ICC Profiles and Colour Management

[Improv]

Has anyone set up ICC Profiles in Colour Management?

The questions:

-My monitor comes with an ICC Profile, but the printer, digital camera and scanner do not. Where can you get ICC profiles? I tried Ilford,

http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/prod_html/galerie/IJPROFILES/default.asp


but they seem to have a very limited selection of ICC Profiles.

-Is it really worth the trouble to setup ICC profiles for all peripherals?

-Do ICC Profiles really improve the accuracy of colours onscreen ->printer?

Thanks

[Jin]

Also posted at TAF and CGTalk.

Hi Doug,

Here are a few sources of information on the subject of digital art on-screen and printed color:

PDF

John Derry's PDF on Consistent On Screen Color Between Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop (http://homepage.mac.com/pixlart/.Public/PDFs/Consistent%20Color.pdf)


Groups

For a more broad list of questions regarding digital art and printing, this is a great group with members who do professional work and have dealt with these subjects for a long time:

digital-fineart List at Yahoo! Groups - List Owner, Author and Expert Harald Johnson (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digital-fineart/)


Books

Mastering Digital Printing (Digital Process and Print) by Harald Johnson - and Other Books by Harald Johnson at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=stripbooks&field-keywords=harald%20johnson&results-process=default&dispatch=search/ref=pd_sl_ya_tops-1_stripbooks_31403002_1&results-process=default)


Profiles

You'll be able to ask about color profiles on the digital-fineart list and get answers from the pro's.

In the meantime, I've read that often the print shop will provide their profile for the artist to use. You might try calling a few print shops to learn more about this and to ask other related questions.

...........

[Improv]

Thanks for the info, Jin. Lot's to digest there. From what a few have said, I get the feeling that the preset ICC files are not a whole lot of use, as they are meant for a 'typical' situation. (Whatever that is!)

I am leaning towards one of the hardware/software packages such as the Pantone Huey or Colorvision Spyder2 Colour Calibration Suite.

http://www.londondrugs.com/Cultures/en-US/Product+Detail/Computers.htm?CatalogNavigationBreadCrumbs=Compute rs;Computers;Software;Image,%20Graphics%20and%20We b;Colorvision%20Spyder2 %20Colour%20Calibration%20Suite&CS_Catalog=Computers&CS_RootCategory=Computers&CS_Category=Image,%20Graphics%20and%20Web&CS_ProductID=1832054&ProductTab=1


As you may know, you attach a sensor to the monitor and it adjusts for ambient room light, monitor characteristics,etc.

Seems like the more sensible solution.