Color management

• Viewer mode
• Save mode
• Copy mode
• Multipage mode
• Fax mode
• E-mail mode
• Gimp plugin

• Gamma correction
• Brightness
• Contrast
• Threshold
• RGB default
• Negative
• Autoenhancement
• Default
• Restore
• Store
• Histogram window
• Pipette functions

• Pipette white
• Pipette gray
• Pipette black
• Unzoom
• Zoom out
• Zoom in
• Undo zoom
• Autoselect scanarea
• Autoraise scanarea
• Select visible area
• Delete preview cache
• Preset area
• Rotation
• Aspect ratio
• RGB values
• Select scanarea
• Move scanarea

• Empty batch list
• Open batch list
• Save batch list
• Add area to list
• Remove selection
• Rename selection
• Rotate image
• Mirror image

• Copy setup
• Display setup
• Enhancement setup
• Fax setup
• Filetype setup
• E-mail setup
• Saving setup
• Color management setup

When you scan an image with color management disabled then you often get an image that does not look very good. The colors do not look natural, the contrast is bad, the image is too dark etc. The reason for this is that each device interprets a color e.g. represented by a red, green and blue value in its own way.

When you want a display or a printer to produce an image with the colors of a photo that you want to scan with a scanner then you need to tell your system how each device interprets colors. This is done with ICC/ICM profiles. When you have at least an ICC/ICM profile for your scanner and for your display then you can enable the color management of XSane. Please make sure that you filled out the color management setup correct before you enable it, otherwise you will get a lot of error messages.


Enable color management:
  

To enable the color management activate it in the Preferences menu. When you do this then the gamma, contrast and brightness options are disabled.

Color management function:
  

There are three different functions available when color management is enabled:

• Embed scanner ICM profile
  The image is saved with the original image data, no color transformation is done. The ICM profile is embedded to the image file. Programs that support color management know how to correct the colors.
  Advantages:
  • no loss of information
  Disadvantages:
  • a lot of programs are not able to handle embedded profiles
  Usage:
  • image archive, image manipulation with all color corrections, professional printing
  
  When the selected file format does not support the embedded profiles then the image is tranformed to sRGB.

• Convert to sRGB
  The image is converted to sRGB, no ICM profile is embedded.
  Advantages:
  • all programs can handle the color corrected image
  Disadvantages:
  • sRGB does not cover all visible colors
  • when you do any further color correction then you lose color information that can result in visible color steps
  Usage:
  • web publication, office documents, image manipulation only when no color correction is done, home and office printing

• Convert to working color space
  The image is converted to the working color space you selected in the color management setup. The ICM profile of the working color space is embedded to the image file.
  Advantages:
  • There are color spaces that do cover the visible colors better than sRGB does
  Disadvantages:
  • when you do any further color correction then you lose color information that can result in visible color steps
  Usage:
  • image archive, image manipulation with (may be limited) color correction, professional printing