ProPhoto space

[Rawcoll]

Whilst I am well aware of the arguments for and against using ProPhoto as a working space, I was wondering whether it is indeed possible to use ProPhoto as a working space in PWP? I think I've seen earlier reference on the old forum about doing so, but it does not seem to be a space that I can select on my system.

I am not really familiar with the wide gamut spaces that are selectable (namely Widegamut RGB and Universal RGB) and the chart on page 16 of the Colour Management white paper doesn't include the ProPhoto space for comparison. So how do these wide gamut spaces compare with ProPhoto please?

Ian

[tomczak]

You can download ProPhoto ICC profile from Kodak:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professi ... pace.jhtml

Once you uncompress the files, right click on ProPhotoRGB.icm, and Instal it (on XP it installs in C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\color; you can also move the file by hand there). PWP should be able to see the profile then.

Be aware that ProPhoto gamut is large and includes imaginary colours and also colours that can be represented in theory but rarely occur in nature. Since room is reserved for such colours, calculations require high precision and risk posterization as well as colour shifts when converted to gamuts of displays and prints, possibly even if you work in 16bit per colour precision.

[Rawcoll]

Thanks Maciej. I've done that and I can now select ProPhoto as the working space. Interestingly though, when I open an image produced from LR3 beta in ProPhoto space, with ProPhoto used as a working space in PWP, I get a profile mismatch and the image is converted from ProPhoto to ProPhoto ! So what is going on there?

I appreciate that posterization is a potential pitfall here, and I doubt that I shall use ProPhoto on a regular basis. I am just experimenting at the moment.

Regards
Ian

[Rawcoll]

One further thing I've noticed is that if I open the ProPhoto-space image using the ProPhoto working space, (which precipitates the conversion to the 'new' ProPhoto space), and save the image, the new thumbnail in the browser looks rather different to the original. The opened images are identical however.

I must say that this colour management gets more involved with every turn!

Ian

[jsachs]

There is more than one version of Pro Photo but I assume they are identical in their color information. PWP looks for an exact match on every byte of the profile which includes the description, copyright, etc. which often vary from version to version.

Thumbnails are not color managed.

[Rawcoll]

Jonathan, that could be it I suppose. If I use PHOTOME to inspect the metadata, one file has a description of length 131 and the other 134. In all other respects it appears to be the same; even the creation dates and times are the same.

But I don't understand why the thumbnails should look different, even if they are not colour managed. Both images are (supposedly) in the same colour space, namely ProPhoto, and I would have thought that they would be interpreted identically.

Ian

[JML]

Bruce Lindbloom has info on RGB working spaces at http://www.brucelindbloom.com/ including an online gamut viewer that compares various spaces.

My experiments with ProPhoto ended here http://dl-c.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=40 and I no longer use it.

I don’t use LR but I recall reading somewhere that Adobe uses a customized version of ProPhoto which would account for the mismatch.

The Kodak version of ProPhoto works fine in PWP on tiff files but not for output of a raw conversion.

Jim

[Rawcoll]

Jim

Thanks for the links and comments. I'd spotted the Bruce Lindbloom site before: it's not for the faint hearted is it!

Ian

[JML]

Ian:

A couple of other sources that you may be familiar with but some may find them of use:

The free Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP has a graphic viewer that allows comparing various working spaces, monitor profiles, and printer profiles. It is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downl ... fault.aspx .

Norman Koren’s Gamutvision is much more sophisticated. http://www.gamutvision.com/docs/contact.html.

I trialed Gamutvision but did not purchase since I didn’t think I would use it that much.

Jim

[Rawcoll]

Jim

Perhaps like you I am not so much 'into' profiles that I'd want to pay out serious money for specialist software, so the Windows applet looked attractive. However, I find that it only picks up monitor and output profiles, and then not all of my printer profiles (though they work perfectly well when selected for soft proofing), so I'd not be able to achieve my aim of comparing my printer space with, say, Adobe. Note that all these profiles are in the spool/drivers/colour folder.

This page at Dry Creek Photo http://www.drycreekphoto.com/tools/prin ... model.html is worth a look at, though it doesn't let one use ones own profiles. A plugin needs to be installed (which I haven't yet done with my current system).

Ian