arbitrary profiles in PhotoLine

[Lundberg02]

I began a thread in Luminous Landscape asking if there was a way to load arbitrary icc profiles in the Workflow Options of ACR in Photoshop. It currently offers ProPhoto,aRGB, ColorMatch, and sRGB for opening RAW. I wanted to add, for example, Best RGB and PhotoGamut. Short answer: Photoshop CC (only). An image processor called Iridient ( about the same price point as PhotoLine) does have this capability. Eric Chan suggested that the new PS capability is good for proofing. You can get rendering intents on paper using Ps manages colors and printing from ProPhoto at least in an Epson workflow.
The thread digressed into rendering intents. Experts Jeff Schewe and Andrew Rodney confirmed that Photoshop as delivered does not do anything but Relative Colorimetric no matter what you have in Color Settings, because all Adobe profiles in Photoshop are v2. If you can find an aRGB v4 that has all four you can load it. The Adobe spec for aRGB reads as though it is v4 but the loaded version does not have anything but ReCol. The ICC has an sRGB that will at least do perceptual. I didn't read it thoroughly enough to see whether it does all four, because I would never convert to sRGB in the first place.
So, can you load arbitrary profiles in PhotoLine for RAW conversion?
Can you actually do all four rendering intents in PhotoLine? If so , can you extract the profiles for use in other programs?

[bkh]

Experts Jeff Schewe and Andrew Rodney confirmed that Photoshop as delivered does not do anything but Relative Colorimetric no matter what you have in Color Settings, because all Adobe profiles in Photoshop are v2.

Experts? ICC v.2 supports all four rendering intents – but, like in ICC v.4, the profile must specify what to do. If the profile doesn't specify one of the intents, colour management will use another. What they probably mean is that the profiles are matrix profiles, not LUT profiles, and as such, they only allow for relative and absolute colorimetric intent. ICC v.4 is better for perceptual intent, though, because it can take both the source and destination colour space into account.

If you can find an aRGB v4 that has all four you can load it. The Adobe spec for aRGB reads as though it is v4 but the loaded version does not have anything but ReCol.

This is because it's a matrix profile. (Every profile allowing relative colorimetric intent should allow for absolute colourimetric intent as well!)

So, can you load arbitrary profiles in PhotoLine for RAW conversion?

In PL, you can use an arbitrary camera profile (to be set in Preferences -> Colour Management -> Devices -> Digital Camera). By default, you'll work in the camera's native colour space, and the camera profile will only be used for export. However, you can switch to document mode, and assign whatever document colour space you like – then the document colour space will be used as the working colour space.

Can you actually do all four rendering intents in PhotoLine? If so , can you extract the profiles for use in other programs?

If you want to work with a custom profile, you'll have to supply your own camera profiles anyway (there is software for creating such profiles from test chart photos).

PL itself only supplies simple matrix profiles (from dcraw, which in turn takes most of them from Adobe DNG, afaik) and uses those to comvert to sRGB, aRGB or PhoPhotoRGB. You can't export these matrices as ICC profiles from PL. If you work using these profiles, there is no real perceptual intent, since none of the three working profiles support it, but you can work in ProPhotoRGB and do the perceptual rendering during export (using the sRGB v.4 profile), since you don't lose much going from a camera's colour space to ProPhoto with relative rendering intent.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Lundberg02]

I tested Photoshop manages colors with the ProPhoto Printer Test file in 16 bit tif. I used the correct Epson profile and the correct paper setting. I printed all four intents and they were exactly the same, so, no intents other than what I presume is relative. If I did that from PL would I get the same result? I intend to try it tomorrow, but I have never printed from PL so there will be some learning curve I suppose.
I am becoming a color agnostic. I've always favored the Coke machine theory anyway, bang on it until it works.
Also, what the %$#$^&% is going on with typing in this forum? There appears to be some sort of maniacal spell check. I have to go back over everything I write to correct words like "there" which comes out "tree". Is this due to the forum native language being German?

[bkh]

I tested Photoshop manages colors with the ProPhoto Printer Test file in 16 bit tif. I used the correct Epson profile and the correct paper setting.

Does your Epson profile support all three intents? If you are working under OS X, you can use the ColorSync Utility to open the profile and check for B2A0 and B2A1 tags. Otherwise, there is a probe profile from ICC. PL handles this profile correctly, as far as proofing is concerned. I don't have a colour printer.

Also, what the %$#$^&% is going on with typing in this forum? There appears to be some sort of maniacal spell check. I have to go back over everything I write to correct words like "there" which comes out "tree". Is this due to the forum native language being German?

No problem here with Safari – the spell checking seems to be done by your browser locally (what browser do you use?), so maybe you've got wrong settings there. I don't think it has to do with German, because "tree" isn't a German word.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Lundberg02]

Thanks for the ColorSync tip, I'll do that. After talking with Jeff Schewe, I don't think it's possible to get any rendering intent other than relative with consumer printers. I might be able to get an Epson 4900 profile and soft proof, but with an sRGB monitor I doubt I would see anything.

[Lundberg02]

Thanks for the probe profile link, I didn't see that in their site the other day. Looks like a valuable tool.

[Lundberg02]

i inspected the Epson profile with ColorSync and it has all three of the usual intents, but "Photoshop manages colors" produces identical prints after selecting the rendering intents. I don't know what's wrong and I'm hoping to get some guidance from Jeff Schewe. I may try using printer manages colors.
I have never printed from PL so what can I expect? I'm going to try it soon. How do you turn off printer color management?