The Application of Image Enhancement and Color Management in Digital Photo-Printing Workflows

摘要

Different printer and image enhancement technologies as well as missing color management support of modern printers make it difficult for the photo labs to print digital images on different printers in a consistent quality. It is surprising to see how differently a same test image is reproduced on different digital printers, even if their image enhancement is switched off. We will show the importance of color management in the digital workflow. ICC printer profiling enables printers to produce standardized output quality. We will also see samples of what happens when we try to print digital camera images with colors which are out of the printer gamut. Then we learn what the latest developments in image enhancement technology are. We cover standard global image corrections as well as local corrections of density, contrast, color and sharpness. We will for example see how "Memory Colors" like skin, sky and vegetation are detected and locally enhanced and how density can be locally corrected. We also see what can be done with local sharpening algorithms. Finally we show a real world example of how these technologies can be implemented in a digital photo lab workflow and how the quality of the production can be monitored.