On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:33:07 -0400 rafeb (rafeb@channel1.com) wrote:
> Nope. Dan's approach is to go by the numbers
> (RGB values, or L*a*b values, or CMYK values)
Oh, that still. I don't see any major contribution to road safety here:
RGB is device dependent, whether numbers or colours - if you don't set the
numbers for the specific output device, they will be wrong. So R127G127B127
is mid-grey, mathematically at gamma=1, but what's the right gamma? How
red is red? And life is too short to start defining skin tones in different
lighting... I don't have a clue about what output devices will be used, or
what some numbskull may do as a result of what they see, once the file has
left my hands - but it's a racing certainty that monitors will be used in
DTP systems. LAB? Well, nobody even knows what it is, certainly among Art
Eds and Production Eds of my acquaintance - and you can't JPEG a LAB image
anyhow AFAIK, so I can't deliver it electronically (50Mb TIFFS are not
popular:). And as for CMYK, I can't convert to CMYK as I have no idea of
the press/ink/paper characteristics which will be used wherever an image
ends up. I've discussed the possibility, never had a useable answer.
All/any of these could work just fine if you have anal end-to-end control
over the entire process, eg you are self-publishing, but nobody working for
magazines or press has a hope in hell of doing it that way. The information
simply is not available, you are just one factor in a chain which involves
lots of people, each with specialised skills and minimal overlap, and 6yr
old Radius monitors with screen burn. It's no use asking the designer what
flavour CMYK they want, they won't know - and even if they can ask the
repro house, they probably won't understand the answer, and it's all
aggravation they don't want on press day anyhow. 'Can't you just shoot it
on E6?' is their idea of colour management.
It's this chaos that ICM is supposed to provide a thread of sanity through,
but the final stage, repro/print, mostly hasn't caught up and it remains an
area of profound drain bramage IME. In the 6 years I have been doing this
stuff, there has been infinitesimal progress there, and supplying dig
images remains a game of Russian Roulette.
Regards
Tony Sleep
- Online portfolio & exhibit; + film scanner info
& comparisons
