Kodak Ektachrome Color Standard
Kodak Ektachrome Color Standard

Original scan from CD, no corrections

Slight gamma corrections added for neutral grays


This is a little item I got from the Adobe Photoshop 3.0.5 CD. I have never heard of it being referenced anywhere except a salesperson I met who discovered it. It disappeared in Photoshop 4.0.

It is a 512 x 768 Kodak Photo CD scan of an Ektachrome color target slide. Picture number one is exactly as I got it from the CD. No corrections except cropping. Yes, it's a little off, it was that way on the CD.

Number two is the same thing with the white, black, and gamma points pushed around a little to achieve overall average neutral grays. The temptation was to go wild with the white, black, and gray color correction eye-droppers in Photoshop. You can get a very nice display that way, but you damage several of the colors.

I addressed five points on the RGB transfer curves (image\adjust\curves) and gently pushed each point of each curve around slightly until everything that was supposed to be gray was, on average, gray. The white, black, and gray points were maintained, but the spread between colors (color cast) has been reduced. It's a slightly noisy scan, so I didn't even try to hit everything exactly.

The woman's face is a total loss. I got her to look good only after cutting her out, applying full color correction, and then pasting her back in. Nobody will ever see that picture except me.

The second picture may be handy for a printer test. It has enough different colors to be very informative. If the printer does anything wrong, you're probably going to see it.

6/3/97


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