The Digital Photo Guy

CMS (Color Management System) Tips & Tricks

The above screen grabs are from a very powerful tool I bought while researching color management. Chromix ColorThink plots icc profiles as well as image colors in 2D and 3D. The “squiggly” orange area in the 2D chart (top left) represents all the colors in my friend’s photo (right) which appear to be fully contained within the printer gamut (multicolored outline) but when converted to a 3D graph, it’s easy to see that many colors are actually out of gamut meaning the printer can’t reproduce them. The second row shows a 2D graph of all the colors in the PDI test chart (right) versus a 3D graph (center) showing some colors are out of gamut. The main difference is that the colors in the PDI chart can be brought back into gamut without visibly affecting the print but the colors in my friend’s image are so far out that major compromises will be required.

Anyone who prints photos knows it can be tough getting just the right colors from either their own printers or from a service provider. If you’re just pumping out a few prints for Grandma & Grandpa, spot on color probably isn’t a big deal but if you’re printing an 8×10 to frame, getting the right color can be a pretty finicky process. If you’re producing a print for competition, spot on color can be the difference between winning and also ran.

Six months ago, the Sedona Camera Club invited me to present a program on CMS. Specifically, they wanted a program to help members who don’t own their own printers and aren’t interested in spending lots of money to implement a “proper” CMS. Of course, I said, “Sure, no problem” before thinking through what I was getting myself into.

In a flash of inspiration, I decided to break down the presentation into two distinct parts. First, I’ll explain how and why proper CMS is such a huge, complex and expensive endeavor. I’ll explain the science behind color from human eyesight to camera capture to editing and, finally, to print. This will be a 30,000 foot overview, so to speak.

The second half of the program will concentrate on an “old school” technique borrowed from the darkroom, test strips. I’ll demonstrate how to quickly and easily create digital test strips in both Photoshop/Elements as well as Lightroom to avoid multiple, costly bad prints. This isn’t a particularly innovative idea. I used to do this all the time in the old chemical darkroom days. I first read about the digital version in Rob Sheppard’s book, Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing (Lark, 2005, out of print.) In fact, I posted an article about this technique back in 2011. The post was specific to Photoshop Elements and contains a minor difference from what I now recommend but produces nearly the same results.

It’s doubtful most people will spend $150 for a copy of ColorThink plus another $1000 to $3000 for a printer, suitable monitor and colorimeter. However, using test strips, you can get very close. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post step-by-step procedures for making test prints using Photoshop CS4, Lightroom 6 and Photoshop Elements 9 & 13. Stay tuned.