Nikon Capture Color Management

Iliah Borg · May 12, 2003

Jim Cullen said:
I work in adobe rgb, from camera to capture nc3 and then PS. Before
sending to print do I need to embed sRGB profile before my files
are printed on a sRGB machine, what would prints that went through
with the adobe profile look like? Desaturated by about 25%?

First use Soft Proof, using sRGB profile. Your monitor would closely imitate sRGB printer. Tweek color/saturation/contrast using Gamut Warning. After yuo are satisfied, convert to sRGB and save under different name, or in a separate folder. Please feel free to ask for more details, if I'm unclear (English is my second language).

Martin59 · May 19, 2003

Photoshop 7.01 (called PS) and Nikon Capture 3.51 (NC).

With Colorvision's Spyder I profiled my monitor - btw no big difference between calibrated / non calibrated but

remarkable.

In Photoshop - as I learned - it is not needed to activate the created profile - it is automatically used on starting PS

7. Right?

settings as follows (for compatibility with online foto printer I use sRGB as workspace). Under View, Proof is

unchecked.

In NC as Monitor profile I choosed the profile created with the Spyder. settings as follows:

Now see the result. I put the test file PDITargetA4LtrsRGB.jpg side by side in a PS and a NC window - left part PS, right part NC:

See the difference? - Now I changed the NC settings to the default NKMonitor_Win.icm:

Also tested a ICM file called sRGB_Color_space_Profile.icm - result as follows:

Nearly identical, enough for my needs. -

My questions:

Clicking / unclicking the "calibration active" check button changes the color of all the screen slightly, also the color of both an open PS and NC window. Why should we then choose the Monitor profile again within NC to the profile created by Spyder? Maybe the profile is used double twice then?

Did I choose the best ICM within NC - or what is your recommendation?

--
Martin

Iliah Borg · May 19, 2003

Martin59 said:
Photoshop 7.01 (called PS) and Nikon Capture 3.51 (NC).

With Colorvision's Spyder I profiled my monitor - btw no big
difference between calibrated / non calibrated but

remarkable.

In Photoshop - as I learned - it is not needed to activate the
created profile - it is automatically used on starting PS

Only if this profile is under "Right Click on Desktop"-> Preferences -> Settings -> Advanced -> Color Management is installed as a default profile, and Adobe Gamma Loader is not in Startup, and was not run.

Also, to be sure, check in Photoshop Edit-> Preferences-> Color Settings-> RGB. The line in drop-down menu above Adobe RGB 1998 should state your monitor profile as "Monitor Profile - ". Do not choose it, just check it is there and hit Cancel.

In NC color management Monitor Profile setting should point to the same profile.

Working space in NC should probably be set to the same color space you are shooting in, at least with my D1 changing default NTSC to anything else would render invalid balance. I've heard some recommendations with the newer cameras to shoot in Adobe RGB. This is supposed to give more room for editing.

My choice in Photoshop while opening images after NC processing is not to convert, and my working space in Photoshop is usually Adobe RGB or wider ProPhoto RGB. So, Photoshop is convrting colors on the fly, and colors in NC and Photoshop are virtually indistinguishable.

After editing in Potoshop I save the file, then duplicate it and swwitch the Proof to the color space I need for output on. I edit the proofed image until it closely resembles the image I've edited in wider space. Then I convert it to the destination output profile and save concatenating the name of the profile to the file name.

If you print your files at your own printer, you even do not need to convert them to 8 bit, unless you need some editing possible even in 8 bit (but even here some trics are possible).

After

Hendrik van der Veen · May 19, 2003

Strange,...

When I compare a picture in PS701 and NC351, they are identical. I see no difference. I think you made an error somewhere. Did you check that in PS the profiled profile is loaded?

Also read the previous posts if you did not already.

Hendrik

Martin59 said:
Photoshop 7.01 (called PS) and Nikon Capture 3.51 (NC).

With Colorvision's Spyder I profiled my monitor - btw no big
difference between calibrated / non calibrated but

remarkable.

In Photoshop - as I learned - it is not needed to activate the
created profile - it is automatically used on starting PS

7. Right?
settings as follows (for compatibility with online foto printer I
use sRGB as workspace). Under View, Proof is

unchecked.

In NC as Monitor profile I choosed the profile created with the
Spyder. settings as follows:

Now see the result. I put the test file PDITargetA4LtrsRGB.jpg side
by side in a PS and a NC window - left part PS, right part NC:

See the difference? - Now I changed the NC settings to the default
NKMonitor_Win.icm:

Also tested a ICM file called sRGB_Color_space_Profile.icm - result
as follows:

Nearly identical, enough for my needs. -

My questions:
Clicking / unclicking the "calibration active" check button changes
the color of all the screen slightly, also the color of both an
open PS and NC window. Why should we then choose the Monitor
profile again within NC to the profile created by Spyder? Maybe the
profile is used double twice then?

Did I choose the best ICM within NC - or what is your recommendation?

--
Martin

Martin59 · May 19, 2003

Iliah Borg said:
Iliah Borg said:

In Photoshop - as I learned - it is not needed to activate the
created profile - it is automatically used on starting PS

Click to expand...

Only if this profile is under "Right Click on Desktop"-> Preferences
-> Settings -> Advanced -> Color Management is installed as a default
profile,

... that DID THE TRICK! thought the Spyder software would have done this for me.

before (left PS, right NC with Spyder monitor profile; Spyder monitor profile not set as default under Windows color management settings)

choose my Spyder profile under "Right Click on Desktop"-> Preferences
-> Settings -> Advanced -> Color Management

now see the result: "after"

not identical, but much more similar. There is still a little difference, but maybe the two sRGB of PS and NC are a bit different?

At least I now use the Spyder profile both in PS and NC, which I APPARENTLY DID NOT before your post. THANKS!

Iliah Borg said:
and Adobe Gamma Loader is not in Startup, and was not run.

checked this; I removed it during installation of the Spyder sw, as recommended in Spyder's manual.

Iliah Borg said:
Also, to be sure, check in Photoshop Edit-> Preferences-> Color
Settings-> RGB. The line in drop-down menu above Adobe RGB 1998
should state your monitor profile as "Monitor Profile - ". Do not
choose it, just check it is there and hit Cancel.

yes:

Iliah Borg said:
In NC color management Monitor Profile setting should point to the
same profile.

ok

Iliah Borg said:
Working space in NC should probably be set to the same color space
you are shooting in, at least with my D1 changing default NTSC to
anything else would render invalid balance. I've heard some
recommendations with the newer cameras to shoot in Adobe RGB. This
is supposed to give more room for editing.

I use sRGB on both D100 and D1H for compatibility to online printers: color tags are ignored, they expect workspace sRGB. One mistake in my early days was to shoot in "better" workspace Adobe RGB, let the files printed without changing anything, and the colors got weak, dull.

Up to now I do not understand there is a sense of editing in Adobe RGB, if my output is again "reduced" to the smaller workspace sRGB. Did I miss something here?

My workflow is NEF-NC-edit white balance, exposure-PS-edit-convert 8-bit-maybe again edit-save as JPEG-give to (online) printer service.
Thanks Iliah and Hendrik for your input, I think I got it now.

--
Martin

Iliah Borg · May 19, 2003

Dear Sir,

Please allow me to say that I'm very much impressed with your screen captures. I've never seen such a clear and wonderful exhibit of the most common problem. If I dare to suggest, making a web site out of this would be most useful.

I use Adobe RGB or even wider just because it gives you more room for consecuative moves, some of which may be way off limited sRGB. Actually the native space of Nikons is not Adobe RGB, nor is it a pure NTSC with my older model. Also, in-camera color conversion is not accurate, and so is JPEG conversion. There is a trade-off between accuracy and speed, and I got Nikon rep recommendation to do all the conversions during post-processing.

What a shame that Spider was not installing the profile to the system color management!

Your two last pictures were pretty close. Yet some contrast and color differences are obvious. This should not be that way, IMHO. Can you please try other color spaces?

Martin59 · May 19, 2003

Iliah Borg said:
Please allow me to say that I'm very much impressed with your
screen captures. I've never seen such a clear and wonderful exhibit
of the most common problem. If I dare to suggest, making a web site
out of this would be most useful.

I will do that, and include it in my signature. Is that your idea?

Iliah Borg said:
I use Adobe RGB or even wider just because it gives you more room
for consecuative moves, some of which may be way off limited sRGB.
Actually the native space of Nikons is not Adobe RGB, nor is it a
pure NTSC with my older model. Also, in-camera color conversion is
not accurate, and so is JPEG conversion. There is a trade-off
between accuracy and speed, and I got Nikon rep recommendation to
do all the conversions during post-processing.

For that reason I store the pics as NEFs, being able to change the white balance afterwards, and give them the workspace I want. Maybe conversions into JPEG are better done with the PC instead of letting the camera do it.

Iliah Borg said:
What a shame that Spider was not installing the profile to the
system color management!

... and do not recommend it in the manual! I wonder how many people spend several hundreds of $ or whatsoever and actually not using the Spyder profile with PS ...

Iliah Borg said:
Your two last pictures were pretty close. Yet some contrast and
color differences are obvious. This should not be that way, IMHO.
Can you please try other color spaces?

Do you know my testfile? Colorvision Europe did send it to me via email. You can download it at http://www.inkjetart.com/custom/

I performed the testing I presented in the past postings converted to sRGB settings. Using the test file as Adobe RGB, I get the same results:

no difference to the view both as sRGB (as expected?):

if we correctly open the files not ignoring the workspace tag, they should look the same on the screen. but:

left: Adobe RGB shown as sRGB ignoring correct workspace; right: correct view - AdobeRGB shown as AdobeRGB (both PS)

imagine: I invested in a brand new D100; photos taken in AdobeRGB "better color workspace = better colors"; took the files to be printed - advised camera store not to do anything to my wonderful Nikon files - they printed them expecting sRGB workspace, ignoring AdobeRGB tag. Awful. My wife asking me why I payed that lot of money for that quality ...
--
Martin

Iliah Borg · May 19, 2003

Martin59 said:
Iliah Borg said:

Please allow me to say that I'm very much impressed with your
screen captures. I've never seen such a clear and wonderful exhibit
of the most common problem. If I dare to suggest, making a web site
out of this would be most useful.

Click to expand...

I will do that, and include it in my signature. Is that your idea?

Sort of. IMHO I'm not the only one, but I came to it independently

Martin59 said:
Martin59 said:

I use Adobe RGB or even wider just because it gives you more room
for consecuative moves, some of which may be way off limited sRGB.
Actually the native space of Nikons is not Adobe RGB, nor is it a
pure NTSC with my older model. Also, in-camera color conversion is
not accurate, and so is JPEG conversion. There is a trade-off
between accuracy and speed, and I got Nikon rep recommendation to
do all the conversions during post-processing.

Click to expand...

For that reason I store the pics as NEFs, being able to change the
white balance afterwards, and give them the workspace I want.

As I said, I have no experience with current D1 successors, waiting patiently for D2 . When you change the color space of a NEF in NC, do screen colors change?

Martin59 said:
Maybe
conversions into JPEG are better done with the PC instead of
letting the camera do it.

That's for sure.

Martin59 said:
Martin59 said:

What a shame that Spider was not installing the profile to the
system color management!

Click to expand...

... and do not recommend it in the manual! I wonder how many people
spend several hundreds of $ or whatsoever and actually not using
the Spyder profile with PS ...

So weired...

Martin59 said:
Martin59 said:

Your two last pictures were pretty close. Yet some contrast and
color differences are obvious. This should not be that way, IMHO.
Can you please try other color spaces?

Click to expand...

Do you know my testfile?

Oh, yes!

Martin59 said:
Colorvision Europe did send it to me via
email. You can download it at http://www.inkjetart.com/custom/
I performed the testing I presented in the past postings converted
to sRGB settings. Using the test file as Adobe RGB, I get the same
results:

Yes they match very close, just some minor differences, maybe profile interpreting in NC and PS are a little bit different.

Martin59 said:
imagine: I invested in a brand new D100; photos taken in AdobeRGB
"better color workspace = better colors"; took the files to be
printed - advised camera store not to do anything to my wonderful
Nikon files - they printed them expecting sRGB workspace, ignoring
AdobeRGB tag. Awful. My wife asking me why I payed that lot of
money for that quality ...

Well known caveat, unfortunately. Once my customer put my pictures, which were TIFF Adobe RGB, to his web site, not doing color conversion, just converting them to JPEG. I was astonished how dull they were.

Drew Loker · May 30, 2003

Hello. I was just loaded the correct monitor profile for my monitor in Nikon View and the resulting image was just horrible. I read the complicated thread: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=5080142 , but I still don't understand what I may be doing wrong. The color matching using the default NKMonitor_Win seemed to be doing a pretty good job. I was reasonably getting from the Frontier printer as what I was seeing on the screen, but I thought I would try to nail it down even better.

Should I just use the Nikon Default? I had it on Diamond Compatible 9300 G2.2 and it was pretty much the same as the NKMonitor. But when I changed to the Mitsubishi NXM76LCD, is when it when totally flat...but that is what the monitor is.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any feedback!
--
Drew
http://www.pbase.com/lokerd

Naoki Takagaki · Jun 13, 2003

Hi,

I've also very recently started using Spyder and OptiCal, and this thread helped me much. Now my NC 3.5 and PS 7.0 match.

However, sRGB images I prepare using PS look different when it is displayed on Internet Explorere. As I suspected, a support e-mail from Color Vision told me that's becasue IE didn't color manage. Well, this is kind of a drag. Don't you think?

Regards,
Naoki
--
http://my.reset.jp/~takagaki/galleries/india_2002/

Iliah Borg · Jun 13, 2003

Are you converting to sRGB color space before saving the file or choosing "Save foe web"?

SysConsultant · Jun 13, 2003

Iliah Borg said:
Are you converting to sRGB color space before saving the file or
choosing "Save foe web"?

I recently converted some photos for distribution on a CD and display in a slideshow application that comes with EZ-CD Creator 6. Like Explorer, this application doesn't seem to support color management either. So I needed a fast way to convert the NEF files to sRGB JPGs.

I found this easiest to accomplish by color correcting the photos on my profiled monitor in NC 3.5 and then using the batch convert to JPG feature in NikonView. There is an option you can check in the convert to JPG dialog box in NikokView 6.01 that causes NikonView to make the conversion to sRGB at the same time it performs the conversion to JPG.

Hope this helps.

Naoki Takagaki · Jun 13, 2003

Iliah Borg said:
Are you converting to sRGB color space before saving the file or
choosing "Save foe web"?

I work with Adobe RGB-embeded images on PS with Adobe RGB as working color spece. I then change the Adobe RGB to sRGB using "convert to profile" command of PS. Then using "Save for Web" command to save. Just to see, I used "Save AS" command insetead of "Save for Web," but made no difference, of course.

Regards,
Naoki
--
http://my.reset.jp/~takagaki/galleries/india_2002/

Naoki Takagaki · Jun 13, 2003

Hi,

Well, converting to jpg is not a problem.

I was just amazed to learn that the newly-created color profile, which, I hear sometimes, is applied to the Windows system, is not even applicable to such an essential program as IE.

I guess since my NC and PS's colors match and I was told by the Color Vision support that this is the color average computer display would show, there is no real problem. It's just bit disconcerting, however, to work with your image adjusting colors to the best of your ability, and then see the outcome on IE and lo! The color is different! This kind of thing would drive you up the wall, doesn't it? It does to me.

Regards,
Naoki

SysConsultant said:
I recently converted some photos for distribution on a CD and
display in a slideshow application that comes with EZ-CD Creator 6.
Like Explorer, this application doesn't seem to support color
management either. So I needed a fast way to convert the NEF files
to sRGB JPGs.

I found this easiest to accomplish by color correcting the photos
on my profiled monitor in NC 3.5 and then using the batch convert
to JPG feature in NikonView. There is an option you can check in
the convert to JPG dialog box in NikokView 6.01 that causes
NikonView to make the conversion to sRGB at the same time it
performs the conversion to JPG.

Hope this helps.

--
http://my.reset.jp/~takagaki/galleries/india_2002/

Drew Loker · Jun 13, 2003

SysConsultant said:
I found this easiest to accomplish by color correcting the photos
on my profiled monitor in NC 3.5 and then using the batch convert
to JPG feature in NikonView. There is an option you can check in
the convert to JPG dialog box in NikokView 6.01 that causes
NikonView to make the conversion to sRGB at the same time it
performs the conversion to JPG.

Sometimes I do use NV to batch convert to JPEG, but if I already have Capture open, which I try to run it solo for best performance, I use captures batch...unless I need to be selective on what images to convert.

Is there some reason you use NV if you are already in Capture?

Thanks!
Drew
http://www.pbase.com/lokerd

SysConsultant · Jun 13, 2003

Drew Loker said:
SysConsultant said:

I found this easiest to accomplish by color correcting the photos
on my profiled monitor in NC 3.5 and then using the batch convert
to JPG feature in NikonView. There is an option you can check in
the convert to JPG dialog box in NikokView 6.01 that causes
NikonView to make the conversion to sRGB at the same time it
performs the conversion to JPG.

Click to expand...

Sometimes I do use NV to batch convert to JPEG, but if I already
have Capture open, which I try to run it solo for best performance,
I use captures batch...unless I need to be selective on what images
to convert.

Is there some reason you use NV if you are already in Capture?

Thanks!

Not sure how you convert to sRGB in Capture. Using NV (which I keep open anyway while using Capture) I can just select a range of pictures and make the conversion to JPG and sRGB in a single operation. Just one of many ways to get there but pretty easy if you are doing a batch.

Regards,
SysConsultant

Iliah Borg · Jun 13, 2003

Naoki said:
Iliah Borg said:

Are you converting to sRGB color space before saving the file or
choosing "Save foe web"?

Click to expand...

I work with Adobe RGB-embeded images on PS with Adobe RGB as
working color spece. I then change the Adobe RGB to sRGB using
"convert to profile" command of PS. Then using "Save for Web"
command to save. Just to see, I used "Save AS" command insetead of
"Save for Web," but made no difference, of course.

When using "Save for web", what compensation do you have under "Preview menu"?" Is there a setting when preview matches how the picture is shown in IE?

Naoki Takagaki · Jun 14, 2003

Iliah Borg said:
When using "Save for web", what compensation do you have under
"Preview menu"?" Is there a setting when preview matches how the
picture is shown in IE?

I don't know exactly waht you mean, but when I go to "Save for Web," the image shown is already how it'll be shown in IE. There is an IE icon below the image at the righ-hand side indicating the image shown is preview of IE image.

Naroki
--
http://my.reset.jp/~takagaki/galleries/india_2002/

Iliah Borg · Jun 14, 2003

You can try converting to another profile instead of sRGB, like generic P22 or EBU monitor with different gamma values.

Naoki Takagaki said:
I don't know exactly waht you mean,

In "Save for web" window there is an arrow near the upper right corner of preview window, similar in function to the arrows to the right of PS palettes. There are some settings you can use.

Naoki Takagaki · Jun 14, 2003

Thanks for you replies, Iliah!

Iliah Borg said:
Iliah Borg said:

I don't know exactly waht you mean,

Click to expand...

In "Save for web" window there is an arrow near the upper right
corner of preview window, similar in function to the arrows to the
right of PS palettes. There are some settings you can use.

I found the settings, but choosing different setting did not change how the image appeared in IE.

But you know what? I think I found something. Instead of converting Adobe RGB to sRGB, if I conver the image to the profile made by Spyder, NC, PS, IE all have the same color.

Is this what I was looking for? I'm not sure yet... Color Vision support sure did not mention anything like this. hmmm...

Regards,
Naoki
--
http://my.reset.jp/~takagaki/galleries/india_2002/

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