Re: [Gimp-developer] Soft proofing and the GIMP Display Filters and Color Management settings

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 08:55 -0400, Elle Stone wrote:

> The odd behavior of the display filters came to my attention because 
> I've been working on rewriting some of the GIMP color management 
> documentation and so took a closer look at what all the display filters do.

Documenting (briefly) the wrongness might help demonstrate what needs to
be done, too.

> I agree 100% that soft proofing requires the ability to quickly switch 
> gamut checks on and off, and also quickly enable/disable soft proofing.
+1 although for print work at this point you have to move to Krita or
Photoshop, most likely photoShop with a "preflight" plugin, so that you
can adjust individual plates (e.g. with dodge) for the different ink
colours (CMYK at the most basic, or two plates for a duotone).

The decision is (as I understand it) for GIMP to stay out of the print
shop so this all gets a little fuzzy for me.

But there are plenty of non-print use cases for soft proofing, of
course, including e.g. targeting a specific mobile device (even though
there's huge variation between individuals, there are basic limits on
the colour you can usefully work with) or for projection at a conference
or in an art gallery.

> A common way to soft proof requires having the image open twice to 
> compare the original with the soft proofed version.

Yes. It's unfortunate that Single Window Mode makes this hard.

> The current GIMP preferences allow you to choose "Print Simulation" in 
> "Preferences/Color Management/Mode of operation". But that sets *all* 
> open images to Print Simulation mode, for which I can't think of any use 
> cases.
No - a display filter makes more sense, agreed. Then you could maybe
make the filter apply be default to all images if you really wanted?

There should be (is??) a way to include something in the title bar
and/or status bar to show which display filters are active.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml