ICC Color Profile for Fuji Frontier MiniLab

[cinderella]

I found a link to download an ICC Color profile for Fuji Frontier Mini Labs like the ones at WalMart and other places for printing digital photos.
Hopefully my printed photos ,which I bring on a CD in JPEG,will have a better color match to what I saw on my monitor.

http://www.popphoto.com/HowTo/ArticleDisplay.asp?ArticleID=198

This profile can be used in Color Settings in Photo Shop.
Directions are on the page you link to.
Joyce R

[DJ Dubovsky]

Sorry Joyce.
I think this thread got caught in the lost threads pile so I missed it when it came out. Did you try out the profile yet? I'm curious to see if you think it helped match your printer to your monitor better. I know color profiles are a real tough issue for most of us to deal with. So if you find something that works, that puts you ahead of the game.
DJ

[charles]

I downloaded the profiles for my local labs Fuji Frontier 330/800 from the Fuji website.
Last week I had some wedding pics printed and they were really poor, way too contrasty. I went home and checked the embedded profiles on the CD and they were wrong. I resaved the images this time with the correct profile, burnt them onto another CD and went back to the shop for reprints. BINGO! Perfect prints that match my monitor. The monitor is setup correctly for photo work. Gamma, brightness, contrast yada yada yada.
Charles

[mimiya]

Does anyone know how to use this profile for the Fuji machine with Photoshop Elements? A step by step setup would be great.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Hi Mimiya,
Sorry I can't answer you question but I will say welcome to Retouch Pro. If anyone can answer it for you, they are probably here at Retouch Pro. There are so many talented and knowledgable people here and they go to extremes to help each other.
DJ

[cinderella]

I did an experiment using 3 color profiles (Fuji, sRGB, and RGB1998) on the same photos. . Had them printed on a FujiFrontier digi printer. Don't see any big differences on these photos which were all sepia toned. They all still don't have the same color appearance as I see on my monitor. They are all darker and all have a red cast to them.
I am printing from the same CD on another digital printer to see if it makes any difference.

Hope someone has some suggestions.

When I have some color photos I will do the same experiment. I was pleased to see someone benefited from using the Fuji profile.

To use the profile in PS load it into Working Spaces in the Color Settings . Click on Edit, color settings. The following link has lots of good info to follow that I used to set up color management.

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/photoshop_6/ps6_1.htm

[cinderella]

I got my photos back from another digital printer source and they are much better. Still don't match what I see on my monitor. Guess the Fuji I used needs some calibration.
Have more questions than answers.
What about Relative Colormetric vs Perceptual in the Color Settings Conversion Options?
Hopefully someday I will unravel all the mysteries of color settings. In the meantime it is a trial and error.
Does everyone embed a color profile ????

[DJ Dubovsky]

The day you unravel the mysteries then you will make millions on the knowledge because I don't think anyone really knows how to make things match up perfectly. I doubt they ever will. Too may variables. Color has always been a nightmare to me.
DJ

[charles]

Like I said folks, I use the profiles for my local labs Fuji 330 downloaded from the Fuji site. My monitor is set up as good as I can get it and I'm quite amazed at the colour accuracy I get.
This may sound like a silly question, but how many of you have your monitor set up correctly?
Charles
Ex UK firefighter feeling a little useless today 9/11

[cinderella]

Hey Charles, God bless all fireman. I dug deeper for info on the net and am more confused than ever.
As far as I know my monitor is calibrated correctly, having followed instructions . It does give me good results with my inkjet printer. It is the Fuji that is giving me fits.
Have you ever looked at the following site?

http://www.drycreekphoto.com/

On the next site I have quoted some insructions

http://bermangraphics.com/press/frontier.htm

"Fuji recommends your image to be in a sRGB color space. Be sure to tell the operator that you do not want any additional adjustment, for although the machine will not automatically compensate, the operator still might try to be helpful by making changes."
Then I saw that my Fuji icc should be installed here \Winnt\system32\spool\drivers\color and it is not.

I installed it to: ProgramFiles\CommonFiles\Adobe\Color\Profiles as per directions on the site I downloaded from

Does this matter??
Should I turn color management off when working on my photo in the sRGB work space? And then bring that to FUji?

[charles]

I use the Fuji colour space and save the files with the Fuji profile.
I take my files into the printers on CD. I have to use the kiosk in the shop, therefor the files on the CD are not affected by what the operator does, the photographs simply get printed. If I take a film in, the operator can change certain things like brightness, contrast etc before the pics are printed.

As for turning the colour managment off, try it, it may just work.

[alan hurton]

Which fuji site? I've been trying to find the profile for the fuji at my local Asda

I downloaded the profiles for my local labs Fuji Frontier 330/800 from the Fuji website.
Last week I had some wedding pics printed and they were really poor, way too contrasty. I went home and checked the embedded profiles on the CD and they were wrong. I resaved the images this time with the correct profile, burnt them onto another CD and went back to the shop for reprints. BINGO! Perfect prints that match my monitor. The monitor is setup correctly for photo work. Gamma, brightness, contrast yada yada yada.
Charles

Which Fuji site please? i've been trying to get the profile of the fuji frontier in my local asda

[owen]

Fuji Frontier profiles

I live in England and have tried to use a company that uses Fuji Frontiers, they have some information on their site see belo:-

"Do you support profiles for Fuji Frontiers?
It is important to note that the Fuji Frontier printers currently strip out any embedded profiles in your images, so you should ensure that your images are submitted in sRGB. You can also use our calibration print to adjust your screen to match our output as closely as possible (see above)."

So it would seem that using the profile wouldn't make much difference.

Here is the link

http://www2.fujifilm.co.uk/colour/generic_profiles/

[tlooknbill]

I've been researching this for quite sometime working with a Noritsu and a Frontier. This is what has worked for me.

If you edit in AdobeRGB you'll need the full version of PS to do conversions or if you're on a Mac there are scripts you can find on the most Mac install CD's in the Colorsync Extras folder that will do the conversion if using Elements. Look for the script that says Matching in the name.

That said no matter what profile you get all of these printers will drift in color cast tint and between models and paper types will have varying grayramp density distribution characteristics that won't match exactly your 2.2 gamma grayramp. It will be evident in how shadow detail ramps out of black and highlites get blown out from white.

The cast drift will be most pronounced in fleshtones and mid grays and change within a week's time. Other primary type colors will look pretty much the same. The casts in fleshtones can go from yellowish orange to maroonish to bluish to greenish depending on the model and locality. At low volumns during the week it could be yellowish orange at high volumns like on weekends maroonish blue.

But it's consistant. The Noritsu I use locally has drifted this way for two years like clockwork where I have two DryCreekPhoto.com profiles that emulate these two casts by temporarily assigning it to an sRGB test file I had printed with no operator color corrections. The sRGB test target consists of a grayramp and gradients of the six 255RGB display primaries and several indoor/outdoor bridal photos of varying fleshtone colors. The assigned profile that makes the test image look like the print is the one I convert to from AdobeRGB. You must have an accurately calibrated display to get this kind of precise predictability. Eyeball calibrators aren't accurate enough if you have an LCD.

Editing in the printer space by loading it in Color Settings or assigning it to the image will not guarantee the best results because you won't know which way the printer will lean that day and you can exaggerate the misalignment by editing in the already bumpy fingerprinted environment of a table based printer space. To see what I mean assign the printer profile to a grayramp and notice the banding and color crossover anomolies. It's a nasty space.

There is a generic clean table based printer profile called PhotoGamutRGB on the web that takes advantage of these types of printer's gamut while maintaining perfectly neutral grayramp when assigned to an sRGB image. It can also be safely used as an editing space, but if you send that file to a printer that isn't as prestine as this profile you might get unexpected results just as you would sending sRGB. It might be subtle or it might be glaring. Always run a 4x6 sRGB test print and assign your printer profile to check for differences.

However, if you're not too picky unlike me and you don't mind fleshtones without a color cast just sending an sRGB file may suffice. It's hit or miss, though.

[cinderella]

Cast drift in a week's time. Hadn't thought about that. Makes sense. Thanks for pointing that out.
Do you think this occurs with online labs like Mpix?????