ColorCast profiles

I am having a hard time producing and trying to figure out the application of ColorCast profiles. I do work in Hexachrome and can see the advantage, I just can’t figure out the workflow. Can anybody elaborate?
Regards,
Todd

Hi Todd,

You can take a look at the information in the manual:
colorwiki.com/wiki/ColorThin … TM_profile

This provides several usage scenarios:

  • Embedding a HexachromeTM profile into the Adobe RGB (1998) profile to perform HiFi soft and hard proofing in Photoshop with no plug-ins required. This is effective for the clients of packaging printers, for instance. They can easily proof complex multi-channel printing systems with nothing more than a normal RGB ICC profile.
  • Embedding a SWOPTM CMYK profile into an RGB Epson printer profile so each time the profile is used it proofs SWOP press color even from within office applications such as MS Word.

The easiest way to create ColorCast profiles is by using the “create profile” option in the ColorSmarts Guide. You would bring your Hexachrome profile into the “Proofing Profile” spot, and any common working space profile into the “Device Profile” spot. Most people use something large enough to accommodate the colors of the proofing profile, such as AdobeRGB, if you want to end up with an RGB profile.

Next, if you or your client have Photoshop and are printing to an adequate inkjet printer, here is how you would make a hard proof:

  • Bring your ColorCast profile into that computer,
  • In the Photoshop print dialog, choose Proof (instead of Document),
  • Put the ColorCast profile in place as the proofing profile
  • Use your normal profile for that inkjet printer as the Color Handling profile choice.
  • Print.
    This will print to the inkjet using the ColorCast profile to simulate the Hexachrome process. No special plugins are needed.

Even simpler is using a ColorCast profile to soft-proof. If your clients want to see the effect of your Hexachrome process, give them a ColorCast profile. Even the latest versions of Photoshop cannot soft-proof actual multi-channel profiles properly, but ColorCast embeds the effect of these multi-channel processes into a normal printer profile, complete with all the rendering intents.

It has been said that “the people who need ColorCast are not the ones who buy it”. (The ones who need it are their customers!)

If you want to use a CC profile in a Windows printer driver, see this article from the ColorWiki.

Hi Patrick,
Thank you for your response. Please confirm that I am on the right track. After I convert the image to Hexachrome in PSCS5 the image is a multichannel. To soft proof for Hexachrome I load the RGB_Hexachrome Color Cast profile that I created into my color settings and then change the mode of the image to RGB? I believe this is similar to Xrite’s Multicolor Proofing Plug In.
Regards,
Todd

You might be making it harder than you need to.

To soft-proof your image, you don’t even need to convert to your Hexachrome profile in PS. Just have your image open in PS, and go to View > Proof Setup > Custom & choose the RGB_Hexachrome ColorCast profile you made. (This is the typical way to soft proof in PS.)
That’s really all there is to it.

The ColorCast profile “looks” like a normal RGB profile to Photoshop, but its effect will capture the effect of the hexachrome profile that is built into it.

I was making it too hard(’:(’) I’ve got it now, thank you Patrick!
Regards,
Todd

…easier to revive an old thread than start a new… now that i1Profiler is out I’m running into some issues with it’s cmykog builds.
Pat, do you have any idea why my current cmykog profiles preview in PS correctly as you describe above, but the new i1Profiler cmykog profiles do not? They don’t even come up on the list as available…
I’m wondering if this may be related to other issues I’m having with the new profiler…
Thanks,
Tyler

Hi Tyler,

It sounds like you are wanting to use the profile directly in Photoshop as opposed to making a ColorCast profile out of it? If so the profile may be corrupted in some way. The profile you sent us earlier seemed to have a table problem where the entry for 600% coverage had a bad entry (very light in color)

If you made a ColorCast profile out of the CMYKOG profile and it won’t show in Photoshop then check to ensure that the destination profile was a normal RGB working space or normal RGB or CMYK Print profile. If it was then please send it over and we’ll take a look at it.

It sounds like the CMYKOG profiles in i1P are sometimes messed up.

Steve

Hi Steve, I probably should have started a new thread under profiling as you are right, I’m not involving ColorCast. I’m having a variety of issues with i1P CMYKOG so was wondering if some of these issues all point to a larger general problem, many of them are printing badly as well.
After much searching around I saw Pat’s description in this thread about using the advanced part of the PS convert dialogue for previewing/converting to multichannel profiles… hoping that might help me run down problems I was disappointed to find they don’t even show up on the list.
I’m not sure where to even begin to find some fixes… damn, the bleeding edge again!!!
Thanks for your reply,
Tyler