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Out of Gamut colors make me want to cry

A

aero

Guest
Hi All,

I've been working on a series of pieces for a show that contain glowing, vibrant red as a central visual focus.

I want very much not to do extensive manipulation for this series, since they are especially abstract and I need viewers to know that the result is truly from my camera rather than post processing. However, I can't find a way to get around modifying my images extensively to get the gamut warnings to go away in PS3.

Here's what I've done so far:

1_ Tried various printer paper profiles to see if any would correct gamut.

2_ Changed the printing metric from perceptual to relative, saturation, absolute... I tried them all, but the images that result have extensive clipping (on my Epson 3800).

3_ Tried profiles from a local Lightjet provider thinking perhaps their process would have less gamut correction. It required more, not less.

4_ Did a google search and applied various layers in PS3. In order to clear the warnings, my images were quite simply ruined (in my eyes).

...the closest I've come to an OK print was literally painting the images with various opacities of grey, or dodging/burning. This makes me sad though, because the images just aren't quite as vibrant and, well, they've been fiddled with in photoshop.

I'm not a printing expert by any means (obviously), and have come face to face with some realities that have me a bit down.

Is there software that might address this properly? Perhaps I should consider having my photos professionally retouched (a very costly solution though).

Thanks for any advice,
-Dan
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
The best you can do is going to be limited by the total available gamut of your viewing space, which in this case is an sRGB monitor or a 3800 print...

As a first consideration, the newest x880 Epson printers contain specifically more red and blue gamut, so this may be worth a look (as well as other printers I'm sure, but I don't know of any printers that specifically give larger red and blue gamuts than Epson x880). You can get a "free look" by downloading a profile and doing a soft proof, but of course all this will tell you is the relative difference between what your 3800 can print and what the x880 will print. For this I recommend you use Epson's Premium Luster (Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster) profile as it has one of the largest gamuts of any papers available.

All this said, the best way to emulate or simulate saturations in a print is to use the saturation rendering intent. Note this intent is designed for the graphics industry and works by shifting colors toward the nearest similar color with highest (more saturated) gamut, so absolute color accuracy is NOT maintained... BUT the result may be more to your liking. Again, you can soft proof these intents, but they only give you a hint as to what the actual output will be.

Best,
 
A

aero

Guest
Thanks for the great reply Jack - the manipulation continues ;-) I'll report my results when this is figured out. It's an odd and rather new thing to me tohave photos that can't be printed properly. I think instead of photographic mattes, frames and printing, I'll just buy a bunch of monitors and sell them like big a$$ Jeff Wall type lightbox pieces (joking).

D
 
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