ColorSynergy 4.0 new profile editing tool

[Dan Culbertson <danculb@concentric.net>]

Well in my last post on my never ending new romance (?) with making RGB
profiles I noted that I was going to try to manipulate the scan of the
target print to essentially edit the resulting profile so I could have
multiple versions like I can have with CMYK profiles.  Turns out that, as I
am reading the ColorSynergy 4.0 manual, this version has a new feature that
allows you to manually edit any profile (including RGB ones) in a very
powerful way.  Basically you open a real image (not a target scan) and
operate on it with a set of image editing tools.  But this does not edit
the image, it edits the profile you select to view it with.  Thus, you can
edit a profile that is not quite right or make multiple versions of a
profile for different types of prints.  For example you may want to offset
a blue-ish paper by adding a very slight yellow tint to the highlights (say
for portraits while not doing so for landscapes).  Or if the Colorsync
engine in Epson driver drops too much black ink in your deep blues you can
make the profile tell it to increase blue in the shadow.  Or if the profile
tends to print a bit flat (and you know the printer/paper combo can print
better) you can crank up the saturation.

This is a really great tool that actually makes using RGB profiles almost
as flexible as CMYK profiles with a true CMYK driver.  The Edit tool has a
gray ramp tool (you drag on what should be neutrals and the profile is
adjusted to make them so -- or get this, you use a "variations" selections
just like the one in Photoshop.  You can remove (or add) color to blacks,
shadows, midtones, highlights, and whites with this tool (or all five
regions in different proportions).  Then there is a black point white point
tool that works very much like Photoshop's Levels adjustment (even has an
"auto" selection).  Then a Brigtness/Contrast control (also with a
Variations option).  Then a Hue Selective Edit panel (a lot like a very
different sort of Photoshop Hue/Saturation adjustment) that lets you rotate
the hue and crank up saturation in any arbitrary range of hues.

Gotta love it!  Makes working with profiles almost easy.  You could even
take a crummy Epson canned profile and fix it to work on watercolor paper
--without any more measurement than just eyeballing a couple prints and
making adjustments visually until it works right.  But ColorSynergy now
works pretty darn good with a scanner so it is pretty easy to do a scan
profile then tweak it until it works exactly as you like it.

One thing I think I can do with this is make a standard color profile for a
paper, ink combo then use the Gray ramp panel to assign highlights to Cyan,
Mids to Yellow, Shadows to Magenta, and Blacks to Black -- thus partioning
an image to print optimally with the MIS quadtone inks.  Ought to work at
least passably well and a lot less work than creating individual curves in
a four gray CMYK file.  IE I can make the quads print from a grayscale file
and partition them on-the-fly with a CMYK profile!  Also, this ought to be
good for those who want to print grayscale with CMYK color inks.  The Gray
Ramp panel does a very good ramp leveling in a very simple way!

Anyhow, I'm very glad I splurged on the upgrade.  I was within spitting
distance of giving up on profiles (the RGB ones at least) now I am within
spitting distance of really being able to use them in a very flexible way!
You can download the very wonderful manual (a color primer extraordinaire)
from the Pictographics site at http://www.picto.com.  Kind of pricey for
the actual software but for me it is mucho mucho worth it!  I'm still
marvelling over the three dimensional Gamut Viewer that came with the 3.0
upgrade now they sprung this profile editor on me!

Dan Culbertson




-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Please: Stay on topic. Trim quoted messages.
http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.