ICC profile and GIMP
Hi everyone, I’m just getting started on my first book with BookSmart, and I’ve been reading the threads here on calibrating your colors using the ICC profile. I noticed that GIMP version 2.4 now has support for color proofing, and I was wonering if the ICC profile can be used with this, and if anyone has tried it and could share their experience. Also, I’m new to this and am just starting on creating my first book. It is just a memoir book of our recent vacation. Is this color management really necessary for something non-professional? Or is it more pain than its worth? Are the results still beautiful without going through this process? One last comment, I have seen others request this as well. No one has provided a nice step-by-step tutorial or documentation of the process yet. If anyone has the knowledge, experience and time to do this I think it would help many people out here.
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ososnilknarf, You can produce a quality product without ICC profiling etc. If you are using a modern digital camera with sRBG JPEG files as output. Most cameras do that. Calibrating your monitor is required if you want to see what the output will look like. My wife has produced several "nonprofessional" books that we are pleased with by going this route. You may find that at times images are darker or less saturated than you would like but in general they are pretty good. I on the other hand do a lot more image processing using Photoshop. I would try a "proof book" which would be the fewest pages (20) but the size (either 7×7 or 8×10) I’m interested and in soft cover. This is a good way to see how your images reproduce on the digital press. Don’t worry about resizing for the frames in Blurb. Blurb will besize automatically, just import the JPEG. Blurb does have a web tutorial of some sort. You might want to search for that. Len
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Thanks for the helpful reply Len. I appreciate you sharing your experience. Well its good to know that it isn’t necessary to get good results. I was just reading through all of the posts and thinking that people were going through a lot of trouble to get the color right, so it made me wonder if the results weren’t satisfactory without it. But I think some people are just really anal about these things. And that would make sense for creating a book of professional photography, or something for a paying client and such. I think for my purposes I’ll just go the easy route and see how it turns out. As for your image processing in Photoshop. I’m just curious, what kinds of processing do you typically do to your photos? (I’m learning to use GIMP, just because it was free, but I think it can do most of what PS does). Just adjusting contrast and sharpness? Or more involved stuff? Thanks again for the reply. Pete
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Oh, and also, I think I wasn’t clear in my original post. The step-by-step I was asking about was for the ICC/color proofing process. I have seen the booksmart tutorial and it was very helpful to get started quickly using the software.
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Pete, If you want more information on ICC/color proofing the following web site has a lot of technical information www.normankoren.com/ concerning monitor calibration, profiles etc. Also check out Digital Light and Color <font size="-1">www.dl-c.com they provide software less costly than Photoshop and much more intuitive for a casual photographer (Much cheaper also). I use either photoshop or Picture Window Pro (from Digital Light) to crop images, change color saturation, modify image contrast, remove dust or objects (my clone function), eliminate red eye sharpen, add text into an image, or change file formats when necessary. I just completed a project where I scanned 460 35mm Kodachromes taken on a family vacation to Portugal 28 years ago. I had to work on a lot of the scans to get they acceptable for printing (dust removal and excessive contrast). Turned out great printed by Blurb. Finally get the pictures out of the slide trays an in an easy to view form. This couldn’t be done just a very years ago.</font> Len
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Sorry about the typos. Len
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