I’m using PL 5.7 on Win 10, my monitor is a Dell U2413 working in its built-in Adobe RGB mode. This being PL 5 it too is working in Adobe RGB.
I have a Nikon Coolscan V ED slide scanner. It can work in various colour spaces, the widest of which are two that you can only really use if you are happy to work entirely within the dedicated Nikon Scan software. The widest space that other applications like Photoshop (PS) or Affinity Photo (AFP) know and understand is ‘Wide Gamut RGB’.
If I set the scanner to use that colour space and then open the output TIFF in either PS or AFP then:
If those applications are also set to use Wide Gamut RGB as their working space then the file opens silently and the CMS does it’s job of managing that wide space down to the smaller Adobe RGB space of my monitor.
and
if those applications are not set to Wide Gamut RGB then the file opens with a warning about the profile mismatch. That then allows me to decide how to handle the file.
In stark contrast, PL 5 simply opens the file and says nothing, leaving me guessing as to what it’s done.
Has it ignored the embedded profile and thus blindly interpreted the data as if it were in Adobe RGB?
or
Has it read the embedded profile and correctly converted the data from Wide Gamut to Adobe RGB?
NB I don’t actually use PL for editing scans, I find AFP is a much better tool for that job, but I toss this out in case anyone has any thoughts they wish to share.
In the first case, this would be like opening a pic without a colour profile and assigning a ‘new’ one, just hoping to match.
I don’t know if PL5 can read an embedded Wide Gamut profile. Apart from its limiting working colour space AdobeRGB, colour corrections on RGB-files so far are not PL’s strength.
Firstly, PL5 uses AdobeRGB as it’s working color space and only PL6 can use a larger working color space (DxO Wide Gamut)
PL5 should be able to recognise the embedded color profile in your file and convert it to it’s working color space for editing. If you do not get any message then this is what I expect PL5 had done.
If you want to work in a wider gamut working color space then you will need to upgrade to PL6.
I must say it again, the soft proof profile is converted to the monitors profile too.
Everything send to the monitor is converted to the monitor profile.
@George, one would normally use soft proofing to simulate a lower gamut device and see what it looks like on your monitor and make adjustments if required while viewing in the soft proof profile. Converting back to the monitor profile would defeat the whole purpose of soft proofing! Go and research the concept of soft proofing if you like.
A monitor can show colors only in its own profile.
So there’re 2 choices: send the image to the monitor without any conversion and accept wrong colors or do a conversion to that profile and get the colors as good as possible. That last one is called color management… In a color managed system every image that’s send to the monitor is converted to the monitors profile.
We’ve been here before. https://forum.dxo.com/uploads/default/original/3X/4/5/4525f8cd6109c761b2a28ee7bb156548330a5425.jpeg
@George, would changing the text in box 7 to “Simulate Soft Proof Profile(s)” satisfy you? Profiles(s) is used because we will eventually get soft proof for paper and ink too which will also have profiles associated with them.
For me, softproofing is only a temporary process step in which the paper/printer “end device” is simulated and displayed on the monitor.
This means that only the current monitor profile is “overwritten” with the paper/printer profile.
By viewing the soft proofing process I have the possibility to adjust the image brightness and contrast so that the expected result on print corresponds to what I see on the calibrated monitor.
After I have switched off the soft proofing again, the image in the normal monitor profile view may appear too bright/too dark/too contrasty/too low in contrast.
If I export the image with the profile(not the soft proofing one), give it to the service provider and then print it (assuming identical printer and paper pairing as selected in the soft proof) it should match relatively well.
At least that is my experience with LR and the softproof functions there.
PS and AFP only open the file silently, without any warnings when there is no conflict between their working space and the space of the file. If the working space of PS or AFP is NOT the same as the file’s then they warn me of the mismatch. That means I can control the conversion.
PL though never says anything. Yes, I know PL 5 can only work in Adobe RGB so it must be doing something when it opens a file that’s not in Adobe RGB but we can only guess as to what it is doing. We hope it properly colour manages the data into Adobe RGB but it could just as easily be ignoring the embedded profile and thus (mis)treating the data as Adobe RGB.
The sole point of my original post was to highlight this difference. To me, PS and AFP are more polite, they keep you, the user, informed. While PL just doing whatever it does seems arrogant.
I have seen this diagram in other posts. I don’t see that it contributes anything to this particular topic which is that PL does not tell the user what is happening.
Yes! Feel free to carry on but I think I’ll leave you to it
PS and AFP only open the file silently, without any warnings when there is no conflict between their working space and the space of the file. If the working space of PS or AFP is NOT the same as the file’s then they warn me of the mismatch. That means I can control the conversion.
PL though never says anything. Yes, I know PL 5 can only work in Adobe RGB so it must be doing something when it opens a file that’s not in Adobe RGB but we can only guess as to what it is doing. We hope it properly colour manages the data into Adobe RGB but it could just as easily be ignoring the embedded profile and thus (mis)treating the data as Adobe RGB.
The sole point of my original post was to highlight this difference. To me, PS and AFP are more polite, they keep you, the user, informed. While PL just doing whatever it does seems arrogant.
Of course, I accept your opinion about these things. But your case seems a distinction without a difference.
Sorry if you think DxO PL is being impolite. But with any of these for-profit companies we are simply not privy to the proprietary initial pipeline, polite or not.
You’ve presented no objective information on this topic. Have you determined, for example, that your scans even contain any information outside of aRGB color space? Maybe this is all about nothing.
You seem happy with your Affinity Photo workflow. Great - maybe just accept success and get on with it.
I was merely noting the different behaviour of PS and AFP vs that of PL 5 when handling these TIFFs. I did so because I believe, and I think others here will agree, that this is another example of PL’s less than clear approach to colour management and is something that DxO could quickly and easily address without breaching any of their commercial confidences, if they chose to do so. Sadly I’m not confident they will.
May I suggest to check in AP / PS a scan (ProPhotoRGB, with a lot of yellow and red),
which then you convert / save as P3 and AdobeRGB to compare their softproof
(activate out of gamut colour / colour proof warning).
You can but as I stated in my original post, the widest gamut the scanner can do is Wide Gamut RGB, i.e. I can’t directly obtain a scan with a ProPhoto profile
Also, as I’ve already said, I’m not trying to solve a problem here, I’m just making an observation.
[ My monitor is mainly calibrated for AdobeRGB and I have and print successfully in ARGB with custom profiles. So for me, that is more important than P3, while I’ve printed ProPhotoRGB test pics … ]
Fair cop, my language is sloppy. Yes, what I mean is that the colour space with the widest gamut that the scanner can apply to the data it captures and which is a colour space that is defined by a profile that is understood by other applications is ‘Adobe Wide Gamut RGB’.
)
