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What about slides?

What about slides?

2006-04-15 by Bailey Donnally

On some occasions I need good quality slides made from digital files
and I can't afford to pay a lot of money for them, so I use service
companies that will do them for approximately $2.50 each.  I have
tried several companies, and some of these companies seem to give
reproducable results, but I have found none that give me slides that
have the colors and luminosity just right (The closest I have come is
Slides.com.). I have my monitor profiled with the Spyder2Pro system,
and the files print out reasonably correctly (on an Epson 2200
printer) with the "canned" profiles, and even better with profiles I
prepare using PrintFix Pro. From this evidence I presume that I am
making properly color-managed files.  I can adjust the files so that
the slides come out somewhat better by using (usually substantial)
adjustments in Photoshop of levels, curves and/or color balance, but
it is hard to get everything just right. 

Is there any way, preferably using the Colorvision products, but any
way that works, of creating a good profile that I can apply to the
files before I send them to the service company to have the slides
made that will make the resultant slides better?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Bailey

Re: [colorvision_group] What about slides?

2006-04-15 by CDTobie@aol.com


In a message dated 4/15/06 12:09:54 PM, bdonnally@... writes:


Is there any way, preferably using the Colorvision products, but any
way that works, of creating a good profile that I can apply to the
files before I send them to the service company to have the slides
made that will make the resultant slides better?


Slides are created using a type of device called a filmwriter. It is possible, though rarely done, to build an ICC profile for a filmwriter. More typical is to take a generic profile and alter it to optimize filmwriter output using DoctorPRO. If a company bothers to do this, then they end up with a color managed device, meaning that files from any known source can be converted to the colorspace of the filmwriter profile, and produce consistant, predictable results. Short of that, its a "get what they give you" situation.

You aren't really in a position to send a ColorVision patch target file to a slide production company, and read hundreds of color patches from the resulting 1 inch wide transparency. You could "brew your own" DoctorPRO profile by sending them the PDI test image converted to a few colorspaces (AdobeRGB, sRGB, a few printer profiles) and see which one was closest, then edit the result with DoctorPRO, and send the same image converted to that profile with your next batch, and so on, until you had "trial and errored" your way to a reasonable profile for the device, much as you currently do with Photoshop corrections, but then rolling the corrections into a profile edit. Unless the lab was actively involved than this would just be guerilla profiling...

C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Division
DataColor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com

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