ICC + vuescan, photoshop

[jano]

I'm a little confused with vuescan's color management. I have to questions.

1. Monitor ICC profile option: I assume this is where you put your monitor's icc profile (I calibrated mine with a gretag eye one, on windows xp). Would this cause a double-application of the profile? i.e. my monitor is calibrated and loads with the latest calibration profile. Then setting vuescan to use this.. wouldn't it apply the profile on the displayed image, thus shifting one more time? I tried it, but didn't see a difference when using the ICC profile vs. standard sRGB profile.

2. output color space is set to sRGB. Fine, that flows with my workflow. However, if scanning b&w, the image is saved without a profile, and when I open in photoshop, it asks me which grayscale profile to apply. None of the supplied ones match the display in vuescan, however, gama 2.2 comes closest. I like to keep my b&w's in rgb mode, because I've found in the past this is most likely to keep the image display consistent from monitor to monitor (it doesn't add much size, anyway, for web-based viewing). So, uh... I guess the question here is, which profile should be assigned, and how to get the proper profile assigned from the start through vuescan?

Thanks,
Jano

 

[planetjoe]

Hey, Jano. I do very much the same thing as you do, for the most part.

I don't think I can offer an answer for #1, but it sounds like you're on the right track - perhaps Vuescan needs to know your monitor profile in order to display the preview correctly? Although, I don't know why it simply can't benefit from the Windows (in your case) environment already knowing that ICC file.

I also scan b&w as RGB, and in my case I think Vuescan applies the sRGB profile. I'm not in front of my scanning PC, so I can't answer for sure. However, since all I'm really doing is Channel Mixer and a curve or two, I don't think that color management in the RGB space is going to help me all that much. I will say, however, that when it comes to eventual grayscale output, Gray Gamma 2.2 is the stuff. I only just happened upon that detail, and it's helped my workflow somewhat.

Hope this helps a bit.


Cheers,
--joe.

 

[kaiyen]

Hey Jano,
I don't use the color profile for monitor setting, so not sure on #1. On #2, you need to check the box that says "TIFF Profile" (assuming you're outputting TIFF) in the output pane. Then it'll attach whatever profile you selected on the color pane.

allan

 

[jano]

On #2, you need to check the box that says "TIFF Profile" (assuming you're outputting TIFF) in the output pane. Then it'll attach whatever profile you selected on the color pane.

That box has been checked. I also have "48bit RGB" selected as tiff file type. I wonder if it has anything to do with b/w negative as the media? This may be it.. since I'm scanning grayscale, not color. I'm thinking "16-bit b&w tif" would be the proper setting. .... testing now...

Okay. In the color tab, I changed the output profile to "gray" and it saved the image with "Gray Gama 2.2" and the scan looks the same in both PS and vuescan. Perfect 🙂 THanks for the help.

 

[jano]

However, since all I'm really doing is Channel Mixer and a curve or two, I don't think that color management in the RGB space is going to help me all that much. I will say, however, that when it comes to eventual grayscale output, Gray Gamma 2.2 is the stuff. I only just happened upon that detail, and it's helped my workflow somewhat.

If you have your rgb properly calibrated, then it's safe to assume your grays will e calibrated as well with proper brightness/contrast. It seems the gray gamma 2.2 is the right way to go.

Thanks for the tips 🙂
Jano