Printing and Out of Gamut Colour

[Jackie Schuknecht]

If you process your photo (in PS using RGB 1998) and print from a TIFF and get an out of gamut warning in the print box, do you a) leave the print as? b) go back in and try to make some colour corrections, and then print?
Does the gamut range also depend on your choice of paper?? Thanks.

[Andy Wai]

If you process your photo (in PS using RGB 1998) and print from a TIFF and get an out of gamut warning in the print box, do you a) leave the print as? b) go back in and try to make some colour corrections, and then print?
I'm not a serious printer so I'm too lazy to go back and fiddle with the color. I just try toggle between perceptual and relative colorimetric rendering intent. One of those usually do a good enough job for me.

I would imagine if I were more picky about the prints, I would need to do some editing, something along the line of painting in desaturation of the oversaturated colors using a Hue/Saturation layer. But this is probably not easy to do if one doesn't have a wide gamut monitor that can see a good portion of aRGB. With a narrow gamut monitor, you don't actually know what the aRGB original looks like, so you're essentially flying blind when doing the desaturation.


Does the gamut range also depend on your choice of paper??Yes. In fact, you're supposed to have a seperate printer profile for each paper you use. The Photoshop gamut warning is calculated based on the printer profile you selected. Without a profile for the paper in question, PS can't even display the gamut warning properly.

Andy

[Roger Clark]

Jackie,

I often see out of gamut when I apply an ICC profile for a paper/printer. This was especially true of 4x5 scans of fujichrome velvia scenes of fall colors. The prints still look great! At least so far my experience is the printer chooses the closest color it can. Greens seem be particularly difficult in my experience. Many paper/printer combinations have muddy greens in my opinion, and the only thing I have found was to change printers and/or paper. Also purple and deep blue flowers often have problems.

Roger

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Thanks Andy and Roger. I was wondering how the printer handled out of gamut. Thanks for filling in the blanks for me. Roger, any paper recommendations?? Also I know you will probably say a pro printer, but that is totally out of my range, but not the paper.

[Andy Wai]

I often see out of gamut when I apply an ICC profile for a paper/printer. This was especially true of 4x5 scans of fujichrome velvia scenes of fall colors. The prints still look great!
Yup. And another example is sRGB. Most people working in aRGB or bigger will convert to sRGB and post to Internet without thinking twice. But if one were to softproof a big bunch of photos in Photoshop against sRGB, one woud probably be surprised just how often an otherwise innocent looking image would have out of gamut spots here and there. So people are dealing with Photoshop's gamut mapper much more often than they realize.

Here's an extreme example:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3318/3412900593_a381ff329c_o.jpg

The original is in ProPhotoRGB and edited on a full aRGB monitor with total disregard of the sRGB boundary. Softproofing indicates that something like 1/3 of the area of the original is out of gamut with repect to sRGB. The version above was converted directly to sRGB using Perceptual intent only. No further editing. The result here looks credible to me. So I think the Photoshop gamut mapper is doing a rather decent job.


[...] any paper recommendations?? Also I know you will probably say a pro printer, but that is totally out of my range, but not the paper.
Alternatively, you might want to check out Aperture Lab:http://www.1010foto.com/

They run a line of profiled Frontier machines and Epson large format printers. Profiles and upload instructions are here:

http://www.1010foto.com/CorpInfo/Download.asp

Looks like the Epson printers are new. The Frontier machines are basically photolab equipment with a digital printing frontend. So you upload digital files to them and they give you prints on archival grade photographic paper. Haven't analyzed the profiles in depth but softproofing a variety of images on Photoshop indicates that they are behaving very well. I prepared a handful of files with very difficult bright yellows for somebody last year and they came out great.

The disclaimer is of course that's one year ago. Don't know what's going on now. If you're nearby, you can send them a couple of 4x6s to test the water.

Andy

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Thanks again Andy, will check out the links.

[Roger Clark]

Thanks Andy and Roger. I was wondering how the printer handled out of gamut. Thanks for filling in the blanks for me. Roger, any paper recommendations?? Also I know you will probably say a pro printer, but that is totally out of my range, but not the paper.

Hi Jackie,
Well, I must say I haven't made a print at home in over a year. I've been thinking about getting it going again, but I'll have to buy new heads and ink (something like 8 inks and several pint heads--an HP, don't remember the model number at the moment). When someone wants a print, I have a lightjet made on fuji crystal archive paper (that is a wet darkroom photographic paper but the print is written by laser(s) at a local pro lab). The prints are stunning. I've just been too busy the last year to fuss with my printer at home. And even when I did, it was for "soft proofing" for the fuji prints. I used the HP glossy 13x19 inch paper. I chose HP because I liked the greens better than on the epson's I compared it with at the time of purchase (not sure how that compares today). On the high end printers, which is what one needs to quality prints at home, you must print often so the ink keeps flowing.

I've also sold fewer prints in the last year, but delivered more high resolution digital files than ever, which is a lot less work--I don't have to get the print made and then mail it. I just set up an ftp location and point them to it for download.

Roger

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Thanks again Roger.