, neither is slow and on any given task one will be faster than the other and more importantly ultimate quickness is only one of a myriad of parameters to worry about that affect your minute by minute use of the computer.

At the moment nobody is really working with a 64 bit operating system and Mac may make it first to that point some time next year but how that really plays out is unknowable at the moment. Not a reason to make your purchase in my opinion.

Whoever told you that Macs process graphics in CMYK and PCs in RGB simply didn't know what they are talking about. They may have said Macs graphics engine is based on pdf and Windows kind of defaults its color system to sRGB but that's not a direct comparison and won't affect how you do your design or photography work. From your point of view, for Photoshop or Elements work, word processing, etc both have the same capabilities and are almost identical clones of each other. Occassionally you'll find a piece of software that has an advantage or two in one direction or the other but again, its not a dealbreaker (the dealbreakers aree coming soon... read on).

To the extent that Pro designers and desktop publishers work on Macs is mostly an historical and style issue and really irrelevant to your current needs. It's a bit of Nikon vs Canon or Fords vs Chevy.

It's also not so true that Macs are more expensive though in general Macs are well spec'd for internal parts and cheaper PCs with really crap internals can be bought for a song. You get pretty much what you pay for and a Mac and similarly spec'd PC cost within a few pesatas of each other.

Yes CMYK is for offset printing and both will do that just fine. Not an issue. Your Film Scanner should work equally well with both machines.

So what are the issues? From my point of view there are 2.

First, if you have a history with one OS or the other, you will have either a lot of valuable experience or enormous built up frustration. If you know and like PCs there are no reasons to switch to a Mac (save below) and vice versa. On the other hand if you're fed up with either, you might find the other a welcome relief.

If you have no real experience then I'd say one really really important question is, who is it that you're going to be calling on the phone for help? If you have a dear friend who is a PC guru, that is a major factor in helping you when you run into problems. And vice versa of course. These days computers are pretty complex and while Apple may put a bit more effort into making the "out of box" experience easier for total newbies, in fact, once you run into problems, you're in deep and unpleasant waters and that can happen on either system

The second issue and not to be laughed at is your emotional reaction to these operating systems. Some people just think its laughable that anyone can care about the style of a computer box, the decoration and "pretttiness" of an operating system and these people usually deride Macs and find them over the top.

On the other hand (and I belong to this group) some people like their toys to be items with finesse and style. I've even downloaded software that makes my Win XP machine look more like a mac because Microsoft's idea of good design grates on me. I do like Apple's approach to design.

(what don't I like about PC design? for example those annoying little pop up windows that show up to tell me there is a new download of chat software or the one that pops up 5 times an hour to tell me my wireless card has resynced with my wireless router and won't go away until I click on it to dismiss it. But these are tiny issues and in a world of war, starvation and political intrique they are really about whether your fly uses a zipper or buttons).

Unfortunately there won't be objective books on why either computer system is better though you can browse through books which explain in depth how each works.

So to summarise:

1) No real practical advantages to one or the other for common photo or day to day business/productivity apps

2) Getting into computers more deeply will require help and if you have a good source of help that you can lean on when you need it that is an important factor

3) Emotional reactions are legitimate reasons for swaying your decision either way all other things being equal.

I'm trying to figure out an archiving strategy for my digital negs and

worked image files. I do some professional work but my contract calls

for the client to maintain a permanent archive of images I give them

(though obviously I want to have my own copies) and I also want to

archive my personal work.

It seems there are no perfect longterm solutions. At the moment I've

been needing about 400gb/year but I'm thinking that soon I'll move

from my 5-6 megapixel cameras to something in the 10-16 range.

DVD's don't sound as though they're as robust as hard drives so my

current thinking is to get either 2 external hard drives and use OS X

Raid 1 to mirror the drives, then when full, take one of the mirrored

drives and put it safely away and then buy a replacement, wipe the

other one of the original drives clean and start the process over again.

Anyone have any experience with OS X built in Raid mirroring?

My other thought was to buy a box like those from Wiebetech or others

and use cheaper internal drives.

In the long run I know the second option is probably cheaper but I'm

also concerned about fan noise, ie, I want to keep it to a minimum to

the extent possible, and also concerned about the growing amount of

computer peripheral clutter eating up my workspace.

I started researching and realised this is another one of those

technical "onion" subjects where the further you research, the more

issues crop up including software vs hardware raid setups, P-ATA

drives, S-ATA drives, IBM/Hitachi are the best wait no they have fatal

flaws use Western Digital, no no!, and on and on. I also like

simplicity and the idea of 2 LaCie D3 200 drives tucked neatly in a

corner under my desk is minimalistically pleasing.

I'm interested in hearing the experience of others.

I've also heard stories at generally reliable discussion forums about some (but not all) new

30" LCDs from Apple having colour cast problems. I don't think Apple is recognising this

as an offical fault. I spoke to an Apple Dealer yesterday who said they'd let me look at the

monitor first but would only exchange it if it fit in Apple's return guidelines. Worrying...

Also, the fan noise from a fully engaged dual processor machine can be quite noisy from

what I've been told.

William, I'm debating the same thing, although I know the answer is the G5 dual processor, the amount of money to buy it and a 30" monitor is bloody scary (cost and simplification are the iMac's two main advantagess).

The iMac can only handle 2 gigs of RAM. Currently Photoshop can only access 2 gigs but you still need memory for the operating system so the iMac loses points here (both can accomplish the same tasks but the iMac has to use virtual memory which is significantly slower). Additionally, Photoshop will undoubtedly change as the move to larger and larger megapixel cameras continues leaving an iMac a bit crippled.

There are many other speed improvements on the G5 desktop that make it faster. My guestimate is that the dual 2.5ghz machines are 2 to 3 times faster. So if you indeed process 200 images each image taking say 2 minutes of time on the iMac (400 minutes) the same kind of thing on the G5 may take between 150-200 minutes.

Questions you have to consider are: a) how important is the time saved to you vs the cost difference, b) how large are your images and what's the chance in the next 2-3 years that you'll be using even larger images?, c) what space issues do you have (ie, the iMac is considerably more compact and space friendly) and lastly d) do you need to add other cards or peripherals. I for example would need far more hard disk space than the iMac (I vaguely remember 160 gig drives? whereas you can get a built to order desktop with 2x250gig drives). You can also add any number of external drives to the iMac but it somewhat defeats its space saving features.

ueberlastly, you have to consider that bulk processing images is just part of the equation, surely you must be handling some tasks on an image by image basis. Things like grain reduction and complex sharpening algorythms are intensive tasks which the dual processor machines will do in 1/2 the time. Add up the minutes and see what you think about how much time you'll be sitting next to your computer reading a magazine or book...

If you are running a business, I think there are reasons to believe that the G5 desktop would not be overbuying, whatever you eventually decide. Now if someone out there would only donate 5,000 pounds sterling to 2 decent guys we could move on to the next photo.net thread with a clear mind...

cheers,

Eric

<i>Eric, I did go to Image>Mode>Convert to profile, and it was already set to

Perceptual for the Intent setting. Does this mean it was already set

correctly, or would I still have to convert the image before saving for web?

Am I going to have to do this for JPEGS to when I shoot like that, or is this

something for RAW?</i>

<p>

Ryan, you really need to play this by ear. My original response was based on your

statement that otherwise colourful images were looking dull on the web (on the PC) and

that's frequently a symptom of not using Perceptual Intent in converting. It is a good idea

to convert to profile even if you're working in the sRGB colour space already and especially

if you're not. The reason has to do with the difference between Tagging an image with a

colour space and Converting an image to a colour space. Tagging is like putting water in a

container, the water takes the shape of the container but could take other shapes in other

containers. Converting is like freezing the water in the container, take away the

container and the water stays in that shape.

<p>

There's not really a correct Intent to use in converting, its more a matter of looking at your

image and judging its

qualities and what you want to achieve when creating images for the web. Relative

Colorimetric is a better Intent for non-saturated images as its more accurate and

Perceptual is the preferable Intent (IMO) for images with strong colours because although

slightly less accurate overall, it retains the overall feel of saturated/strong colours. In my

experience (I tend to like saturated colours) I just leave the INTENT left at Perceptual.

YMMV

<p>

When you shoot RAW, there is no pre-defined colour space, you put the RAW image into a

colour space in Adobe Camera RAW. I think it makes the most sense when working with

RAW images to use a large working space, I use ProPhotoRGB, others use Adobe RGB. In

PSCS you can choose the colour space (there's a popup menu at the bottom left) and then

watch the histogram (top right) move around. If the histogram crams up against either of

the edges of the graph then the image contains colours outside the colour space you've

chosen. In fact, its quite instructive to see how choosing sRGB will likely bring colours to

past the edge of the graph, then selecting Adobe RGB brings them back more towards the

middle of the graph and lastly, ProPhoto RGB, the largest of the spaces, brings them back

even more. Again there's no right answer, you need a colour space which doesn't clip

(throw away) information. The goal is to stay within the boundries of the histogram. Too

big a colour space can also be a problem. Time to read any of Bruce Fraser's excellent

books on the subject.

<p>

Working with jpgs is a bit different. Here you have to asssign sRGB or Adobe RGB in your

camera settings. This doesn't convert the info to either of these spaces, simply puts them

in those spaces with a TAG. I would recommend Adobe RGB if you're going to shoot jpgs.

It's a fairly robust colour working space, certainly larger than sRGB. Why ignore usable

data. In the long run, you'll buy a better printer, better inks or get a better monitor or

develop your skills and you'll want every last bit of data which if you use sRGB won't be

there.

Pete,

Although Save For Web does not tag the file with any profile and yes Safari and IE on a Mac

under the conditions you describe do recognise the profile, the vast majority of web users

are not using Safari or Mac IE. I'm a Mac user but setting up an image to look good only

on Safari and sometimes IE on Mac is not particularly useful advice to a PC user which is

what Ryan is.

The web is not a managed space in terms of colour management. However, the default

colour space on most Windows PCs is sRGB. The reason we save web images in sRGB

format is because it is the default colour system on PCs not because of anything to do with

the web. Since the browser doesn't colour manage, windows colour management will.

Tagging an image is useless as the web browsers don't read these tags (except as noted,

Safari and IE if its so configured and only on a Mac). So we take the original tagged info

and convert the raw data into the actual sRGB space (convert to profile). Now the web

browser just passes the data to ICM which then has a shot at showing something passable.

Yes most monitors are unprofiled (except with default profiles) and they vary all over the

lot. None-the-less, the above will provide the closest match on the greatest number of

machines.

Doing so requires an INTENT choice. I recommend Perceptual Intent if you find your

images going flat. I've done a lot of web work over the past several months converting

images from Adobe RGB and Prophoto RGB and have found from experience that

saturated images converted with Relative Colorimetric do not look nearly as good as those

converted using Perceptual Intent. Even jpgs directly from the camera tagged with sRGB

need to be converted using convert to profile to keep them looking relatively good.

In addition to the 2 books Ellis mentions, consider REAL WORLD Color Management by

Bruce Fraser and others. It's probably the most thorough and yet readable book on the

subject. I didn't think anyone coud make this subject interesting. Bruce does.

Try using Perceptual Intent instead of Relative Colorimetric Intent when converting the

images to sRGB for the web. This will preserve the apparent colour intensity. If your RAW

images are being tagged with sRGB in Adobe RAW you'll have to change this in your colour

management prefs, If you're doing it using Image-->Mode-->Convert to Profile, (prefered

option) do it in this dialogue box. It makes a huge difference on saturated images. Even if

your working space is sRGB use the Image-->Mode-->Convert to Profile and Perceptual

before SAVE FOR WEB

Actually there's a lot of bad information here. Buy one of the books Ellis recommends or to get started look through the various articles at Ian Lyon's website:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com.

If you follow some of the well meaning but mis-informed advice above you'll be in a hopeless mess.

As far as I know, the camera is identical with the Leica in all important respects. There has been talk about the default settings for jpg being ever so slightly different, the Panasonic comes with a UV filter and the Leica comes with a longer warrenty and silverfast software which you probably won't use if you have Photoshop or Elements.

<p>

I have the Leica D2 and I think, depending on the kinds of shooting you do, that its a great camera (images <a href="http://www.curiouslyincongruous.net">here</a>.

<p>

The lens is excellent. If you shoot high quality jpg, you can shoot at 2 frames per second for something like 5 frames. If you shoot RAW its very slow (6-15 seconds to record image) but you get the advantages of RAW. The camera is relatively light compared to an DSLR. ISO 100 is excellent, 200 passable and 400 needs good noise removal software like Grain Surgery or Noise Ninja or else you need to want to use grain for effect.

<P>

I actually think the pani may be better than the Leica in a few ways. First it is less expensive (go buy a good 256 or 1mb SD card, probably SanDisk Ultra). My Leica has a rubber grip which has a slight bubble near the lens on the right hand side. Others have reported this also. No big deal, something for my hands to play with but someday it will come off. I also think the all black pani is a bit more discreet and the Leica red dot may do wonders for you at the country club but on the street it brings nothing (not entirely true, I guess, I went to the health food store in Shoreditch and the cashier started up a conversation about it..."oh, a Leica"). But for ?300 I could have said "nice weather we're having, eh?" and gotten just as far.

<p>

Almost all reviews have been positive. Read the review here at photo.net, read reviews at luminous-landscape, outbackphoto.com and the leica forum at the leica website.

Ethan,

Thanks in more ways than one. I didn't run your conversion test but I have no doubt that

what you say is what happens and that it demonstrates your point.

However in my real life work with real photos, conversions don't seem to work that way, ie,

there is a noticeable difference between converting images from a large working space like

Adobe RGB 1998 or ProPhoto RGB for the web using the IMAGE-->Mode-->Convert To

Profile and selecting sRGB and Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric Intent. I've

personally seen this happen so many times that I've stopped bothering with Rel Col.

So given the now full and detailed explanations you've given, I'm still at a loss to explain

my personal experience which differs radically from the theory and test you offer.

So with all due respect (and I honestly mean that as I read your posts regularly on all the

many boards you participate in and have learned from them) given the choice between

your explanations and my personal experience, I'll continue working in a way consistent

with what my eyes see even if it is contradictory to what theory dictates. I do wish I could

gain a conceptual understanding which bridges the theoretical and the experiential.

As to Jamie, the original poster, I go back to my point. If your images look "bad" on the

web but not in Photoshop, try converting to sRGB using Perceptual Intent and see if that

improves them (maybe it won't, it only takes a few seconds to try). Apparently there is no

theoretical justification for this, it may be one of those "bees can't fly with those wings"

kind of situation...

Hi Ethan, thanks for the additional info.

I'll accept your word for it that the working space conversions are done with simple matrix

tables for transformations. I'll ignore the printer comments because the original question

was about creating photographic images for the web and why they might look bad.

What I still don't understand vis a vis your matrix table point is my own experience time

after time that choosing Perceptual in the Convert To Profile dialog results in a

consistently better, more accurate image when saturated colours are involved as compared

to choosing Relative Colormetric in the same dialog box. (sorry, I've never even seen

Saturation Intent in this dialog box) If these are dummy choices as it sounds like you're

suggesting, then I it must be a victim of the placebo effect. But I really think something

more significant is happening.

I'm curious to know what you think it might be?

Ethan,

You say that both Perceptual Intent and Saturation (but I assume you meant Relative

Colormetric or I really missed something) map onto Relative Colormetric implying that

they are the same, six of one or half dozen of the other, in the end. There's no question in

my mind that you're up on the theoretical and an expert, there's no question that Jasper de

Jong's comments are quite true, but I"m confused about your statement on a practical level

because one clearly sees a difference (and I do have a fair amount of knowledge about

colour management and I do have a profiled monitor) when you use Perceptual Intent vs

RelCol in the Convert to Profile dialog. This is not only my experience but the reported

experience of others.

Perhaps you could clarify your post above to explain this experience?

Cheers

Eric

<i>Image->Mode->Convert To Profile<br>

And convert the image to sRGB using the Relative Colorimetric rendering intent.</i><p>

my experience is that Relative Colormetric makes images look flat and desaturated on the web. While it produces the most accurate in-gamut colours, it ruins saturated colours. As the web is such an innacurate display technology I almost always use Perceptual Intent. Try both and see what your experience is.

Further to Jack's comment above, when you convert your aRGB document to sRGB by using

the Image-->Mode--> Convert to Profile, use perceptual intent (as oppossed to relative

colormetric intent) if you have saturated images. This will preserve the look of the image.

Mike,

Since I'm not certain which inkjets you've seen could you tell me which ones you're comparing it too and how the Olympus is better?

I read a bit about the Kodak dye sub and there didn't seem to be a way to colour manage it (ie, turn system wide colour management off in the driver). Can this be done with the Olympus?

Cheers,

Eric

Another thing you might try is to isolate sections of the tonality and work with curve

adjustment layers on specific sections to bring out all the subtle changes. Tutorial is <a

href="http://wwwluminous-landscape.com/tutorials/masking.shtml"> here</a>. <p>He

also

works

with the gamma shifted towards the whites (ie, darker rather than neutral) so you might

bring up a levels adjustment layer and with the above tonality control, slide the gamma

triangle to the right a bit.<p>

I find the lens blur thing that Beu mentioned a bit gimmicky after awhile but that's a

matter of taste. I do use it

at times too so that's not a blanket criticism, I just think that L Wiese's work stands up to

deeper inspection beyond what that technique can bring.<p>

But this guy is good and there are no quick digital or darkroom fixes, just careful patient

work

regardless of the type of darkroom you use.