emil_ems5

Profile Conversion & Proof Setup · November 19, 2012

Here in Europe our printers follow the European standard for Color printing, Fogra 39. I am confident that there is a corresponding standard in the US. I would hesitate to hand over my material to a printer that simply tells you "Dot Gain 20%".

November 18, 2012

I advise against going the Lightroom, unless you produce a very large number of pictures every month and have the need to catalogue them in an efficient manner.

If you, like me, take only some 1000 pictures per year, Photoshop is the way to go; with its attached Bridge allowing you to organize your pictures in groups (easily found); with its attached Adobe Camera Raw (which is essentially identical to Lightroom's Picture Developing Function); and with all the Razzmatazz of the recent Photoshop versions (mainly content-aware fill) as bonus.

November 18, 2012

This is a nice panorama, well worth some hours of diligent post-processing. As has been said, content-aware fill could get rid of those empty spaces. But before you use it I would suggest to try the Edit/Transform/Warp Command to get rid of some of the empty space.

Remember that you will always get some empty space, even with tripod use, so don't worry about having taken those pictures w/o it. I have done hundreds of panoramas with handheld camera. Sometimes, Photoshop Merge does not do the trick and you have to do it manually. But in a large majority of cases, you will eventually get a beautiful panorama, unless you made major mistakes in the picture taking phase.

Keep on the good work!

October 29, 2012

Tom,

Thank you kindly for your suggestion of Color Mechanic and going to the trouble of showing me an example.

I just have a follow-up question to your suggestion. Does Color Mechanic provide an easy way to pinpoint the RGB values in one region and replicate those exact values in a region in another picture?

October 28, 2012

Thanks Matt, for your quick reply. My question relates to the more general problem of matching two local areas in two different prints. Each print has overall the right white balance in place.

My concrete problem is about two players on a football field taken from different angles. With the sun shining from different angles, the grass color differs. I am eyeballing this, as you suggested in your response, but am looking for an easier way. It is quickly done in Photoshop to establish the RGB values for each of the two patches, but I find it rather cumbersome to adjust those values in one picture to those of the other, using curves. I was looking for a feature (that may not exist in Photoshop) where I could simply dial in the RGB values from on patch onto the patch in the other picture.

October 28, 2012

I sometimes have to match the color in local parts of two pictures that will hang together on the wall. For instance, the grass on a football field. I seem to have problems with doing that in an easy way. The method I am applying at the moment is to take a small patch of (for instance grass) on each picture, average out the color there and manually adjusting one patch with curves to match the (average) color of the other.

But what I would love to do is simply to read the RGB values of the one patch and dial in those values for the patch in the other picture. Is there a way of doing this?

October 24, 2012

Scarlett,

Learning Photoshop is like learning to play the piano. You have to practice a lot in order to get the brain to understand what it is supposed to do. None of the above mentioned books are of the "piano practicing kind". There is only one book that I know of, that can help you with practicing:

Scott Kelby, "7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop". Good luck with getting hold of it and good luck with a lot of practice, based on that book!

August 25, 2012

I have produced a book (a first time event) through offset printing and have some experience with the problems you mention. Here is some advice:

Do not attempt to develop the photos in an environment with changing light conditions. This is a recipe for failure. Try to place your computer in a wardrobe, or otherwise shield the room from outside sunlight and have a constant artificial lightsource. it is nice to have that in the same temperature as the screen, that is, 6800 Kelvin. But I was unable to get hold of a bulb with that temperature, so I use the lower industry standard, 5400 something. I still keep the screen at the higher standard though.

Keep the light subdued and have the screen luminosity at about 90.

When profiling the picture, make sure, when applying your profile, to check the box "Simulate paper color". The profile thus configured will show you, as good as the screen can, how a picture in the book will look like, illuminated by reflected light. You will be amazed by the difference on the screen between the profiled and the unprofiled picture. There is a need for some curve adjustment to get the profiled picture close to the unprofiled. I use two adjustment curves for the initial adjustment: (i) adjustment curve "lighter" with 25% opacity and (ii) above that adjustment curve "linear contrast" with 100% opacity. This will get you pretty close to the desired result. Depending on the picture, you may have to do additional changes, mostly in increasing contrast and luminosity in deep shadows.

Before sending the book to the offset printer, I sent parts of it to Apple's book printing (comparable in printing technique to Blurb). The result was acceptable as concerns most pictures, with only some of them off to a marked degree. However, I noticed that the book had a slight color cast that applied to all pictures and that I could not see on my calibrated screen. This I assumed was due to the fact that the publisher sends books to different printers who do not apply completely with the standard it gives you and that you profile against. The few pictures which were not acceptable were due to myself, usually the luminosity was off (too light or too dark) and I could correct that subsequently.

The final book, printed in offset with a reliable german printer, who abides by the European industry standard Fogra 39, was excellent and I could see that the pictures in the book corresponded satisfactorily to the pictures on my screen, watched through the Fogra 39 profile. The color cast in the Apple book was gone, which corroborates that the digital printing technique applied by Apple's printer (and Blurb's printers!) is not yet able to abide completely to the printing standard.

You cannot expect Blurb, or any other digital printer on the market, to replicate the profiled picture on your screen. Even with the same original, subsequent printing runs will differ, in color cast, luminosity or overall contrast. But this is of concern only to demanding photographers. People at large would not notice that difference and be quite happy with any version produced by those printers.

July 27, 2012

I do this type of thing often, to correct some minor "disturbances" in a picture. Just take a merged copy of the underlying layers as a new layer on top of them and do your correction on that new layer. Render the accompanying layer mask black and white out only that part of the picture you wish to be corrected. Of course it may take a bit of retouching (the patch tool comes in handy there) to get the corrected part melt into the underlying picture, but it sure is worth a try!

July 12, 2012

It often happens that the chosen area suddenly "goes crazy", that is, jumps out of context and encompasses major parts of the picture. For that reason it is always wise to apply the tool piecewise, that is re-apply it in several steps. If the last step "goes crazy", just push the Command/Z Key (in Apple), or use the Menu Command "Edit/Undo". This nullifies this last step. You then proceed with a smaller size of the "circle", as Andrew has indicated.

Even after having selected all of the area you want to select, it pays of to give that selection a closer look by enlarging the image. Often small areas outside your desired selection are included and small areas inside still occluded. To get rid of the former, just keep the "Alt" key pushed in while selecting it with a very small "circle". To include the latter, just select it with a very small "circle".

Once all of the selection is OK, you may still see jagged outlines. Those have to be dealt with on the menu panel.

The name "Quick" is somewhat misleading. If you want quality, you have to improve the original choice as indicated above.

July 9, 2012

Funny! After having closed down the computer and re-opened it, it still did not work at first. But whilst I was looking at my e-mails, after a long delay, suddenly the picture appeared in ACR. Since then, everything works smoothly again.

Should anyone else have the same problem, the solution is to close down the computer, to reload the picture and to have some patience. Hope this works as well for you as for me!

July 9, 2012

Just to clarify things further:

The Beta (trial) version of ACR 6.7, which I downloaded three months ago, has been working perfectly together with both Nikon and Canon (G1X) raw pictures. I could open them in Photoshop CS5 without any problems.

The problem I need help with is the following: Adobe has now issued the latest version of ACR for CS5, which is called ACR 6.7, and which I downloaded with Adobe's download service (in Bridge) this morning. Since that download, I am no longer able to open ANY raw pictures in Photoshop CS5. It seems that ACR has ceased working.

Has anyone here had similar problems with ACR 6.7 recently and could help me resolve the problem?

July 9, 2012

I am getting desperate. Today I updated Bridge and Photoshop CS5 with the latest version of ACR, so that I can work with raw images from my new Canon G1X. After updating ACR, I can no longer load any raw pictures into Photoshop. The program is imply stalling. This applies not only to Canon raw pictures, the same thing with my Nikon raw pictures that I opened in Photoshop routinely before this unfortunate update.

My computer is an Apple Mac Book Pro with OS 10.7.4 (the latest operating system). Has anyone here accoutered similar issues and knows how to resolve them?

May 15, 2012

I tend to agree with Randy. The most important difference between transmitted and reflected images from the same file is the loss of contrast in the latter. To see and compensate for that lack of contrast you need a good profile that is mimicking the way the paper is reflecting the image under standard illumination. Here in Europe we use the Fogra 39 standard as the viewing profile. You have to check the "simulate paper white" box in CS5 to get the full mimicking effect. In the US, where printers usually are more sloppy than in Germany, you should, besides the SWOP standard, ask the (offset) printer for their precise standard. The German printers of renown usually guarantee to print according to the FOGRA 39 standard, so there is no need to pressure them for their house-made standard.

Patrick, who is an utmost expert in color processing, nonetheless is a bit careless in my taste in bypassing this essential test. I have recently published a book, printed in offset by a renowned German printer, with color pictures generally praised as having "true colors". All of the photos in that book were proofed by me against the Fogra 39 standard and I had to make substantial adjustments in each picture to get them optimized for paper viewing prior to conversion to the CMYK color space necessary for offset printing. It is first after this necessary adjustment that I converted the pages of the book to a PDF file. That file preserves the CMYK values to go straight to the offset printing machine, albeit condensed with the JPEG method. Presenting a PDF file to the printer renders it un-necessary (impossible) for the printer to manipulate the originals according to their own idiosyncrasies, which I consider to be important for high quality printing.

Aaron, if you would like some hints about, what adaptation would be necessary in CS5 (besides correcting of color gamut issues), you may consider the following starting-point for your photo adaptation in RGB before conversion to CMYK: Put a curve layer over your picture and choose the standard "linear contrast" with 100% opacity. Put then a new curve layer on top of that and choose the standard "lighter" with 25% opacity. These two layers together should bring you pretty close to the adjustment in contrast needed for a CMYK paper picture to approximate the RGB transmitted picture on screen. Starting from there, you may need to do further minor adjustments, for instance, to lift the very dark values up a bit, so they do not appear almost black in the print.

May 10, 2012

We have a saying in Sweden "The best is the worst enemy of the good". This issue of focus stacking in landscape photography appears to be exaggerated. Admittedly, there is a problem with DOF, when the picture includes elements rather close to the lens and, at the same time, far off elements like mountains.

In the old days, tilting the lens plane or film plane solved the issue, but only to a degree. It changed the plane of sharp focus, but still left objects out of that plane more or less unsharp. But this never bothered us old-timers; the eye is easily deceived that everything is sharp, as long as the important picture elements are sharp.

In analogy to this, in real life landscape picture taking, the problem laid out above is resolved very easily in digital photography. Just take two pictures of the scene (even hand held). One in which you hold the narrow foreground sharp and another one, where you hold the far background sharp. Closing down the lens to f11 will take care of the rest. Merging two pictures in Photoshop can easily be done manually, permitting your judgement to be the arbiter of what to do, rather than letting ephemeral automatic processing klutzes do their worst.

April 15, 2012

Dear all,

Thank you kindly for you nice efforts to keep me going with my pictures from G1X. I am at the moment far from home and do not have access to all facilities from my main computer, relying only on my MacBookPro. All your answers have, each in its own way, been helpful.

Strangely enough, the updated ACR gave me a message on the screen after three days, reminding me that it was a beta version and that it would resend this message after each month until the definitive version would be available. After that, suddenly, everything worked and I am able to convert the G1XZ raw files in ACR. But in the mean-time, I had learned to convert the files in DPP and treat the 16 bit Tiff-files I got from there in ACR.

When I compare the two conversions, from DPP and ACR, I have to conclude that the conversion from DPP is far more true to the greens in grass and plants. If I would apply a rather heavy yellow saturation in Photoshop to the DPP conversion, I would arrive at the ACR conversion. Having found out this over-emphasis of yellow applied by ACR, I am staying with the DPP conversion, except in cases where increased yellow-saturation helps the picture.

So, if anyone else out in our Community has initial problems with ACR 6.7, the answer is to be patient and wait for a few days for the new ACR to "mature", and in the mean-time to use the camera firms own converter to Tiff, which then can be imported into ACR.

April 11, 2012

I recently bought a Canon Powershot G1X, which I find quite nice. There is a problem though with transferring the raw images into Photoshop. Although I have updated my ACR (bought together with CS5) to the new version ACR 6.7, that is supposed to handle files from that camera, Photoshop is stalling whenever I try to import a raw file.

I am using a MacBook Pro with operating system 10.7.3 (the latest system). CS5 works splendid with this configuration and I have no problems with importing Nikon raw files.

Does anyone here have a similar problem and could propose a solution? I am getting a bit desperate!

January 30, 2012

Dan,

You asked me what type of layer you should introduce. It should be just an empty layer, not an adjustment layer. Such an empty layer is always good to use, when you want to improve an area with, for instance, the stamping tool, or, in this case, a touch of color where there was none. The reason for doing this on an empty layer is that you can adjust the strength of the effect easily by diminishing the layer opacity.

In response to another submission I would like to say that my method works splendidly, if applied judiciously, that is, with an opacity that just gives a hint of color. Extreme highlights are never textured and it would be a mistake to render them so. Of course, it depends on the precise context. My advice was not to completely erase the blow-out, rather, to keep its intrinsic properties without leaving a completely blank spot.

January 29, 2012

Sorry Dan, a small mistake in my earlier submission. In (1), leave blending mode at "Normal"

January 29, 2012

Dan,

The method I use in a similar case (assuming the blown section is not too large) is the following:

(1) Create a new (empty) layer. Set its blending mode to "Color"

(2) Choose the color picker and pick a color that lies close to the blown area and is light.

(3) Choose the brush tool and paint over the blown area. it will be covered with the picked paint.

(4) Diminish the opacity of the layer until the earlier blown area has just a touch of color.

January 29, 2012

Randy,

The CMYK conversion is not only about preserving color, which obviously is not possible full-out for your blues and purples. Another type of adjustment, which as a side effect might alleviate some of the color problems, is also in order. You have to take into account the difference between light transmission (on your screen) and light reflection (on the final output).

To get the printed image as close as possible to the reflected image, you have to slightly increase exposure and mid-tone contrast in your file.

The exposure part you seem to have grasped. However, I am missing the mid-tone contrast increase. When I do CMYK conversion (I converted some 500 pictures recently for a book), I usually apply an adjustment layer in Photoshop using CURVES/LINEAR CONTRAST, together with CURVES/LIGHTER (the latter with 25% opacity). In your case only the first adjustment seems to be in order and may have also the beneficial side effect of getting you blues and purples a wee bit closer to the original.

January 27, 2012

Andrew and Patrick,

How can you see on the screen what you get on paper, if there is no proofing profile for ABW printing? From experience I know that I always have to make adjustments to account for the difference between the two forms of illumination (transmission vs reflection). Is there no way of proofing for that in ABW?

January 25, 2012

Dear Andrew,

I do not intend to use the CMYK process; rather, I would like to use a tritone process, where the printer uses three inks (full black, middle grey, light grey) in his offset printing, since this is about a high quality book that should mirror the quality of my b/w prints.

I had expected that, similar to the CMYK separations, the printer would be able to provide me with a profile for its tritone curve process, so that I could optimize the print file for that process myself, to get the maximum out of the offset production. If that is not feasible, I would have to hand over my files optimized for my (calibrated) screen and let the prepress experts of the printer do this adaptation to their print process; they would have to use my prints as model for this.

I would much prefer to do that adaptation myself, since I learned from my color print book that the adaptation sometimes necessitates to deviate from the print. This is so since the offset printing process sometimes is unable to mimic fullout the quality of my (Epson) prints and I have to circumvent that slightly altering the distribution of tones. This results in an offset print differing from the Epson print, but nonetheless giving me the quality I am ultimately looking for.

January 25, 2012

I have just finished producing a book in color (CMYK), printed on offset. The printer being located in Germany, he did not have to give me a profile for proofing the separations. He just told me to follow Fogra 39, which worked beautifully.

My next book project will deal with my b/w large format prints. To get the full range of tones I would like the printing done in tritone, albeit neutral grey or only slightly warm. When asking the printer for the right profile to proof my prints on screen for the separations, he had no profile to offer. Instead he told me that common procedure was to submit paper prints to his prepress experts as a model and let them make the separations of the picture files.

Has anyone in this Community made his own print separations for duo- or tritone printing? What is your experience with co-operating with the printer; how was this done?

January 1, 2012

As the other contributors said, McBook Air or McBook Pro will satisfy all your needs for processing. I went to California (from Sweden) for 2 months in 2010 and had a McBook Pro with me for processing my thousands of pictures in Photoshop. The results can be seen on my blog emsemil.blogspot.com

Two things to think about: (1) As already said above, take a small external hard disk with you. I had a 500 GB disk with me and that was quite enough. This is not about back-up. Pictures quickly accumulate and the Laptop will be full of them sooner than you know. (2) Make sure to calibrate your monitor before leaving on the trip. For varying light conditions I found a luminosity of 120 to be about right for photo processing. The other parameters you should choose as recommended by the colorimeter provider.

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