Cosmin,

Interesting effect this tinkering with your in-camera colours; I think it probably gives the images a kind of retro feel.

Of these, I like the first and fourth the best. On the first, I think I would prefer the gentleman on the left had a little more room for his arm. And on the fourth, I am quite taken with the woman's position in relation to the very cool shadow / window reflection, but think a slightly different composition would be good: perhaps something over her left shoulder and with less of the distant street.

More to come, I hope!

Don,

I've seen the "soft proofing" option in the print preview screen, but if I understand correctly, isn't this just for proofing something I'm printing with one of my own printers? Is there a way to soft proof with an external printer via its ICC profile?

More clarity comes with the morning!

Thanks for the ColorSync Utility tip, Matt! The apple imaging document looks fantastic. I also discovered just this morning (by accident, I'll admit) that if you open an image in the Mac's super-program "Preview", under tools, it gives the option to "assign profile" including any installed by the user. So, now there are two options, and you've saved me the $40 of the other program. Thanks!!

A couple follow-up questions, please:

1. Don and Matt both say Adobe RGB. So, should I change the setting in-camera, and in Silkypix and in PSE, then? And do I understand that the advantage will not be perceptible to my eyes on the screen, but is a less compressed (?) color space, and so allows for an easier transition from my huey-generated profile to the lab's printer profile?

2. When I apply the profile of my lab in either Color Sync or Preview, there is a noticeable (not drastic) change in colour from that which I produced on the calibrated monitor. Is this normal? And if it's not something I need to fix, then how do I best account for that difference in the Silkypix and PSE stages of the workflow, so that what I see is what I'll get, both at "assigning profile" time and at printing??

And one more:
Is there any way for me to find this out, short of sending some prints for comparison?

Many, many thanks

Ok, I've been reading and re-reading posts on this site, and several other tutorials on colour management (such as here and here), following on the advice gratefully received in my earlier post.


Looking for help to see if I understand the basic workflow for getting my images printed at my local pro lab, which has given me their ICC profile.

1. Camera: set default colour space as sRGB (although as I shoot in RAW all the time, this doesn't matter)

2. Computer: iMac, OS X, Tiger; Monitor: calibrated with huey Pro

3. Silkypix: do basic editing, develop to 8 bit Tiff, in sRGB.

4. Optional: do further editing in Photoshop Elements 6

5. Unlike Photoshop, neither Silkypix nor PSE6 allow me to save the image with the lab's ICC profile (or anything else other than sRGB or AdobeRGB), I would open the image saved in either Silkypix or PSE6 in Graphic Converter (see here; other options available for PCs). Having opened the image with this utility, I would simply do a "save as" with the selected colour profile being my local lab's (or at least that's what I'm guessing, not having downloaded this software yet).

6. Burn a CD or email the files to the lab, with the instruction to turn off any automatic enhancements, and to print the image with their embedded ICC profile.

7. Hope to God it works!

Ok, what am I missing, friends?

Well done, Simon! More incentive to keep walking and looking and clicking!

I can't read them all, because I take the time to memorize my favourite posts!

Does anybody else miss the "Mark all posts as read" option on the old format? That helped me manage what threads I had already read or decided to skip.

Karmazyniello,

Love the HCB portrait; the little bit I know of Ezra Pound tells me that he's really captured something of the poet's persona.

So, if you were meeting my friend and I for a pint at the pub, and we both had our cameras, how would you have posed him and composed the frame differently? (The offer of a pint is good, next time you're in Nova Scotia!)

Cheers!

How many Pentaxians does it take to change a light bulb?

... CHANGE?!?!

I'm not fussy about the format changes either; however, while I've been working at home today, I've been able to read several threads, post to a couple others, including one with images, and decided it was time to add an avatar - all with a minimum of fuss or reorientation.

Also on the plus side, I've seen a few things in the gallery for the first time, and was pleased to find some great images by folks that both do and don't contribute to the forum.

Like others, the main things that have been less than enjoyable today:
- smaller image size; and having to open a new window to see the "full size" image"
- difficulty telling which parts of the forum have new (to me) posts, and then the same problem inside those parts; regular registered visitors, I suspect, find this invaluable, as I do/did.
- a narrower and more crowded interface for the posts, competing with ads which are much more prominent than before.
- and I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude to the competition moving into the gallery section (if I understood correctly)

All of this said before, I know. And it sounds like the admin/publishing gang are willing to be convinced and to act on most of them.

Perhaps I'm not unusual in finding my way to this forum somewhat circumspectly; not through the magazine, but via a quirky google search when shopping for lenses. It's certainly the forum that keeps me here. It's the generous interaction between experienced veterans and wet-behind-the-ears novices (like me) that makes this very much a community.

Here's hoping we can all get together for a group picture when the transition is over!

Montecarlo,

[I thought I already posted a response here, but perhaps it was lost in the shuffle of the transition!]

What a great Sunday morning! I particularly like the 1 & 3. Perhaps a little more contrast on the first?