Datacolor User to User Support Group.

Is the a way to create Photoshop curves from the XML spectro data files?

I'm trying to get around the problem that OS X 10.6 and Adobe CS5 have with using custom color profiles.  ( If you choose Photoshop-controls-color, OS X disables the printer's color controls, but not ColorSync. )

Myron

On Oct 24, 2010, at 11:06 AM, gochatunbdotca wrote:

> Is the a way to create Photoshop curves from the XML spectro data files?
> 

No, and in any case, I don't see any use in trying to do it. (More below)

> I'm trying to get around the problem that OS X 10.6 and Adobe CS5 have with using custom color profiles. ( If you choose Photoshop-controls-color, OS X disables the printer's color controls, but not ColorSync. )
> 

You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Snow Leopard and CS5 don't have a problem using custom color profiles; the mechanism of using profiles that
are built from properly printed targets (no color management) works just as it always did, with previous
versions of OSX and CS.

You use the profiles in Photoshop's print dialog with:

Photoshop Manages Colors; select the printer profile in the popup beneath that; etc etc as has
always been the case.

In the OSX print dialog which follows: (and this has also been the case in previous versions
of CS and OSX): in the Color Matching pane of the dialog: yes, the two radio buttons are dimmed
and ColorSync comes up auto-selected, but you don't have to worry about what this means. *The
"right" thing is happening under the hood, and ColorSync is not applying an extra printer
profile to the process.

*You can just ignore what you see here when printing with a custom profile from Photoshop, but
it IS critically important when printing targets from inside Spyder3Print, see more below.

In the printer-specific part of the OSX printer dialog, you DO need to use the same controls
to turn off color management that you did when printing targets from Spyder3Print. In Epson drivers,
this is going to be the "Off - No Color Management" setting.

The point is: you're thinking there's a problem with 10.6 and CS5 using custom profiles,
because of things that have been written about problems -printing targets- for profiling;
when in fact, it all works just as it always has, and there's nothing going wrong there.

The change in CS5 has to do with it -not- supporting the printing of profiling targets, because
they're eliminated the "No Color Management" option in their Print dialog. There's a workaround
posted for this on their site, but we've always advised users to print the Spyder3Print targets
directly from within the Spyder3Print software itself. That eliminates all sorts of potential
problems with color management settings in a printing application, because Spyder3Print handles
all of that for you invisibly, without your having to worry about doing something wrong. When
you print targets from within Spyder3Print, the -only- thing you need to pay attention to is
setting up the printer driver controls properly for turning off color management.


*So, how to turn off color management in printer drivers, when printing targets from Spyder3Print
for OSX:

1. Epson drivers: These all have a properly functioning "Off" control for color management, but you
need to set things correctly in 2 different places.

- Choose "Epson Color Controls" (not ColorSync!) in the Color Matching pane.

- Choose "Off - No Color Management" in the Epson-specific section

- You need to do BOTH of these things to get a properly printed target, with no color management.
(A common mistake is not to do the first one; ColorSync is the default in all printer drivers;
not switching that setting over to "Epson Color Controls" will produce an incorrectly printed
target that won't build a profile that works correctly.

2. Canon drivers: These tend "not" to have a properly function "Off" control for no color management
(if such a control or setting is even visible - many of the older Canon drivers had a "None" setting
in a certain popup, but in OSX Leopard and Snow Leopard, that setting disappeared) So there's a
different way to do this reliably, it's basically a workaround, and it's different than printing
targets to Epsons.

- Choose ColorSync (not "Vendor Matching") in the Color Matching pane.

- In the Profile popup beneath that: click in the popup and use the "Other Profiles..." command
at the bottom to see a list of all the profiles on your system. If you're running Leopard, choose
"Generic RGB". If you're running Snow Leopard, choose "sRGB".

- That's all you need to do, other than choose your paper type, output quality/resolution, etc.
The "Color Options" pane in the driver will have all of it's controls dimmed; just leave it alone.

3. HP drivers: Same comment as Canon drivers. In the past, HP had an "Application Managed Colors"
setting that behaved the same as Epson's "Off" setting, but it seems to have disappeared. So, as with
the Canon drivers in #2: choose ColorSync (not "Vendor Matching") and either "Generic RGB" (Leopard)
or "sRGB" (Snow Leopard), and then your paper type and output quality in the HP specific section.


In all of these cases: you should get a dark, saturated target which has had no color management
(printer profile) applied. When you measure the target, the patches should come up fairly dark.
They won't "look like" the Pure display (or the "upper left" corners of the patches if the
Target window is viewed in the "Split" display mode); they should be darker and (if you're working
with matte paper) duller as well. That's expected. If your target print looks too bright and "cheery",
it's probably wrong. One easy way to tell is to look at the transitions from black to blue, and
black to green, in the target print. (For example, the first 5 patches of the color pattern, going
across, in the 225 patch target, and the first 5 patches going down). Both of these transitions
should be rather dark, and they should end up on dark (fully inked) patches for blue and green. If
you see that black immediately jumps up to lighter greens and blues in these transitions, and ends
on lighter green and blue patches, then the target print is wrong.



David Miller
Senior Software Developer, Digital Color Solutions
Datacolor

> You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
> 
> ... in the Color Matching pane of the dialog: yes, the two radio buttons are dimmed
> and ColorSync comes up auto-selected, but you don't have to worry about what this means. *The
> "right" thing is happening under the hood, and ColorSync is not applying an extra printer
> profile to the process.

I was fine with profiling (setting color control properly in two separate dialogues), but the inconsistency of these dialogues in other contexts was confusing me.  There seem to be three possibilities for the Color Matching pane:  three radio buttons (including one for no color control), two dimmed radio buttons with ColorSync selected, two undimmed radio buttons with Epson selected.  The third one occurs with Photoshop CS and Light Zone 3.9. The first occurs with Spyder3Print, and the second occurs with CS5, Aperture and Lightroom.  It was the second one that confused me. I wanted to explicitly choose not to manage color, or choose to manage color with the Epson driver (and then tell the Epson driver not to manage color at all).  I assumed that even a dimmed ColorSync choice would automatically apply some kind of profiling to the data.  Apparently not.  The dimmed but selected ColorSync button is either a "lie" --- ColorSync is in fact *not* enabled --- or ColorSync only profiles data that does not come already labelled as actively profiled.  ??

Myron

On Oct 26, 2010, at 9:10 AM, Myron Gochnauer wrote:

> 
>> You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
>> 
>> ... in the Color Matching pane of the dialog: yes, the two radio buttons are dimmed
>> and ColorSync comes up auto-selected, but you don't have to worry about what this means. *The
>> "right" thing is happening under the hood, and ColorSync is not applying an extra printer
>> profile to the process.
> 
> I was fine with profiling (setting color control properly in two separate dialogues), but the inconsistency of these dialogues in other contexts was confusing me.  There seem to be three possibilities for the Color Matching pane:  three radio buttons (including one for no color control), two dimmed radio buttons with ColorSync selected, two undimmed radio buttons with Epson selected.  The third one occurs with Photoshop CS and Light Zone 3.9. The first occurs with Spyder3Print, and the second occurs with CS5, Aperture and Lightroom.  It was the second one that confused me. I wanted to explicitly choose not to manage color, or choose to manage color with the Epson driver (and then tell the Epson driver not to manage color at all).  I assumed that even a dimmed ColorSync choice would automatically apply some kind of profiling to the data.  Apparently not.  The dimmed but selected ColorSync button is either a "lie" --- ColorSync is in fact *not* enabled --- or ColorSync only profiles data that does not come already labelled as actively profiled.  ??
> 

Spyder3Print's possibilities end up working the way these controls were intended, because it
does nothing to override or influence any of those controls. Choose "Epson Color Controls"
means that the Epson-specific section of the driver alone is used for handling color,
and so it then makes sense that choosing "Off - No Color Management" in that section does
exactly what it says. If you choose "ColorSync" when you're using Spyder3Print, then you end
up with a profile (whatever you select in the popup that shows up underneath it) and the
Epson specific section has no influence on output colors at all (and the controls in that
section end up being removed and replaced with some explanatory text instead)

Photoshop is a different story. In that case, a dimmed ColorSync choice is a half-lie.
Yes, ColorSync is being used, but no, ColorSync is not being used to apply a printer profile.
Instead, what it's doing "under the hood" is essentially the same as the workaround I listed
for the Canon and HP printers. They're applying the same source and destination profile
(Generic RGB in Leopard and sRGB in Snow Leopard) so that while ColorSync is "turned on",
(and there's no way it can be "turned off", since it's dimmed), it's doing nothing to the
colors that are being sent to the driver: what goes in is the color content of the image
window without any profile having been applied to it. Functionally, it's doing the right
thing, but when you look at the controls in the OSX Print dialog: yes, it can be confusing.

David Miller
Senior Software Developer, Digital Color Solutions
Datacolor