One important thing to understand is that there are input profiles, profile connection spaces, and output profiles. Camera raw files are in an input space, not ProPhotoRGB, Adobe98, or sRGB. Printer output files are in an output space, based on the capabilities of the inks, paper, and marking engine, plus choices made by the profiling method and settings.
So, ProPhotoRGB is a connection space. A robust workflow will support this space as input to connect to a printer profile, but opening color space up to whatever the photographer wants is not favored by most printers, because of the reasons called out in the article, plus fun bonuses like corrupt or stunt profiles used by some pro photographers as reasons to print only through their workflow.
The other thing important to consider is bit depth. Raw files are nearly always in higher bit depths (12, 14, or 16 bit, usually), so converting to 8 bits while maintaining a very wide gamut will quantize the colors *more* than converting to 8 bit sRGB.
In short, “do what the printer asks you to do” is sound advice. Camera raw and high-bit-depth ProPhotoRGB gives you the widest gamut and possibilities on the front end, but consider the trade offs being made to display these files onscreen, and on to print.
Sometimes when dealing with custom printers using process print I have LONGED for the simplicity of the wet darkroom. I was hopeful when GRACOL was being developed but as of now, we've gone from the waving of chicken bones via hard proofs to almost insane complexity with modern CMYK process and 99% of asset providers having no idea how to even send their CMYK conversations of spot colors.
I feel this, and I’m in favor of “show me the color appearance you want, and your tolerance for variation” as a strategy, for when “print by the numbers” goes awry.
And at this point we've both gone so far off the rails that there are ZERO other photographers that want or need to know any of this, we are now in the 1% of process print geek people that walk in circles cursing at everything because of the complete lack of awareness or care of all the crap sent we have no idea what to do with because of bizarre folk lore the emanates from everywhere yet no identifiable place that can be shut down that we have to "fix" having no clue what the target actually is...
Theoretically anyone should be able to send ANY PDF with mixed profiles and intents and any print provider SHOULD be able to accurately translate that to a device end of story... but nobody actually does that and no printer will accept that let alone tell you if it doesn't measure up, they'll just do the WRONG thing silently. Grrrrr. Problems that shouldn't exist.
Bringing it back to photographer land....
Yes, if you shoot by the numbers and control color immaculately and can PROVE the file you sent exactly matches the color of the object the customer has, they will insist it is WRONG according to their own random screen they are looking at on their boyfriend's 2014 dell $600 laptop in a browser from 2012 that chucks out color profiles (or similar scenario)
Yes, commercial clients are difficult, hence my partner's job and not mine!
Part of my job is telling those difficult clients that rasterizing their brand color to RGB JPEGs stuffed into a PDF isn't helping us print their swatch color, so I can definitely relate. I can't bear to do the wrong thing silently--the curse of the properly-OCD color scientist!
There were several opportunities which were lost in the conversation namely,
1) A calibrated workflow is a necessity if one wants a reasonable expectation of achieving consistent and predictable results,
2) Most users need to turn down their monitors’ luminance to around 80 Cd/m2 if their final destination is printing.
3) Room ambient light and illumination sources are important considerations when post processing for print.
4) While there are numerous advantages to editing in a larger color space such as ProPhoto, primarily lack of rounding or mapping errors, these advantages do not necessarily translate into better or more desirable prints. Commonly employed monitors can at most display sRGB or 99% of aRGB. Thus, one cannot visualize on conventional monitors what might be lurking in the file or how it will appear on the output. A great example occurs when printing portraits and if one exports the results in aRGB to a company whose printers are operating in the sRGB color space, the skin tones will likely appear orange/yellow in the output. In this scenario, the user is wiser to convert the print to sRGBand deliver the final proofed print as intended.
There are many other interesting points to discuss, though as you indicated, they are better covered in a course on printing. Cheers!
Thanks for pointing those out. I was trying to stay on topic for the specific conversation. Certainly there's A LOT to printing, all in the eBook I referenced.
Coincidently, the very first bit of advice we tell participants in our intro to fine art printing workshop is the #1 problem people have is that prints turn out too dark because their monitor is too bright! So absolute agreement with that bit of wisdom.
I really like your response and am saving the essay for my files and future plagiarism! What was omitted is the conclusion which I assume is the recommendation to use the method of hard proofing on smaller sheets of paper to answer questions softproofing intended to answer.
Without a doubt a hard proof is the BEST way!!! Having said that, the other thing we "preach" at our intro to fine art printing workshops is experience with particular papers and how they render various types of images, colors, densities in shadow/highlight, etc.
In some cases we don't make our first hard proof on the final target medium. An example would be super-expensive awagami papers where we'll use a similar (in terms of rendering) mat paper to do our first hard proofs before a "final" on the handmade Bizan sheet. That way we're not spending a ton of cash iterating minor revisions on super expensive materials.
We'll even print 4 up on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 in many cases before going large.
One important thing to understand is that there are input profiles, profile connection spaces, and output profiles. Camera raw files are in an input space, not ProPhotoRGB, Adobe98, or sRGB. Printer output files are in an output space, based on the capabilities of the inks, paper, and marking engine, plus choices made by the profiling method and settings.
So, ProPhotoRGB is a connection space. A robust workflow will support this space as input to connect to a printer profile, but opening color space up to whatever the photographer wants is not favored by most printers, because of the reasons called out in the article, plus fun bonuses like corrupt or stunt profiles used by some pro photographers as reasons to print only through their workflow.
The other thing important to consider is bit depth. Raw files are nearly always in higher bit depths (12, 14, or 16 bit, usually), so converting to 8 bits while maintaining a very wide gamut will quantize the colors *more* than converting to 8 bit sRGB.
In short, “do what the printer asks you to do” is sound advice. Camera raw and high-bit-depth ProPhotoRGB gives you the widest gamut and possibilities on the front end, but consider the trade offs being made to display these files onscreen, and on to print.
Sometimes when dealing with custom printers using process print I have LONGED for the simplicity of the wet darkroom. I was hopeful when GRACOL was being developed but as of now, we've gone from the waving of chicken bones via hard proofs to almost insane complexity with modern CMYK process and 99% of asset providers having no idea how to even send their CMYK conversations of spot colors.
Of course, many asset providers just want “make it look like it does in my screen in Canva,” which is why an article like this is useful.
I feel this, and I’m in favor of “show me the color appearance you want, and your tolerance for variation” as a strategy, for when “print by the numbers” goes awry.
And at this point we've both gone so far off the rails that there are ZERO other photographers that want or need to know any of this, we are now in the 1% of process print geek people that walk in circles cursing at everything because of the complete lack of awareness or care of all the crap sent we have no idea what to do with because of bizarre folk lore the emanates from everywhere yet no identifiable place that can be shut down that we have to "fix" having no clue what the target actually is...
Theoretically anyone should be able to send ANY PDF with mixed profiles and intents and any print provider SHOULD be able to accurately translate that to a device end of story... but nobody actually does that and no printer will accept that let alone tell you if it doesn't measure up, they'll just do the WRONG thing silently. Grrrrr. Problems that shouldn't exist.
Bringing it back to photographer land....
Yes, if you shoot by the numbers and control color immaculately and can PROVE the file you sent exactly matches the color of the object the customer has, they will insist it is WRONG according to their own random screen they are looking at on their boyfriend's 2014 dell $600 laptop in a browser from 2012 that chucks out color profiles (or similar scenario)
Yes, commercial clients are difficult, hence my partner's job and not mine!
Part of my job is telling those difficult clients that rasterizing their brand color to RGB JPEGs stuffed into a PDF isn't helping us print their swatch color, so I can definitely relate. I can't bear to do the wrong thing silently--the curse of the properly-OCD color scientist!
There were several opportunities which were lost in the conversation namely,
1) A calibrated workflow is a necessity if one wants a reasonable expectation of achieving consistent and predictable results,
2) Most users need to turn down their monitors’ luminance to around 80 Cd/m2 if their final destination is printing.
3) Room ambient light and illumination sources are important considerations when post processing for print.
4) While there are numerous advantages to editing in a larger color space such as ProPhoto, primarily lack of rounding or mapping errors, these advantages do not necessarily translate into better or more desirable prints. Commonly employed monitors can at most display sRGB or 99% of aRGB. Thus, one cannot visualize on conventional monitors what might be lurking in the file or how it will appear on the output. A great example occurs when printing portraits and if one exports the results in aRGB to a company whose printers are operating in the sRGB color space, the skin tones will likely appear orange/yellow in the output. In this scenario, the user is wiser to convert the print to sRGBand deliver the final proofed print as intended.
There are many other interesting points to discuss, though as you indicated, they are better covered in a course on printing. Cheers!
Thanks for pointing those out. I was trying to stay on topic for the specific conversation. Certainly there's A LOT to printing, all in the eBook I referenced.
Coincidently, the very first bit of advice we tell participants in our intro to fine art printing workshop is the #1 problem people have is that prints turn out too dark because their monitor is too bright! So absolute agreement with that bit of wisdom.
I really like your response and am saving the essay for my files and future plagiarism! What was omitted is the conclusion which I assume is the recommendation to use the method of hard proofing on smaller sheets of paper to answer questions softproofing intended to answer.
Without a doubt a hard proof is the BEST way!!! Having said that, the other thing we "preach" at our intro to fine art printing workshops is experience with particular papers and how they render various types of images, colors, densities in shadow/highlight, etc.
In some cases we don't make our first hard proof on the final target medium. An example would be super-expensive awagami papers where we'll use a similar (in terms of rendering) mat paper to do our first hard proofs before a "final" on the handmade Bizan sheet. That way we're not spending a ton of cash iterating minor revisions on super expensive materials.
We'll even print 4 up on a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 in many cases before going large.