Digital Color Management: Encoding Solutions, 2nd Edition

Series Preface

The other day I used my new 12 mega-pixel Digital SLR camera to take some pictures of my wife's garden, which was in full bloom with Fall colors. The camera has two settings for color encoding and two rendering settings, normal and vivid. I used vivid. The file format was “raw”, using 16 bits per pixel. I transferred the image, picking one of two possible renderings, to my computer using the provided camera software and converted the raw format to a TIFF format so I could use my favorite image-manipulation software package. I used some of the color, tonescale and sharpness features to make a final image that looked great on my LCD display. I then printed it on my inkjet printer, again using the software provided by the printer manufacturer, making sure that I picked the correct settings for paper type (glossy photographic paper) and a color calibration compatible with my LCD monitor. I then proudly showed the print to my wife, and to my surprise she was not impressed with my hard work. She said, “The reds are not as bright or saturated; and look at the blues, they are not right. Can't you do something to make them look right?” So I went back to the computer and used saturation and curve shaping tools to make the print look more like the “actual” scene in bright sunlight. When finished, the lavender flowers were almost an exact visual match (in bright sunlight) while the reds, blues, yellows and oranges were close enough to satisfy my wife. Greens were not important ...