Building Scanner Profiles - Color Management for Photographers - page 145

Fig. 4-3 Don Hutcheson's
HCT is the ultimate target
for building scanner
profiles.
you will use to build your scanner profile supports this target. Most of
the newer software products do. I highly recommend this product for
film scanners.
You might ask yourself why a target for color negatives hasn't been
discussed. The simple answer is, no universal target exists. Fuji supplies
their own proprietary negative target for use with their profiling software
mated to their line of high-end scanners. There are a number of reasons
why other scanner profiling products do not support color negative film.
First, the exposure and processing of color negatives is incredibly vari-
able, making it vastly more difficult to produce a standardized target.
Then there is the issue of the orange mask used to produce color nega-
tives. This mask differs from film to film, and is highly affected by expo-
sure and processing. There are ways of handling color negatives in the
pipeline, which we will discuss later.
Sidebar
Targets of Differing Film Emulsions: One endless color geek debate centers on the neces-
sity of using multiple scanning targets based upon multiple film brands. Some argue that if a
user intends to scan Fujichrome TM , Ektachrome TM , and Agfachrome TM , an ICC profile needs to
be built from a target generated from those brands of film. Others believe that using the widest
gamut film is sufficient for describing the scanner behavior and that the resulting ICC profile
will work with all film brands. Most experts seem to agree that a profile built for E6 processed