Digital BW, The Print

I would make just one (badly expressed) comment:  you are attempting to
explain profiles from a narrow field of view (as adjustment curves) that is
only applicable by default in the greyscale case rather than starting with
the more correct broader colour world and explaining how profiles affect B&W
work.  This sentence is probably poorly worded! People get introduced to
profiles in a colour world and they are best explained in the broader colour
world to which they relate.  Then extend that explanation to their use in
the B&W world.  (Okay I know I am not explaining myself well here.)
Profiles are not "adjustment curves". In the B&W case a single channel
profile can be replicated with an adjustment curve but that doesn't make the
profile an adjustment curve. If someone read any article on colour
management (eg stuff from Ian Lyons site or Real World Color Management) and
then turned to your page they would likely be very confused.  Understanding
colour management is already an every day thing for colour photographers and
is, as can be witnessed by these discussions, becoming more important again
to B&W photographers who were let down by colour management initially (if it
worked well we'd simply be using a colour managed workflow exactly the same
as our colour printing!).  People need the broader picture to make sense of
the narrower B&W case.  Remember your experience is biased by the fact that
you DON'T employ colour management in the printing leg which ripples
backwards through your workflow.  A better explanation would begin with the
digital camera (JPEG), RAW converter (Raw to colour space conversion) or
scanner (profiled) through the colour management chain to printing.
Followed by a discussion of why colour management doesn't work so well for
B&W and then a discussion of the implications of not using colour management
for printing B&W (ie the document space then matters).


> From: Clayton Jones <cj@...>
> Reply-To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:33:55 -0000
> To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Comparison: K3 versus Ultrachrome inks on Semi-Matte
> + ImagePri
> 
> Hello Paul,
> 
>> That may be a matter of definition.  Where is this default space
>> set and what is it?  Those with more computer expertise than I
>> can probably answer this.  It could be in the system and not
>> Photoshop.  
> 
> This is a confusing subject and anyone who tries to explain it will
> likely have his own way of doing it.  I took a stab at it in article
> #4 on my web site and have have good feedback from it.  It's more than
> I can repeat here, so if you don't mind being referred to a web page
> it's in the 2nd and 3rd sections in article #4, subtitled "Profiles
> And Work Spaces, Tagging And Embedding" and "Assigning Front End Profiles"
> 
>    http://www.cjcom.net/articles/digiprn4.htm
> 
> It explains the terminology and the various controls in the Assign
> Profile dialog and how they interact.  As is usual for me, it's based
> on my own experience in figuring out how it works, and not on theory,
> so perhaps it will be helpful.
> 
> Regards,
> Clayton
> 
> 
> Info on black and white digital printing at
> http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
> 
>