[Mike Nelson Pedde]

Printing Colour Management

on: March 4, 2021 at 3:46 pm

Okay, I’ll admit that ‘Printing Colour Management’ is probably an odd place to discuss an e-book, but I’m looking for some input from all y’all.

A friend of ours has been working for a few years on a photography book chronicling his adventures kayaking in northern BC, hanging outcwith salmon, bears and the like. He was almost to publication stage, but after 2020 the possibility of tours, promotions, author signings, etc. is pretty much nil for a while yet. To that end he’s been looking to publish it in e-book format, at least initially.

Here’s the rub, though. Anyone who’s done this (including me, for Marcia’s children’s book) can tell you that book printing is an often hair-pulling event of soft-proofing, hard-proofing, and if necessary camping out in the press room for the initial run to make sure the colours and everything else look good.

With e-books, none of that is possible. As you know, the ‘net is a vast, un-coordinated space in terms of colour. If you have a print book you go to great lengths to ensure that the prints look right. With an e-book you can’t do that. Everyone who sees your book will be seeing it differently, almost entirely on too bright, overly contrasty screens. One can softproof, but to what standard?

Thoughts appreciated.

Mike.

_____
Mike Nelson Pedde
Victoria, BC
https://www.wolfnowl.com/

• This topic was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Mike Nelson Pedde.

[Andrew Rodney Participant Posts: 392]

Re: E-Book

Reply #1 on: March 4, 2021 at 3:52 pm

Those who care about color appearance, for image editing or just viewing images on screen (net or otherwise) use color management and calibrate and profile their displays. And use Color Managed browsers.

Those that don’t care or know, probably don’t. And yes, there’s nothing you can do about those people.

The web itself is utterly color space agnostic. I can post images in ProPhoto RGB and if you have a color managed browser, and you’ve profiled your display, it will preview ‘reasonably‘ well (reasonably because how you calibrate and profile your display, it’s qualities, backlight etc, isn’t anything I can control).

If you view that ProPhoto RGB image without color management, it looks awful. And not just on the web.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)”

[Author]

Posts