Digital BW, The Print

Here I was  searching for some info on softproofing in general and I 
stumble on Dan Culbertson's page on softproof  creation for Quads with 
 Profiler Plus  at:
http://www.lincolninks.com/culbquads/CulQuad.html

I give it a general read, note the comments on using Tyler Boley's step 
wedge and begin to wonder... Can I usefully combine this with the Tyler 
Boley or Paul Roark curves and get myself some usable onscreen proofs?

I mean, it's all well and good to see a nice neutral greyscale image 
onscreen, but if I'm actually printing a cold-tone or sepia image, it 
would be REALLY nice to get a sense for color before I print it...

Well, after a VERY little bit of trial and error,  it turns out it can 
be done quite easily... Not only that, it should work with any scanner 
or spectro based profiling package.

First, as I would with any other inkset, I print a standard Profiler 
Plus calibration chart,  scan it and create a high resolution profile..

You can tweak the profile if you want, but these narrower gamut inksets 
tend to swing wildly when you tweak outside a very narrow range, so I 
just go with the stock automated profile that was just created.,..

Now, take a greyscale image, and convert it to RGB.  Then in the 
PhotoShop  "View Menu" choose "proof setup" followed by "Custom".. 
 Select the newly created Quad Profile..  Be sure to Select the 
"Preserve Color Numbers" in the dialog box.

Then in View select the "Proof Colors" to turn on the soft proof. If all 
works, you should now have a pretty near neutral image onscreen, an RGB 
mode greyscale image if you will... All well and good.

The fun part is to see what happens when you apply Paul or Tyler's 
curves (for VM), or my curves (for VM Sepia) to this image... (Making 
sure you use one of the No Color Adjustment curves)  Apply a curve to 
the image... VOILA!  A softproof of the final image printed with the 
color balance the curve defines..  Very nice, no more guessing about how 
warm a "w" curve is compare to an "mw" curve..  No more guessing how 
cold an "nc" curve will look when applied to a particular image!  

In fact, you can now, with this and the info at the bottom of Paul's 
page on "separation curves examples" you should be able to actually 
interactively play with some home brewed curves.  In fact, one could 
even create split toning curves this way before printing tests (I'm sure 
they'll still need subtle tweaks)..

Anyway, the bottom line is  that instead of seeing the garish colors 
induced by the application of the curves,  not only do the curves 
produce the desired final color temperature in the print, but you can 
pre-visualize that color range onscreen...  I hope this will be of value 
to someone..

Keith

 

"Just some guy," and founder of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSONx7x_Printers/
 
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"

 

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