[Scribus] [OT] Re: 'Adobe will release a full feature version of Acrobat for Linux.'

[Hal V. Engel]

On Thursday 23 February 2006 12:30 pm, Gerhard Gau?ling wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 23. Februar 2006 18:46 schrieb Nathan Turnage:
> > What I really want to see is a concerted effort to get
> > professional level color correction environment set up on linux.
> > Something a little more robust than little cms.
>
> From what I read about little-cms, it can easily compete with commercial
> CMM's (and it seems that it's often used in commercial applications):
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=1912&max_rows=25&styl
>e=nested&viewmonth=200510
>
> Like You mentioned in a further reply, it's more a problem to have a
> good profiler, which can make use of profiling hardware, like a
> spectrometer (e.g. eye one).
>
> I think Hal V. Engel is on the way to improve the little-cms profiler
> 'lprof' which have not been developed for a long time, because Marti
> Maria (the developer of lcms) works now for Hewlett-Packard.
>
> Thank you for your work on lprof Hal!
>
> Just to make some things clearer.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Gerhard Gau?ling

Gerhard - Thanks for the kind words.   

As Gerhard pointed out LPROF was effectively orphaned for a number of years as 
the last updates from Marti were in 2002 (or perhaps late 2001).  I have been 
the maintainer only since last August and it has under gone a significant 
amount of change since that time.  The UI has been largely rewritten, many 
bugs have been eliminated, the build system is much better,  the code is now 
more portable and the quality of the camera/scanner profiles are hugely 
improved.  Much remains to be done and I plan to eventually create a full 
featured world class profiler.   It will take some time in part because I am 
still learning how all of this stuff works and also because there are only so 
many hours in a day.  

As Gerhard points out in order for there to be a working CM environment on 
Linux there needs to be a good usable profiler.  LPROF already produces 
camera and scanner profiles that are at the very least close to world class 
and has a significantly improved UI.  When fed a monitor measurement file it 
will also produce monitor profiles that are comparable to any other software 
out there no matter how much it costs.  What it is missing at this point is 
direct support for measurement instruments and support for printer profiling.  
I am currently working with a vendor to make it possible to have support for 
USB based measurement instruments.  But this has been taking way longer than 
I would like and I am not yet convinced that the vendor will come through.  
My current plans call for integrating printer profiling sometime down the 
road perhaps by the 3rd quarter of this year.

ArgyllCMS already has support for some serial port measurement instruments and 
the ability to create both monitor and printer profiles from these 
measurements.   It can also produce camera and scanner profiles.  What it 
lacks is a user friendly UI as all of the utilities are command line tools 
and it typically takes several steps using difference utilities to create a 
profile.  But from all reports the printer profiles created with ArgyllCMS 
are world class or at least very close to it.

As you can see between lcms, ArgyllCMS and LPROF all of the building blocks 
are there to create a very high quality profiler.  It is just a matter of 
taking those building blocks and putting them together.  All that takes is 
some know how, commitment and time.

I should add that I also want to make sure that there are ways to get OK 
profiles for those that can't afford a measurement instrument.  LPROF 
currently has the rough monitor profiler and the current release has a much 
improved way to set the estimated gamma and monitor black point (new 
feature).  But I am sure that there are additional improvements that can be 
made.  Some to the software itself and perhaps with improving the 
documentation so that users will have additional techniques that will allow 
the creation of better rough monitor profiles.   I intend to have poor man 
options for printer profiling too.

Any and all ideas concerning how to improve LPROF are welcome as are bug 
reports.  Most of the items currently in the LPROF tracker were put there by 
me to help keep track of what needs to be done.  Those that are entered by 
others are very important and will be acted on as quickly as possible.  I 
view every one of these as a gift since it gives me valuable information on 
what users want and need and what I can do to make LPROF better.

Hal

PS:  One example of a commercial app that uses lcms is a program called 
Profile Prism.