#1 | Written by Steven Kasapi about 3 years ago.Reply
I just discovered the Costco Photo Center and your plug-in, which looks great. Costco Photo Center uses color-corrected machines and supplies ICC profiles through a 3rd party. I noticed in your plug-in you have a field for a Color Space. Does your plug-in convert the RGB values into the target Color Space? The Costco printers don’t use embedded profiles, at least according to Dry Creek Photo who created the profiles, so I need to send Costco a jpg file with the correct RGB values for their printer, hence my question about how you’re using the Color Space.
Steve,
Here is a step-by-step guide for installing a custom ICC profile:
Use Dry Creek Photo (http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/) to locate, download and install the ICC profile for a Costco outfit near you).
Launch Lightroom, go to the Export dialog, choose my plug-in and click the Color Space drop down. Choose Other…
Choose the profile you have just installed to appear in Custom Profile popup.
Now go back to the Export dialog and save your selection as a user preset, name it My Costco, for example.
Now when you export your photos just choose “My Costco” from user presets – this will populate the export dialog with the settings you saved, including the color profile. That color profile will be applied to every exported photo before it gets uploaded.
I hope this helps, if not – don’t hesitate to contact me, I’ll walk you through this.
#3 | Written by Steven Kasapi about 3 years ago.Reply
Hi Vlad,
Thanks for the thorough and fast reply! I’ve got the profiles for my Costco installed. From your reply, it sounds like your plug-in actually modifies the RGB values, rather than tack on an ICC profile to the JPEG file. Am I correct in reading that in to your reply?
Thanks again. BTW, do you have a way to make donations for the plug-in?
No, this is not correct, I am sorry I didn’t explain that better. The profile you select the in the color space drop-down is passed directly to Lightroom’s export mechanism – Lightroom renders the output file (a JPG in this case) using the specifications you set in the export dialog, including the size, quality, and ICC profile selected. My plugin is only responsible for the communication with the online service.
However, I am not sure whether Lightroom modifies the RGB values of the exported image or just embeds the profile in the JPG. My guess is it does modify the actual values.
Yes, I think it does modify the values by converting the RGB values from the original space to the target space, then it attaches the target space to the jpeg file. This is normally used for converting to editing spaces, but it should also work for printer profiles.
Can your Costco/Wal-mart (USA) exporters be modified to export to Sam's Club as well? I believe they all use PNIMedia as their back end. If not, would you consider developing a Sam's Club module?
Thanks,
Andy
