At some point I'm planning to experiment with ICC profiles that I'll
obtain by calibrating my scanner with IT8 targets.

I'm wondering what I then need to do in order to use the generated ICC
profiles with NikonScan. I've only found one place where ICC profiles
can be loaded (besides monitor calibration). This is in the

Preferences -> color management -> CMYK tab -> User defined ICC profile

(This is just a translation of my german menu names, so the english
names may actually vary)

Is this where I need to load the profile?

--
Olaf

(remove '_no_spam_' from email when replying)

No Olaf, wrong place :-(

(and there is NO PLACE AT ALL), because for now NikonScan doesn't support
custom ICC profiles for scanners (as instead does Silverfast or Vuescan).

Marco

"Olaf Meyer" <flatpicker_no_spam_@gmx.de> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:brt60f$8lr$1@ulysses.news.tiscali.de...

Hello, Olaf Meyer
you wrote...

You have to do it in photoshop or any other ICC aware application. If
you don't have any, you can try to use TIFFICC or JPGICC which apply
ICC profiles to Tiffs or Jpegs from the command line. You should find
them on http://lcms.coloraid.de or directly at
http://www.littlecms.com/newutils.htm

--
Erik Krause
Digital contrast problems: http://www.erik-krause.de/contrast

In article <brt60f$8lr$1@ulysses.news.tiscali.de>, Olaf Meyer
<flatpicker_no_spam_@gmx.de> writes
loaded by the operating system from Control Panel|Scanners &
Cameras|Your Nikon Scanner|Color Management. I would guess that is
where you should try it.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

Olaf Meyer <flatpicker_no_spam_@gmx.de> wrote in message news:<brt60f$8lr$1@ulysses.news.tiscali.de>...
Olaf,
I don't think it's possible to create custom scanner profiles with
NikonScan, but you can do that with Vuescan.

Assuming you have a custom profile for your scanner , you cannot use
it with NikonScan. The place you mention (Preferences, color
management,..) is for output profiles, not scanner profiles.

Now, if you really want to experiment, here is some information that
may help you .
With Windows XP and NikonScan 4, the Nikon scanner profiles are
located in : Program Files\Common Files\Nikon\Profiles , and they are
called, for a LS50 for ex : NKLS50.icm, NKLS50_P.icm, NKLS50_K.icm,
NKLS50_MN.icm, NKLS50_N.icm and NKLS50_R.icm .
I did some experimentation, in fact the opposite of what you want to
try : I used those Nikon profiles with Vuescan, in order to compare
them with the one I generated with Vuescan.
Worked OK, I got images :
NKLS50, _K , _P : exactly the same image , but quite 'cold' colors
NKLS50_MN : very neutral colors
My own generated profile with VS : warm colors, maybe too warm.

I thought at beginning that _K was meaning Kodachrome, _P = Positive ,
_MN = Monochrome, _N = Negative , but since I got almost the same
results, I don't know.

You can always try to build your own scanner profiles, and rename them
with Nikon names, but I doubt you get good results.
In fact, for what you want to do, you should rather use Vuescan :-) .
Bernard

Erik Krause wrote:
Erik,

thanks for these pointers. There are quite some useful free tools out there!

--
Olaf

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Bernard Leverd wrote:

Bernard,

I know that I cannot create any customer scanner profiles directly with
NikonScan. But it seems that with the tools available at
http://lcms.coloraid.de and the IT-8 targets that I have I should be
able to do this.

It seems that I can assign a ICC profile to the scanner. The place that
Kennedy mentioned (ControlPanel -> Scanners and Cameras -> Nikon
Coolscan -> Properties -> ColorManagement TAB) look like it, doesn't it?
Do you know which default profile NikonScan4 uses?

I also tested a demo version of VueScan but upto now I like the results
that I get with NikonScan better. Especially the ICE scratch removal is
superior to VueScans. For now it seems that I want to stick with NikonScan.

--
Olaf

(remove '_no_spam_' from email when replying)

Olaf Meyer wrote:

No, no, no: YOU CAN'T, because NikonScan DOESN'T offer the possibility to
use Custom scanner profiles. It offer ONLY the possibility to use custom
MONITOR profiles, as you can see in the ColorManagement TAB.

To help you to understand, please read this FUNDAMENTAL article by Bruce
FRASER:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/review/14539.html

Color Management
Nikon's implementation of color management has always been idiosyncratic.
Though it has improved greatly in NikonScan 3, it still marches to the beat
of a different drummer. Rather than offering a full-blown open ICC-based
color management system, Nikon's latest effort (for RGB, at least) is
basically a closed proprietary system. This system allows you to scan into
any of ten RGB spaces, which are supplied by Nikon as ICC profiles, but
these profiles are buried inside Nikon's own Preferences folder where they
are inaccessible to other software.
If you want to scan into one of the supported RGB spaces (Apple RGB,
ColorMatch RGB, sRGB, BruceRGB, NTSC (1953), Adobe RGB (1998), CIE RGB, Wide
Gamut RGB, plus slightly tweaked versions of Apple RGB and Wide Gamut RGB),
Nikon's color management works reasonably well aside from the aforementioned
shadow clipping. But if you want to scan into other wide-gamut spaces such
as Kodak's ProPhoto RGB, Joseph Holmes' EktaSpace, or Don Hutcheson's Don
RGB, it isn't much help. Nikon does include some scanner profiles that
appear to be media-specific, but assigning them to raw scans in Photoshop
produces pretty hideous, washed-out results.

Fortunately, you can get raw scans from the scanner either by turning color
management off, or by selecting Scanner RGB as the RGB output space. When we
built a scanner profile from this setting using Kodak's COLORFLOW ICC Input
Profile Builder, we found that we could get much better results, with
greatly improved shadow detail, and we could convert the scan into any
Photoshop working space we wanted. If you want to get the most out of this
scanner, plan on making custom profiles

Best regards

Marco Passanisi

Marco Passanisi wrote:
Marco, thanks for these infos. I think I'll turn Nikon Color management
off in order to get raw scans. Can I then apply a custom ICC profile
using the tools that Erik mentioned (see below)?

them on http://lcms.coloraid.de or directly at
http://www.littlecms.com/newutils.htm

I've looked at the "little cms ICC profile applier for TIFF". Below is a
list of available options. I'm not sure what the input profile is if I
turn color managment off in NikonScan. Do you know? I suppose the output
profile then is the custom profile I want to use.

usage: tifficc [flags] input.tif output.tif

flags:

-v - Verbose
-i<profile> - Input profile (defaults to sRGB)
-o<profile> - Output profile (defaults to sRGB)
-l<profile> - Transform by device-link profile
-t<0,1,2,3> - Intent (0=Perceptual, 1=Colorimetric, 2=Saturation,
3=Absolute)

-w - Wide output (generates 16 bps tiff)
-n - Ignore embedded profile on input
-e - Embed destination profile
-c<0,1,2,3> - Precalculates transform (0=Off, 1=Normal, 2=Hi-res,
3=LoRes) [defaults to 1]

-p<profile> - Soft proof profile
-m<0,1,2,3> - Soft proof intent
-g - Marks out-of-gamut colors on softproof

-b - Black point compensation
-k<0..400> - Ink-limiting in % (CMYK only)

-h<0,1,2> - More help

You can also use '*Lab' and '*XYZ' as predefined, built-in
profiles for CIE L*a*b* and XYZ color spaces.

--
Olaf

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