Tutorials - Color Management for Photographers - page 380

Fig. 9-11-3 Here the
Missing Profile dialog
appears and I pick the
custom camera profile I
made as seen in the pop-
up menu. I can click on the
check box to convert into
the working space as seen
here.
This technique can be used with existing images as well if subtle color
and tone “editing” is necessary. I used quotes on purpose since we are
not really editing the data in the document but rather the description of
the numbers to alter the appearance. However, should you have an image
in an existing RGB working space and it needs some tonal adjustment,
you could alter the gamma of the working space and assign that to the
document. This is a very crude and simplified method of improving the
appearance of an image without altering the actual pixel data. This can
be useful if you have a large number of images to “correct,” all requir-
ing the same edit. It is a lot faster to Assign a modified working space
to correct the problem on these files, plus you lose less data as you would
editing an 8-bit per color image. This technique isn't a replacement for
true image editing in Photoshop, where you actually change the values
in a document, but in some cases, it can work quite well and is a very
fast way to correct multiple images. See Tutorial #9 and notice the effect
on the Kodak 660 linear document.
Tutorial #12: Making a Printer Test File
Having a document with various test patterns and images for evaluating
the quality of your color output devices and profiles is very useful. This
tutorial will walk you through the steps of creating some test imagery
that can be useful for including in your own test files. The imagery we
will create are what I like to call synthetic. These are all created with Pho-
toshop, instead of from an existing digital camera or scan. However, it is
a very good idea to always include such real-world images in any test file
you make. The Printer_Test_File.tif supplied on the CD is one example.
It includes some of the test imagery discussed next, but has images that
contain what are know as memory colors: green grass, skin tones, blue
sky, and so forth. It is very important to include these actual types of
images in your test file since they often can tell a story about the repro-
duction quality of a printer and profile as well or better than the syn-
thetic imagery. Try to make your test file in a working space that is as
large or larger than the working space you intend to regularly use. Some