Practical Color Management: Eddie Tapp on Digital Photography

CHAPTER 3: Establishing a Color Management–Friendly Workflow

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Initially, calibrating some output devices

may require a fair amount of work,

but once calibration and pro ling are

established, they’re easy to maintain. You

may be outputting to an ink-jet printer,

a dye sub, a photographic lab, a toner-

based color copier, or a printing press. Or

you may be outputting to the Web.

Preparing a File for Output

Regardless of the  nal destination, there

are three areas of transition that your

 le may need to go through during the

output phase: resolution, sharpening, and

color space conversion. These tasks can

be performed manually in Photoshop or

automatically within a driver or software

known as a RIP (Raster Image Processor).

(Rick will discuss RIPs in detail in

Chapter 5.)

Resolution

Take, for example, a 36MB  le that

you’ve processed and are now ready

to send to your photographic lab.

The resolution from this  le is easily

suitable for a 16 x 20 size print with

little or no resolution changes. If

the  le is going to be printed at 30 x

40, then the  le resolution must be

resampled to match the set resolution

of the printing device, which could

require the  le size to rise to 80–

140MB. Resampling can be achieved in

Photoshop under Image → Image Size.

Output Stage

Output is perhaps the easiest stage with regard to maintaining

consistency. The challenge is to calibrate and pro le your

devices and maintain them. The ultimate goal of any digital

work ow is the  nal product. You want to make sure that the

image is printed or electronically displayed correctly.

© Eddie Tapp

ETCM_book.indb 40 10/6/06 4:43:31 PM

Sharpening

Sharpening an image requires an

increasing contrast of pixel data, thus

removing pixel data in the process.

Because of this data loss, sharpening

for output should be one of the

very last steps and established for a

particular output size. (See the section

“Sharpening” later in this chapter.)

Converting color space

Converting the color space of the

 le to the color space of the printer

is when color management is truly

performed.

The good news is that, in most cases,

when you send your 36MB RGB  le to

your lab, it will use a software RIP that

automatically performs these three

important steps.

With an in-house work ow to your own

output device, you have several options

to automate the output stage. You can

create an action in Photoshop that will

resample the image (if needed), sharpen

it, and bring up the “Print with Preview”

window, at which point you can select

the output pro le for your ink/paper

combination and then establish the print

driver interface. Or you can use a software

RIP to apply these same options (more on

this in Chapter 4).

Archive your processed and original files

prior to the output stage. Once your

files have been resized, sharpened,

and color space converted to an output

device, they can be used only for that

specific output in the future.

Archive your processed and original files

prior to the output stage. Once your

files have been resized, sharpened,

and color space converted to an output

device, they can be used only for that

specific output in the future.

Archive your processed and original files

prior to the output stage. Once your

files have been resized, sharpened,

and color space converted to an output

device, they can be used only for that

specific output in the future.

© Eddie Tapp

© Eddie Tapp

Output Stage

41

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