[argyllcms] Re: Camera profiling?

Ben Goren wrote:


Should  I create  profiles? If so,  how? Treat the  camera like  a
scanner...?


You can certainly try it, but I'm not sure how much good
standard ICC profiles are going to be in differing lighting
environments or for different subjects. One of the issues is
that the color as seen by an RGB sensor in a camera is
the product of the spectral characteristics of the illuminant,
the spectral characteristics of the subjects, and the spectral
sensitivities of the camera sensor. So a test chart may not
be a good substitute for the subjects you want to photograph
if it has substantially different spectral reflectance characteristics,
and a change in lighting could have more far reaching effects than
just a shift in white point.

None of this is to say that a profile won't help, just that it
cannot be perfect, and in general photographs are always going
to require some level of subjective adjustment, unless they are
all shot under identical conditions.

Note that a scanner is a much more controlled situation in that
the illuminant is fixed, and the characteristics of the test chart
can be adjusted to be similar to the type of media that will be scanned.


I have both  a ColorChecker and the scanner chart  that comes with
the i1 Pro. Will either (or both) of those suffice?


Sure, but you may have to take particular care about the illumination
evenness, and may also have to manually get rid of any perspective
distortion (at least until the next release of scanin, which should
then take care of this aspect automatically). Don't be surprised
if they give different results though, since I think that the
ColorChecker (DC or SG ?) are composed of individual colorants,
while (I presume) the i1 pro scanner chart is some sort of print
process.

Graeme Gill.

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