ColorThink Pro Profile Display

CHROMiX ColorThink
1

Hello,

I wonder if someone would clarify for me a concept which appears to be basic to ColorThink. In video #1 of the ColorThink Pro instructional videos at around 6 minutes, Steve Upton is showing a 3D graph of a gamut and says the following: What it [ColorThink] does is it comes up with these device values and sends them through the profile and proofs them saying if I were to send these to the device, what colours would I get? The device gamut that you see here is the gamut of the device as described by the profile This is perfectly clear and the question that follows is: What else could it be? His answer: it could be the gamut of what was rendered to the device. So, it could be describing what the profile would give me on that device. In this case, its not doing that.

I must admit to being confused by this. I dont know what he means by the last statement. I don’t see the difference. If the profile is a device profile it would have been determined by the results generated by the device. So, I would appreciate some clarification. Thanks in advance.

Paul

2

Great question.

The answer lies in the fact that there are two directions, two ways that a profile works. It works to convert images from Lab space to device space (Lab to printer for example), and it works in the opposite direction: from device space to Lab space.

  • The first direction is what happens when you print,
  • The second is what happens when you soft-proof in Photoshop.
    These 2 directions are not mirror opposites of each other; there are differences between them.

These links should make this more clearly understood:

Here is a mention Steve did about how ColorThink’s graphing is different from others:
colorwiki.com/wiki/Color_Man … 28#Myth_26

And here is a new Tips & Tricks video I did a few months ago showing how you can actually use ColorThink Pro to view the gamut of what is rendered to the device - as well as the proofing gamut. With this video you can see the difference right in front of you.

Viewing a Rendered Gamut on YouTube

3

Thank you, Pat. The Rendered Gamut video has been extremely helpful. ColorThink is an excellent tool.

Cheers,

Paul