From rawfile to print, a colormanaged 16 bit workflow on linux
I was going to make a screencast with audio comments about cinepaint and ufraw. Unfortunately I get a lot of trouble with the sound. Anyway I put it on the web with only text comment. There is other way to do this. This is only meant as an example. I could have spend more time in ufraw, and I guess on another image I would.
The reason I was thinking of making this screencast was to present how a 16bit colormanged workflow could be done in linux. There is a lot of people around complain that they can not use linux because of this. In this workflow even the printing is in 16 bit. I guess thats not very common in the windows world.
If the color looks very off, I guess the reason is that I have not profiled my laptop. My workstation is profiled, but it was easier to get the screencast software up and running on mu ubuntu laptop. I am using my workstation screen profile, just for the sake of an example. The video is in 800×600, which is an compromise between filesize and what is usable.
The file is over 5 mb in ogg format with no sound.
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If you have trouble viewing the video, it can be downloaded from here.
The main points in the video is.
A raw file from a canon 10D are send to cinepaint from the filemanager (nautilus). Cinepaint starts and loads ufraw as a plugin. In ufraw the images is cropped and send to cinepaint as a 16 bit file in Lstar-Rgb colorspace. In cinepaint I scale the image to save cpu for the screencast aplication. Normaly I work of course in full resolution. After that I try to recrate some of the contrast in the sky with blending modes. I convert then the image to CIE-LAB colorspace, where the saturation is improved. I also apply unsharp-mask in LAB colorspace. Normaly I will duplicate the image and crop the it heavily and reaplly the settings on the original when I am satisfied. I use the unsharp mask filter only on the luminance channel. I tag the image with a “proof profile”. The profile is a cmyk printer profile for my Epson R2400. I aslo proof the image with the “proof display” and “simulate paper” command. (It can be smartr to look away from the screen when I turn on the simulate paper). The image is then seperated to CMYK with the “print ” command. A new print window is popping up. It’s to big to fit my 800×600 screen and I stop the screencast.
A better written and more in depth tutorial can be found at the behrmann site.