[scribus] Colour Profiles - make colour matching worse!

[John Beardmore]

Hal V. Engel wrote:
> On Monday 27 July 2009 04:33:06 am John Beardmore wrote:
>> Hal V. Engel wrote:
>>> On Sunday 26 July 2009 04:45:11 pm John Beardmore wrote:
>>>> Peter Nermander wrote:

>>>>> This page doesn't cover everything, but is has links to further
>>>>> reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_management
>>>>>
>>>>> Color management is VERY complicated, and you have to make sure you
>>>>> understand which profiles are needed for which translation. I know
>>>>> enough about color management to understand that I shouldn't be using
>>>>> it yet... I need to learn more.
>>>> Same here, but I suppose the frustration is that the documentation of
>>>> most software doesn't make colour handling particularly clear.
>>>>
>>>> It would seem logical that if CIELAB is a colour space that can describe
>>>> anything the human eye can perceive, that all images be stored
>>>> internally in this format. This then requires a profile that describes
>>>> the conversion of each input devices colour space to CIELAB, and another
>>>> profile for each output space describing the conversion from CIELAB to
>>>> the printer specific output.
>>> This is what the color management engine does although there is no
>>> requirement that images or anything for that matter be stored in CIELab
>>> or any other device independent color space.
>> Which is possibly a large part of the problem as the variety of possible
>> profiles and incompatibilities must go up rapidly with the number of
>> possible input and output devices in the absence of a common internal
>> format.
> 
> The use of a common internal STORAGE format does not change the number of 
> profiles required in any way.

As long as there's only one internal format that profiles have to be 
written for.


>  All devices need to be characterized no matter 
> what internal format is used to store images.

It's an interesting thought that one day people might start to make 
devices that use CIELab directly. Of course not all the spaces in CIELab 
might be used by the device image detector, not could a printer 
necessarily print the full CIELab colour gamut.  None the less, profiles 
would in effect become a matter of device firmware.


>  In addition users can use the 
> existing CMS facilities to store everything in CIELab if they want to.  This 
> has issues outside of the CMS however - for example image editors may not 
> handle this very well.

OK -  but presumably it's just another image file format, albeit one 
with better than usual colorimetric resolution ?


>  If there are not profiles available for each device 
> then there is no way to convert from the device's native color space (there 
> are NO devices that natively produce CIELab images so you need a CMS to do 
> this) to the "common internal format".  In addition there are no 
> incompatibilities in the existing CMS design since the CMS does in fact use a 
> common internal format called the Profile Conversion Space (PCS) when doing 
> conversions between device color spaces.  This has been a feature of the ICC 
> specification since the very beginning.  

But why have CIELab and CIEXYZ as possible PCSs ?


>>>> For PDFs which are frequently multi use things, it would presumably be
>>>> sensible to keep images in the CIELAB format then use profiles for each
>>>> VDU, CRT, LCD and mobile phone used to view them, or each windows or
>>>> press printer that might be used to put them on paper.
>>> In fact the PDF specification calls for support for various color spaces
>>> including what the spec calls CIE Based color spaces.  One of these is
>>> CIELab but this also includes objects where the color space is specified
>>> by an ICC profile.  In addition the spec allows for what it calls CalRGB,
>>> CalCMYK and CalGray color spaces which are basically specified by a
>>> combination of an XYZ white point and some gamma curves (actually a gamma
>>> curve formulas) and the XYZ values of the primaries.  Internally when a
>>> PDF is sent to a device for display/printing the PDF spec calls for
>>> everything not in the device color space to be converted from what ever
>>> color space the individual objects are in to CIEXYZ and then from CIEXYZ
>>> to the output device color space.   It does not really make sense  to
>>> store everything in the PDF in CIELab since the specification calls for
>>> everything to be converted to CIEXYZ as an intermediate step and as long
>>> as all of the objects in the PDF have well specified color spaces then
>>> the conversion process is unambiguous.  As a side note anything in a
>>> "device" color space is in fact not well defined in most cases and this
>>> is were many issues pop up.
>>>
>>>> In the absence of such clear and well defined data flow,
>>> As you can see from the above the color data flow is well defined and
>>> very clear but is also complex.  But I think what you were trying to say
>>> is that this is not clear to users.
>> Yes -  to a significant extent.  Though I suspect that is CMS were to be
>> redesigned from scratch, we might end up with something less complex as
>> well as more accessible.
>>
>> Apart from the disk space used, I don't really see anything wrong with
>>
>>      profiles from devices to
>>      universal colour space to
>>      profiles to output devices
> 
> But this is exactly what we have now.  The only thing you want to change is to 
> require that images be stored in the "universal colour space".  The whole 
> point of the CMS is that storing images in a "universal colour space" is not 
> necessary since all it does is shift where some of the color transformation 
> processing is done.

Yes, though manipulating images in higher colorimetric resolution might 
not be a bad thing,


> That is the flow would go from (current flow):
> 
> stored image (input device color) --> PCS
> PCS --> output device color
> 
> to (your flow):
> 
> input device color --> PCS (stored image)
> PCS (stored image) --> output device color
> 
> CMS processing that results in a transformation either into or from the PCS is 
> indicated by --> and to do these one profile is required.   Notice that each 
> flow involves two transformations to get from input device color space (think 
> camera or scanner) to output device color space (think monitor or printer) and 
> the only difference between these is when the input device to PCS transform 
> happens not if it happens.  There is no difference in complexity and it 
> appears to me that your proposal is a solution in search of a problem that 
> does not exist.

Maybe a solution that has in some sense already been implemented, but 
still not sure why CIELab and CIEXYZ ?


>> The fact that "the PDF specification calls for support for various color
>> spaces" may be a reflection of history rather than what's needed to get
>> the job done.
> 
> To some extent this is true.  The Cal* color spaces are basically left over 
> from the PostScript specification and I suspect would not exist if the PDF 
> specification where being designed in a vacuum after the ICC specification 
> where widely accepted.  I also find the "Device" color spaces to be worse than 
> useless since the ambiguity that they create is actually harmful.  In effect 
> by using the PDF "Device" color spaces users are turning off color management 
> in their PDF files.  But this does not mean the the CIE Based part of the PDF 
> specification is incorrect or overly complex because it is, in fact, based on 
> the ICC specification and it is actually the most modern part of the color 
> specification in the PDF format.   I would be happy with the PDF specification 
> if it did not have the Cal* and Device elements since it would simply the 
> format and possibly make it more accessible to users and it would make things 
> simpler for programmers as well.  But the Cal* and Device color spaces predate 
> the CIE Based color spaces and are included so that older PDF files continue 
> to work. 

OK.


>> I suppose if a full CMS requires huge complexity and an understanding of
>> human perception, maybe there is scope to implement something which is
>> much simpler and just reproduces the colours accurately.
> 
> But this is not possible.  Human perception is one of the main issues that 
> this is designed to deal with.  To illustrate if you are in a building with 
> incandescent lighting and a person in front of you has a white shirt on the 
> shirt will appear white even though the lighting has a color temperature of 
> around 2800K (IE. the light is yellowish but we still see a white shirt).  If 
> you follow that person outside into the sun light the shirt will still appear 
> to be white even though the light now has a color temperature of around 5000K 
> and the physical color of the light reflected off of the shirt has changed 
> significantly.  Why do I bring this up?  Because it is an easy to reproduce 
> example of how two totally different physical colors (meaning the color of the 
> light reflected off of a "white" object) can appear to be the same color 
> because of human perception.   The human mind instantly compensates for this 
> change in lighting and even though the actual physical color of the objects 
> changes as the lighting changes our perception of these colors does not 
> change.  The CMS is designed with this and other aspects of human perception 
> in mind and there is no way to avoid this.  It is just the underlaying nature 
> of what we are dealing with and it is not possible to ignore it.

 From a user point of view if all devices used a single colour space out 
of the box I don't see why CMS would be necessary ?


>>> Having said that it takes a lot of up front effort to do this which makes
>>> getting past the learning curve a difficult task for many users.
>> Yes -  and the need to buy kit to calibrate monitors and print output
>> doesn't help either.
> 
> You do need to base this on actual measurements of the hardware being used or 
> it does not work.  Nature of the beast.  It was only a few years ago that the 
> vendors of this hardware viewed this as a specialized activity that only those 
> involved professionally in graphics and printing would use.   For example way 
> back only Macs were used for this type of work and the hardware and software 
> needed for profiling was only available for Macs.  It used to be that the 
> hardware was very expensive (think $1,000 - inflation adjusted - for basic 
> hardware to be able to calibrate and profile monitors and $5,000 for 
> printers).  Now you can get the hardware to calibrate and profile monitors for 
> about $60 and basic printer profiling hardware for about $400.  In addition 
> many printer,  paper and ink vendors now give away high quality printer 
> profiles on their web sites and if your OS/printer driver/printer/paper/inks 
> are supported this way then proper printer profiles are a no cost option.  
> Most windows and OS/X users should be able to find suitable printer profiles 
> on-line for free.  For most *nix users this is not an option.  If you can't 
> find suitable profiles on-line there are printer profiling services that will 
> create custom profiles for as little as $25 (it wasn't that long ago that 
> these services charged over $125).  Even though there are some costs here they 
> are not out of the reach of most users and many users should be able to setup 
> everything they need for under $125 (monitor measurement device + purchase a 
> printer profile + profiling target for camera and/or scanner) to have a 
> complete correct CM work flow.  And there are open source solutions for 
> profiling software that work on Windows, OS/X and all of the open source 
> platforms like Linux.

Not all bad news then !


Cheers, J/.
-- 
John Beardmore, MSc EDM (Open), B.A. Chem (Oxon), CMIOSH, AIEMA, MEI
Managing Director, T4 Sustainability Limited. http://www.T4sLtd.co.uk/
Energy Audit, Carbon Management, Design Advice, Sustainable Energy
Consultancy and Installation, Carbon Trust Standard Registered Assessor
Phone: 0845 4561332   Mobile: 07785 563116   Skype: t4sustainability