A Question for Colour Gurus

[TonyW]

I've been delving into trying to learn the mysteries of color management and ran into a behaviour I didn't expect with Elements. I have my Color Settings (in PSE5) set to Always Optimize Colors For Computer Screens (Limited Color Management in earlier versions) which according to the help file:

"Uses sRGB as the working space, preserves embedded profiles, and assigns sRGB when opening untagged files."

If I open two documents, one tagged sRGB and one tagged Adobe RGB, Elements preserves the profiles but it would appear to also switch working spaces when I switch from one to the other. I have two color swatches (R=254, G=8 B=9 and R=221 G=17 B=18 (thanks Benny :))) that look the same in AdobeRGB but different in sRGB so they let me tell which color space I'm working in. Sure enough when I switch between the two documents with those colours set as the foreground and background colours the swatches change colour and if I use them to apply a gradient to the two documents the appearance reflects the different profiles of the two documents. So it appears that Elements is switching working spaces on the fly rather than using sRGB as the Help File suggests.

Am I missing something?

If this is true then I would have thought that this could be the basis for soft proofing in Elements as long as you have an image tagged with the profile you want to soft proof to. For example I have a document tagged with my local Costco printer tag. If I have an image open in AdobeRGB, remove it's profile (to preserve the colour numbers) and drag it into the Costco tagged image wouldn't I now have a Costco tagged image and the appearance on my calibrated monitor would reflect what it will look like if I printed at Costco (who strip any existing profile before printing)?

BTW this wouldn't work in PSE3 as the equivalent Color Settings option strips the profile and applies an sRGB tag. Not sure what PSE4 did but as I recall it was more PSE5 than PSE3 like.

So it would seem to me that the best Color Setting option would be the last one "Allow me to Choose" which would respect any embedded profile but let me pick whether to use sRGB or AdobeRGB for an untagged document based on the source of the image)

Sorry this got a bit long but I'm thinking aloud :)

Tony

[Jodi Frye]

Tony, this dates back to Elements 3 but it's a good read. There's also a freebie program download at the bottom of the page that might interest you.

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/elements-color-management.html

[Brio]

The program is displaying the images as requested. The embedded profiles are being honoured, thus the Adobe RGB and sRGB images are displayed in there respective colour spaces.
If they did not have a embedded profile or tag, they program would assign sRGB colour space to that image.

[TonyW]

Tony, this dates back to Elements 3 but it's a good read. There's also a freebie program download at the bottom of the page that might interest you.

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/elements-color-management.html

Jodi: Thanks for that link - I did in fact start with that but found that PSE5 doesn't work the same way as PSE3 - with PSE3 you are limited to using either sRGB or AdobeRGB - anything else gets stripped off. PSE5 (and maybe PSE4) seems to be a lot more flexible but I've yet to see any articles that take advantage of this. And I don't actually need to do it as I have Photoshop that lets you do all this stuff but I'm a bit like Richard Lynch in that I rather like seeing what you can find hidden in the depths of Elements. In that Elements and CS2 share the same Adobe Color Engine there would seem to be some interesting possibilities if you can tap into it.

Brio: the interesting thing about PSE5 is that you're not limited to sRGB or AdobeRGB (other than for tagging untagged images). As long as you have a tagged image it would appear that Elements will honour it even if it's not sRGB or AdobeRGB. That would seem to offer some interesting possibilities but I may of course be wrong as I'm still on the color management learning curve (still working through Bruce Fraser's Real World Color Management - great book but a steep learning curve)

Tony

[Brio]

Tony

I beleive what you are doing when you drag and drop is assigning a different
profile to the image and so of course the colours will shift.
I think true soft proofing is more complicated than that and involves conversions between working space, printer profiles and monitor profiles.
Hopefully Codebreaker can add some info for us.

[Brio]

Tony:

I have done a little research and have discoverd that firstly; when you drag and drop as you described, you do in fact convert the colour soaces.
Secondly soft proofing involves 2 seprate conversions.
The first is from your working space to your output (printer/paper) space and the second is to your monitor space. Thetrick is that these 2 conversions require different settings to give you the correct result.
I have attached a link which explains this process in some detail.

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/10150.html

Unfortunately PSE does not seem to give you the control in the conversion process and thus cannot accurately replicate the proof image.

I suppose there could be a workaround by dragging and dropping into 2 seperate images do the 2 conversions. However to do so would require the use of photoshop, and if you have photoshop you of course can utilize the soft proof capability.
Hope this helps

[TonyW]

Brio: Thanks for that link and the comments. You're right soft proofing does require two separate conversions - one from the current space to your printer space and then one to your monitor space. What puzzles me though is whether Elements is actually doing the latter as presumably it has to do that to show on your screen. I actually do have CS2 so can soft proof easily there but I'm always intrigued to see what workarounds you can find to do in Elements. Elements and Photoshop both use the same Adobe Color Engine (ACE) but Elements limits access to it to do the things you can do in Photoshop. PSE3 wouldn't let you use anything except sRGB or AdobeRGB but it appears that PSE5 has opened the door to other profiles.

I did some tests and it does appear that dragging and dropping into a printer profiled document does seem (as best I can tell) to match the softproofing in Elements. I guess I should try some printing to see if they really do match.

I do find color management rather fascinating having gone from knowing nothing and never being able to get my prints to match my screen to knowing a littile bit and finally getting my prints to match my screen. I guess a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing - but it doesn't make it any less fascinating to play around and see what you can learn :)

Tony