Datacolor User to User Support Group.

hi Jonathan

i understand your problem. i'm in the same situation and would love a 
system that could create output similar to what i paint. what i have 
found is that this is never the case. color management is actually all 
about making the best of what you have available. there are plenty of 
color management software/hardware suites out there. the problem is 
that none of them, no matter how expensive and complex, and the can get 
darned expensive, can eliminate the endless tweaking to get the desired 
result. ColorVision PrintFix Pro is one of the most cost effective 
color management systems out there, for what it does. also it has to be 
understood that color management is about the creation of profiles to 
aid in effective monitor based proofing prior to printing. it's not 
about making the printed output look exactly like the painted original, 
instead it is about getting it as close as you can with the inks being 
used. this is why ink and paper combinations all have to be profiled to 
analyze the gamut weakness and generate a good soft proof to make the 
color corrections that are necessary within the scope of the ink/paper 
potential. i do digital painting, so i always paint with the proofing 
filters on in both Photoshop and Painter, which allows me to paint with 
predictability. the proofing filters help me paint only within the 
printer's color gamut. sometimes it's maddening to find out the red i 
want is NOT available, but i just use the next best red :)  ironically 
PrintFix doesn't give you more color, it only tells you how little you 
actually have :P

one thing that irks me is that i find the proofing display systems 
differ slightly between Photoshop and Painter. they tend to generate 
soft proofs different in color and saturation. it's close enough to 
make it usable but i'd love to see it appear the same at least. Corel's 
soft proofing doesn't make any sense. Photoshop's is the closest to 
output, yet it still tends to under-compensate for the actual 
saturation of the print at times ie. soft proofing will render an RGB 
black as a dark gray, yet the printed image is a jet black. i've come 
to compensate for that by adjusting the lab for the paper white, 
generating a brighter paper white in the soft proof. this helps kick up 
the overall contrast and i'm getting better soft proof results.

as for the accuracy of the Datacolor Spectrocolorimeter... i would 
assume it is great, since i am finding it doing an amazing analysis of 
my target swatches, though i find it seems to have troubles getting a 
particular purple swatch read correctly. it tends to render it as a 
taupe, sorta.

ghi


On 1-Nov-06, at 9:10 PM, potomacbassfisher wrote:

> I really appreciate the time you've taken to respond but that one
>  sailed over my head. I wasn't referring the paper... I said what
>  is "on the artists paper" meaning the ink, pencil or whatever the
>  image is. Not to say that that is part of the digital system, only
>  that I want the digital system to recreate it accuratly.
>
>  I deal with B/W and color. In both cases I need to adjust the levels
>  to make the colors darker in order to even come close to the
>  original. I am just trying to identify the cause of this. Where am
>  I loosing the "punch" of the image in my digital process. My guess
>  is it's something with the scanner or color managment of it.
>
>  -Jonathan
>