Digital BW, The Print

on 11/17/01 11:13 PM, Mark Tucker wrote:

> What is the real-world difference between setting your RGB
> Working Space to your Monitor Profile, rather than, say,
> Adobe98? After I think about it for a while, I'd think that I'd
> ALWAYS want my RGB working space as my monitor profile,
> because I work "from my eyes", as in I judge color mostly from
> the monitor representation, rather than by the Info Pallette.

Mark

Look I don't understand this well enough that anybody should even listen to
me, but that never stopped me from talking...

Without knowing what the Profile City's instructions really are I can't
speak to them. I have a feeling they're telling you to select that as a way
to make sure you don't somehow convert the target's values - not really
sure.

There are a couple of reasons not to use your monitor profile as your
working space. 1) It's not a "well behaved" working space. This reduces
predictability, for instance in the workspace profiles that come with PS,
R=G=B makes a neutral color. Device specific profiles don't guarantee that
to be the case. 2) If you share your files, like with a print shop, they
won't see your file the way you do. Earlier in color management days you
would use your monitor profile, but this worked mostly for closed loop
systems, where for instance a photographer gave a chrome to a printer and
they scanned it, made the match prints, and ran the presses. The monitor and
presses used the match print as their standard for both the monitor and the
press and they never had to worry how the file looked on someone else's
system. Of course if they handed the file to someone, like you, they only
way it's look right was if you also calibrated your monitor to their match
print. Thus only the people who use Chubby Boy Press, like you, would like
your image. ;-)

They idea behind modern color management is that if you calibrate your
monitor to one non device-specific standard, and your printer to a different
non device-specific standard, when both are done properly they will look
like each other, and so long as every body else is calibrated and profiled
to those same standards, and the images are properly tagged, they will see
it as you see it.

Regarding the school of correcting by the numbers, that's all good, but
there's no reason that with properly implemented color management that the
numbers shouldn't make a color onscreen that looks like it does in your
mind's eye. When the two don't relate it's like putting a colored gel over
one eye. Sure you can still make sense out of the world, but it's a
struggle.

Todd

PS, I hope someone more knowledgeable than I answer this for you too!