Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
ing them on a light table. When you look at a slide, the color is there,
you're seeing it the way it is. Sort of the way you envisioned it and the
color is accurate to what your memory of the color was. If you've done
everything right it should be pretty accurate.
My big disgruntle aspect of color management currently is that for the
most part, after I shoot digital capture (short of studio photography,
where I have to white balance each image to shoot consistently, and it
all looks the same), most of the time I shot so many varied subjects simul-
taneously when I download my files and open them the color really is
not accurate to what I shot. Only after I bring the files into Photoshop
and process the files do they begin to resemble the colors I envisioned. I
would love to be able to see color management get to the point where
the individual camera manufacturers and software manufacturers and
printer manufacturers all working together and creating a platform where
photography from an electronic standpoint to simulate what the film
experience was. That is, really good accurate rendering of the color just
by looking at the JPEGs, not anything else.
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I just want to look at my
JPEGs and say “Yah, that's there” knowing I can make that 10 percent
better when I go into Photoshop. Right now, it's way off from that goal
for me. Strides are being made in that direction. But the hardest part of
color management for me is getting the color as I remember it without
a lot of work. The closer we can address this issue in terms of capture
and getting accurate color the better the whole work flow will be on the
output side.
When we do anything digital we send Matchprints out because
it's very important, even for people dialed into color management,
because they still like to look at something for reference. For some clients
we give them RGB but some ask for CMYK, and I don't mind doing
that, but we first ask: “Who's your production person? Can we have a
conversation with them?” You don't want to play the game of telephone
because the worst thing that happens is some art buyer who might
not understand the language of digital suddenly takes something that
someone said and changes it and now what you thought was the correct
information is all wrong. So we have a policy here to get right to
the source, the production person, and we go right to the source and
that's the person we talk to. If you set those kinds of boundaries the
agency really respects you. We find out the specific needs like size, what's
the final output, how large a file is needed, and then I have a wonder-
ful retoucher that I work with and he actually does color proofing on
magazine stock.
If you asked, “Steve, what's you optimized way to approach a job?”
I'd say work with my retoucher because he knows how to work with my
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Stephen is shooting RAW + JPEG files but uses the JPEGs for editing and print-
ing proofs and wants those RAW to JPEG conversions to be more faithful to
the original scene.
