On 7 Sep 2004 at 16:37, Stuart Moore wrote: > Hello Rob, > > You have gone way beyond my understanding now. I was picking up on a criticism > of PSP that the latest version of PSP still does seem to have addressed.
Hi Stuart, Sorry if it went a bit over your head, unfortunately colour management is one of the least well documented and most complex areas of digital imaging and of course one of the most critical elements to achieving good and consistent results. It took me a while to get my head around it. > The latest version does have monitor gamma correction and also allows you to > select monitor profiles. This is a contradiction of sorts (if they co-exist), the monitor profile should also set the gamma, in ThumbsPlus there is also a gamma control however setting it to zero invokes the windows monitor profile. I tried to DL the latest PS to have a look at their colour management however their site is slow as a wet week at the moment. The gamma tool in Photoshop adjusts the LUT to set the gamma, this little freeware tool will emulate the Adobe gamma tool: http://quickgamma.de/indexen.html A good tool for visually assessing black-point (and many other settings) is the Nokia Monitor Test 2.0 (no longer available at the Nokia site): http://www.idg.pl/ftp/pc_2678/Nokia%20Monitor%20Test%202.0.html http://www.computerworld.pl/ftp/2678/Nokia%20Monitor%20Test%202.0.html > However, the underlying format still seems to be sRGB and whilst the *ist D can > be set to use AdobeRGB it would appear that I would not be able to manipulate > photos in PSP without losing information. For all intents sRGB encompasses the colour gamut of most RGB monitors so your monitor profile will likely be a slight variation on the sRGB profile. Your working colour space can enclose a larger colour gamut than the display as the colour management system maps the wide gamut values to fit into the monitors sRGB gamut so you can't actually see any of the extra information on screen but it is being used. Using the Adobe RGB colour space as your working colour space will provide prints with a wider colour gamut since there are colours outside the sRGB gamut that the printers can lay on paper especially in the cyan/green and yellow hues. Working in an sRGB working space (not monitor profile) discards any extra information outside the sRGB gamut. > I have been using Fireworks and PSP for year happy in my ignorance - like many > others I suspect - but now I feel that I am missing out on something. Every now > and then I get the urge to invest in Photoshop but just cannot bring myself to > do it. It's really the only sensible solution of you are seriously into image manipulation, you might soften the blow by purchasing and old legitimate copy and upgrading? For a good graphical representation of how colour gamuts compare see: http://www.iccview.de/index_eng.htm If your browser doesn't have a VRML interpreter loaded then follow the links to http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortona/ It's well worth it as it should answer some questions. Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
