The Digital Photography Show #22: Finding Your Right Color Space and Improving Your Prints – Plus, a Chance to Win Qimage!
The Digital Photography Show #22: Finding Your Right Color Space and Improving Your Prints – Plus, a Chance to Win Qimage! (MP3 - 23MB 65mins)
October 6, 2006: Welcome to the tech-heavy twenty second episode of The Digital Photography Show!
Today’s guest is Mike Chaney, creator of Qimage and Profile Prism, two tools to improve your printing and color matching. We had him on at the recommendation of our wonderful listener Landya, who wrote “He is someone I really admire in the field of digital photography, printing especially. I own his printing program and it is fabulous. He is considered a God by those who use his program.”
Well, far be it from us to let the opportunity to interview a deity pass us by! Mike turned out to be an interesting guy who has that knack for explaining technical things in language that even a semi-simpleton like me can understand.
Mike is giving away the highest-end version of Qimage to a listener who can complete this sentence from the review section of Qimage’s product page: “I downloaded the trial version and the result was ___________.” You can link to the page from here.
PS: This isn’t Mad Libs. While we’d appreciate a funny response, it won’t get you any closer to winning the program.
You should also check out Mike’s monthly column Tech Corner on Steves-Digicams. Michael and I have spoken highly about Steve’s Digicams before. They’re a great source for news and reviews. Mike’s column adds an extra helping of techy goodness to that already rich resource.
And don’t forget to check out the pictures I processed using the software we featured last week, Exposure, on my Phanfare site here. And let me know what you think of them.
Check the posts below for links to the other stories Michael and I talked about this week.
Michael and I also talk about the The Podcast Network (TPN Survey), which you’d be doing us a huge favor by filling out. TPN has been hosting us at their expense for about six months now, but we need to show advertisers and investors that our listeners are the kind of cool, motivated and intelligent people they want to reach. You can find the survey here. Please help us out!
Thanks for joining us. Please leave your comments below or email us at thedigitalphotographyshow@gmail.com. We love to hear from you. Y’all are the best!1st time loans autoamerican loan24 hr loan$30,000 loanloan unsercured 10,000$90 loans mortgaget m adoption loank loan 401 Map
October 7th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
I am a new listener I love photoghraphy. I have listened to all of your episodes. I would like to hear more about Pentax equipment but I get the impresion that they are below your price range.
I would like to be entered into this weeks contest.
“I downloaded the trial version and the result was ___________.”
REMOVED BY MODERATOR
Thanks for your show
Dusty From Bend Oregon
October 8th, 2006 at 4:49 am
Rusty - Thanks for writing man, and thanks for the nice words. But you put the answer to the trivia question here, whiich will make it too easy for the other entrants!
Please send your answer (which was correct, by the way) to TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com
Thanks!
October 8th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Just thought you guys would like to know… the Hasselblad camera that they made this lens to be used with would have cost about $5000… but now you can only buy it used since it is no longer made new (I believe). As for the lens, it has to be well over $100,000. I’d probably say more like $500,000 to $1,000,000. The press release stated that individual lens blanks (pre-manufacturing into the working lens) each cost the same as a luxury sedan, meaning that the finished lens has to be worth atleast twice that… and most lenses have 8+ optical lenses to make up the entire lens. Not to mention the amount Carl Zeiss must have charged to take on this project to make a one of a kind lens for a private buyer. They had to build this thing from the ground up.
Now, I don’t know the equivelant of the 1700mm lens into 35mm format terms, but it is still big. Nikon will make a 600mm lens, which is quite large on it’s own (yet not 500lbs.), but only as a custom order and it runs about $10,000… and I did sell one of these lenses when I worked in the camera retail business. Maybe someone will leak the figures of how much that 1700mm lens cost.
October 10th, 2006 at 3:20 am
Hey guys I listened to your podcast on color management. I liked the interview very much unfortunately maybe I missed it or the question wasn’t asked but I still have something I can’t figure out. I have a Spider monitor calibrator and that’s great but my problem is this. The spyder program loads the profile on startup of the computer. My camera uses Adobe RGB and I have adobe RGB color profile loaded in Photoshop.My question is this if I am running a spyder color profile on my monitor shouldn’t I run the spyder profile in Photoshop and have it change the color space of the files for my camera so what I see is what I get? I am also wondering if I can load the spyder profile into my 20D I don’t think I can but you might know. I use a online photo lab do I load their color space into Photoshop and then have too load it into my monitor. I seem to have three different color spaces to work with here. Adobe RGB for the camera, Spyder profile for the monitor, and Srgb for the print lab. I appreciate any help you can give me thanks for the great show look forward to hearing more.
October 10th, 2006 at 4:01 am
Good question. Maybe Scott will have me back in the future and we can go over some of the more fine points of working with profiles. ;-) As to the immediate question, when you profile your monitor with a Spyder, it is actually performing a two step process. The first step is a “calibration” that does things like set the gamma (brightness) level of the monitor and set the RGB curves so that your grayscales look neutral on the monitor. This can improve contrast and overall neutrality when working in Windows or any other non-color-managed software but it is just a first step and is not considered profiling as no profile is used for this.
The second step is that the Spyder will save the actual profile for the monitor in a file on the hard drive. When you boot up your computer and see the color change on startup, it is *not* loading the profile itself: it is loading the baseline calibration. Think of this calibration as a sort of “coarse” adjustment that is made to the monitor so that the profile, when applied, will work well with all programs. The Spyder saves the actual profile in a “placeholder” for your monitor so that other programs (like Qimage and PhotoShop) can find it and use it but it isn’t being loaded on startup and in fact, Windows as an operating system doesn’t use it at all. If you right click on your display desktop, click Properties, and then click Settings, Advanced and finally “Color Management”, you’ll be able to see the color profile that the Spyder associated with your monitor.
Because the Spyder loaded the profile into the display’s color management properties, programs like PhotoShop and my own Qimage will automatically recognize the proper profile for the monitor. There is really nothing else you need to do. You can’t (and wouldn’t want to) associate your monitor profile with your 20D images. Just keep shooting in Adobe RGB and PhotoShop, Qimage, and other ICC aware software will automatically know how to utilize the Adobe RGB you are shooting with in conjunction with the display profile that the Spyder saved.
Hope this helps.
Mike
October 10th, 2006 at 8:18 am
Guys, your show just becoming better and better !! keep up the good work.
Thomas..
BTW How is iStock working out for you??
October 11th, 2006 at 7:18 am
Hey guys,
great show. Really interesting stuff.
I was wondering if Michael uploaded his pictures to flickr in AdobeRGB. Most browsers are color profile unaware and assume every picture is sRGB, so they will not display the wider gammut of AdobeRGB in all its glory. In order to avoid this you have to convert to sRGB before uploading to the web.
And I think the Zeiss lens will be much more expensive than 20,000$. I remember that Canon used to make a EF 1200mm ƒ/5.6L USM lens and it cost 106,000€ (over 120,00$ or so). And they made a couple of those, so I would assume, that the Zeiss lens that’s only built once should be much more expensive. I think I also know, why they always say it is the longest lens for non-military porpuses and is has to do with they question you guys raised in the podcast. Only the military has the right stands to support lenses like that: The ones they use for their canons!
October 11th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Hi Adrian,
I think you got it right. I’ve been working in AdobeRGB and I have not been converting to sRGB for the web. I didn’t realize that was what I should be doing. Ughh. I now have an additional item for my workflow. I’ve created an action for the change. Now I just need to run lots of photos through that action. Thanks for confirming this.
–Michael
October 11th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Mr. Chaney
That is a very helpfull answer my only other question would be do I have Photoshop load the AdobeRGB profile for the color settings or do I have it load the monitor color which is the Spyder profile for the color settings? Thankyou for taking the time to answer my previous question it explained alot.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
FYI: Anyone who is a Smugmug user need not worry about this step. Smugmug converts every single uploaded photo to sRGB as part of the uploading process.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
When loading images into PhotoShop, PhotoShop will recognize the Adobe RGB color space in the image automatically and will know how to display it with your monitor profile. This is part of the definition of “ICC aware” software: ICC aware software knows how to open the image in Adobe RGB, display it on your monitor using the monitor (Spyder) profile, and print it using the printer profile you’ve pointed it to. There’s no need for any manual conversions. You really don’t have to think about that with truly ICC aware software like PhotoShop and Qimage.
Mike
October 12th, 2006 at 2:32 am
“REMOVED BY MODERATOR - BUT IT WAS A VERY KIND WORD” is the answer to the contest as well as my description of Mike’s postings on Steve’s Digicam and a long time ago on DPReview.
Mike, keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
Robert Jensen
NOTE FROM MODERATOR: Robert - You have to send the answer to thedigitalphotographyshow@gmail.com. If you post it here, no one lese will get the fun of finding it themselves! Thanks for writing, though, and we agree - Mike is re*** — oops, I almost said it myself!
October 12th, 2006 at 3:39 am
Thanks! I’m glad the word that wins the contest is a kind word. Whew… now I can uncross my fingers. ;-)
Mike
October 13th, 2006 at 9:45 am
I have been using QImge for about 2 years and it is TERRIFIC. I actually wasted a ton of time with a very expensive RIP trying to get “better” print quality with my Epson 4000 and the prints coming out of QImage were invariably superior with 1/10th the tie & effort. Makes sense, QImage makes a lot of descisions and calculations for optimal prints AUTOMATICALLY instead of having to adjust a dozen variables in Photoshop to tell it what to do. Can’t go wrong with this software.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
I’ve been listening for eight minutes now, does this guy ever say anything? I thought i was going to hear something about color management.
November 5th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Hope you listened for more than 8 minutes. Color management is not the easiest topic for radio. Mike Chaney is an expert in this field, so if you are really interested in the topic, go to Mike’s “Tech Corner” and read his excellent articles on the topic.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/tc_index.html
November 7th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Hi,
I am not sure when your contest ends. The fill in the blank answer is the word “(edited by moderator)”.
I have a question about Qimage. I could not find if the Nikon 200 raw image type is supported. I wonder how this compares to Nikon Capture.
Thanks,
anne wallace
November 13th, 2006 at 4:09 am
Anne:
Your best bet would be to go to the forum devoted to Qimage and ask any specific question there. Usually Mike will hop on and answer questions, although he has many forums that he is directly involved in for Qimage users.
Here is the link:
http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/view_forum.php?id=33
Qimage is more a printing program than a photo editor, although it has a mighty impressive ability to edit your photos. Qimage is not a raw converter software like Nikon Capture. Qimage is worth much more than every penny spent on it! Hope this helps!
January 21st, 2007 at 2:23 pm
My first time, and I feel that I will learn a lot by keeping in touch. I am retried and on a low fixed income, but I have always liked Photograhy, but could not afford to get into it. Now with Didital i can make it a great hobby that I can do and enjoy.