Color Management for Photographers

Color Management for Photographers

Released August 2005
Publisher(s): Focal Press
ISBN: 9781136107092

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Book description

Color Management for Photographers: Hands on Techniques for Photoshop Users, by Andrew Rodney, addresses the difficult subject of color management in a way that can help you get real work accomplished. This is the first book that moves beyond esoteric color management theory and detailed explanations of how things work to explain how to achieve a desired effect with step-by-step instructions so you can get on with creating and printing successful images. Complete with what-button-to-push-when explanations, this guide will help you navigate color management and further solidify comprehension of techniques with self-paced tutorials that enable you to practice what Rodney preaches. This practical, learn by doing approach is enhanced by the accompanying CD-Rom which includes sample files for practice as well as tutorials and software.

Written with the photographer in mind, this book is also a great hands-on guide for graphic designers, those in prepress/print and, more generally, the majority of people who feel color management is too difficult. This book will help to explain this difficult concept in terms you can understand so that you may control and enhance your photographic vision.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Halftitle
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Chapter 1 Color Management and Why We Need It
    1. Why This Book Was Written
    2. How the Book Is Structured
    3. Being a Photographer Isn’t Necessary
    4. My Pipeline (Work Flow) Philosophy
    5. If in Doubt, Test, Test, Test!
    6. Color Management System (CMS) and Why We Need It
    7. Digital Images Are Just Numbers
    8. The Pixel
    9. What Is Light, What Is Color?
    10. Color Models and Color Spaces
    11. Device-Dependent Color Spaces
    12. Device-Independent Color Spaces
    13. RGB versus CMYK, and What’s the Fuss about LAB?
    14. A Brief Look at Color Management in the Past
    15. Desktop Color
    16. Open Color Management Systems
    17. Color Management versus Color Correction
    18. Calibration versus Profiling
    19. Generic versus Custom Profiles
    20. Color Gamut
    21. Color Translation
    22. Rendering Intents and ICC Profiles
    23. Converting/Transforming and the PCS
    24. Assigning/Embedding
    25. Anatomy of an ICC Profile
    26. Where ICC Profiles Live on Your System
    27. Reasonable Expectations from Color Management
  9. Chapter 2 Photoshop and Color Management
    1. Photoshop before ICC Color Management
    2. Photoshop’s ICC Color Architecture
    3. A Divorce of the Display
    4. Display Using Monitor Compensation
    5. Working (Editing) Spaces.
    6. Working Spaces Up Close
    7. Which Working Space?
    8. Which Working Space?
    9. The Bottom Line—Numbers, Previews, and Conversions Are All in Sync
    10. Color Management in Photoshop Can’t Be Turned Off!
    11. Document Specific Color
    12. Photoshop Color Settings
    13. Other Color Management Commands and Options
    14. Soft-Proofing
    15. Working by the Numbers
    16. Common Mistakes
  10. Chapter 3 Building Display Profiles
    1. CRTs and LCDs
    2. Calibration, Then Profiling
    3. Visual Calibration
    4. What to Set and What to Expect
    5. Other Areas to Watch For
    6. When Print and Display Don’t Match
    7. Viewing Images Outside of ICC-Savvy Applications
  11. Chapter 4 Building Scanner Profiles
    1. Targets
    2. The Scanner
    3. Scanning the Target
    4. Scanner Settings for Optimal Data
    5. Building the Scanner Profile
    6. Tweaking the Profile by Tweaking the Target
    7. Pipeline Considerations
    8. Getting Scans from Outside Sources
    9. What Products Are Available?
  12. Chapter 5 Building Camera Profiles
    1. Digital Camera Files
    2. Input (Scene)-referred versus Output-referred Data
    3. RAW or Rendered RGB?
    4. RAW
    5. Targets
    6. Photographing the Targets
    7. Building the Profile
    8. Pipeline Considerations
    9. When Camera Profiles Go Bad
    10. Adobe Camera RAW and Color Management
    11. Other Targets
    12. What Products Are Available?
  13. Chapter 6 Building Printer/Output Profiles
    1. Building Profiles—An Overview
    2. Spectrophotometers, Colorimeters, Scanners, Oh My
    3. Calibration and Printer Profiles
    4. Linearization
    5. Targets
    6. Target Data and Reference Files
    7. Optical Brighteners
    8. Do You Need a Raster Image Processor?
    9. Metamerism and the Printer Profile
    10. Printing Grayscale and B&W Images
    11. Building Printer Profiles: What Products Are Available?
    12. Cross Rendering
    13. Profile Editing
    14. Profile Editors: What Products Are Available?
    15. What to Expect from Profile Editors
    16. Evaluating Your Hard Work
  14. Chapter 7 Printing to a Press
    1. Why Photographers Need to Understand Prepress
    2. What Should You Supply?
    3. The Contract Proof
    4. Profiling the Press
    5. SWOP and TR001
    6. CMYK and Black Generation
    7. What to Do When You Can’t Target Your Output
    8. Spot, Process, and Pantone Colors
    9. Page Layout Applications: When and Where to Apply Color Management
    10. Multicolor Profiles
    11. When Not to Embed an ICC Profile
    12. Prepping Files for Clients and Printers
    13. What to Show Your Clients
    14. What Is an RGB Pipeline?
    15. PDF
  15. Chapter 8 CMS Utilities
    1. Apple’s ColorSync Utility (OS X only) (Mac OS X)
    2. ColorSync and AppleScript (Mac OS 9/Mac OS X)
    3. Image Capture
    4. Chromix ColorThink
    5. Monaco GamutWorks
    6. ColorShop X
    7. Alwan ColorPursuit™
    8. GretagMacbeth Eye-One Share
    9. GretagMacbeth’s iQueue
  16. Chapter 9 Tutorials
    1. Tutorial #1: Photoshop’s Color Picker and Color Model
    2. Tutorial #2: Color Documents and Color Appearance
    3. Tutorial #3: Rendering Intents
    4. Tutorial #4: RGB Working Space
    5. Tutorial #5: Color Policy
    6. Tutorial #6: Assign Profile versus Convert to Profile Command
    7. Tutorial #7: How to Handle Untagged Documents
    8. Tutorial #8: The Photoshop Soft Proof
    9. Tutorial #9: Print with Preview
    10. Tutorial #10: Testing Your Display Profile
    11. Tutorial #11: Using Photoshop to Build Simplified Camera Profiles
    12. Tutorial #12: Making a Printer Test File
    13. Tutorial #13: Evaluating Your Output Profiles
    14. Tutorial #14: UCR/GCR Settings
    15. Tutorial #15: Preserve Color Numbers and CMYK Files
  17. Chapter 10 Case Studies
    1. Joseph Holmes
    2. Greg Gorman
    3. Mac Holbert
    4. Mike Ornellas
    5. Stephen Wilkes
    6. Andrew Rodney
  18. Acronyms
  19. Glossary
  20. Web Sites
  21. Index

Product information

  • Title: Color Management for Photographers
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: August 2005
  • Publisher(s): Focal Press
  • ISBN: 9781136107092